But soon returned in piteous case
To have her garments dried.’
He was a delightful brother and a delightful friend. What he might have done as a mathematician had he but lived it is impossible to tell. As it is, a writer who has discussed the hereditary qualities of the family, speaks of the mathematical genius, which had lain dormant since the time of James Gregorie as ‘blazing forth’ again in Duncan Farquharson Gregory, and if this writer passes over such talents as those of David Gregory, the Savilian Professor at Oxford, he must have held the Fellow of Trinity in great honour. Another authority on the family, said that if Duncan Gregory were alive, which he might quite well be as far as dates are concerned, he would probably have been the most famous pure mathematician of the day. And a still greater testimony is that of Lord Kelvin, given at the Bristol meeting of the British Association in 1898, where in a paper on ‘Graphic Representations of the two Simplest Cases of a Single Wave,’ he referred to Gregory’s work on this subject. ‘Gregory,’ he said, ‘died too soon,’ and as he turned from the black-board on which he had been drawing some diagrams, he added, ‘we cannot tell what we might have known if Gregory had lived.’ His talent was appreciated when he lived, but the qualities to which his friends reverted with most tenderness were his unenvious appreciation of other men’s work, his sweetness and joyfulness, and the patience with which he bore his last long illness.
CHAPTER XI
RETROSPECT
‘Whatever he had in himself, he would fain have made out a hereditary claim for.’—Lockhart, Life of Scott, ch. lxxxiv.
When Pennant on his famous tour through Scotland, came to the dreary moorland below Craigroyston, he was filled with special interest by the scene. Here, he was told, was the cradle of the M’Gregors, a clan so devoid of kindness, that they had been hunted down like wild beasts, their name suppressed and their remnant dispersed like Jews over the country. ‘And even now,’ he added, ‘their posterity are still said to be distinguished among the clans in which they have incorporated themselves, not only by the redness of their hair, but by their still retaining the mischievous disposition of their ancestors.’ What then, would Pennant have said, could he have known that from one descendant of a MacGregor would arise a family, thirteen of whom would be mentioned in the Encyclopædias of 1900? After all it should be remembered that even Rob Roy’s literary tastes have never been sufficiently appreciated, for his name is found in the original list of the subscribers to Keith’s History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland, published in 1734!
The Gregories, then, were inclined to an academic life. Their portraits appear oddly and unexpectedly in the public buildings of this country, their names equally unexpectedly in many books; but their teaching which was the greatest gift they had to offer to their fellowmen can of course no longer be adequately appreciated. The very greatness of a teacher, which leads him to speak directly to the body of men before him with the needs, the ignorance, the prejudices, and the fancies of their age, makes his teaching unintelligible to any time but his own, to a preceding age, if it were possible, darkness, to a succeeding, platitude.
Going back to the beginning, how many times should we wish to thank one or other of the Gregories for their hard hitting at the shams and insincerities of their day! The Rev. John Gregorie, the founder of the family, began by withstanding Cant in the body, and overlooking the upturned sand-glass which that divine had set for him, taught his own views even though they were not accepted by his self-complacent opponent as the ‘orthodox doctrein.’ He after all, uninteresting as he perhaps appeared to be, is still the forerunner of the family greatness, and that not only as their first father, but because he showed an example of independence in opinion to his own children and to theirs—when the time should come that their grandfather’s history would be told them by the fire of a winter’s night.
One of his sons, David of Kinairdy, possessed the first barometer in Scotland, an innovation for which he nearly paid with his life. Another, Professor James Gregorie (the first), because he too rapidly realised the greatness of Newton’s philosophy, and taught it, came under the ban of his fellow-professors at St Andrews, and was glad when the opportunity presented itself to receive the approbation of a sister university, more ready for his teaching. He, too, invented the first reflecting telescope, through which things are seen as they appear to one’s eyes, and not upside down as had been the case with earlier telescopes. This also in its way was a parable of what the Gregories were to do in the world of science in making things as plain as possible, so that the wayfaring men though fools, might not err therein. David the son and David the grandson both did most of their work at Oxford, the first teaching mathematics, and endeavouring to bring Newton’s Principia down to the level of ordinary mathematicians, while the second, who was Professor of Modern History and Modern Languages, having been much abroad, arranged to have the assistance of foreign teachers, whom he supported, not only with his influence, but with his purse. There were other mathematicians descended from David of Kinairdy, who, it may be remembered, had three sons professors of mathematics at one time, and of this branch of the family also were Alexander Innes and Thomas Reid, both professors of philosophy.
Reverting to the descendants of Professor James Gregorie—the son, grandsons, great-grandson, and great-great-grandsons, were founders or builders, all of them of medical education in Scotland, each doing his own part for the cause of medicine. James the son, called the third professor of that name (for one of his mathematical cousins was the second), was recognised and honoured as ‘the founder’ of the Medical School at Aberdeen, though the foundations indeed must lie very deep, for by no amount of digging can traces of them be discovered. Professor John the grandson (his half-brother, Professor James the fourth, was inconsiderable), the fellow-worker with Cullen, accepted and taught that great doctor’s views, and with his charming good-sense eradicated many of the more prejudicial items of children’s upbringing. The great-grandson, Professor James (the fifth), more than took his father’s place as a teacher, and setting the medical world of Edinburgh at defiance, made one of the most sweeping reforms that has ever taken place in the history of clinical teaching in that university. He was also one of the great leaders in the volunteer movement. The great-great-grandsons, Professor William Gregory and Professor William Pulteney Alison, were professors both of them in the Medical Faculty of the Edinburgh University, and taught their subjects in the lucid and original way, which was the gift of the whole family. Duncan Farquharson Gregory was the only one of the descendants of James Gregorie, the great contemporary of Newton, who followed in his footsteps as a mathematician. He died in his thirtieth year, but left behind him a brilliant record of his life’s work, which is only sad because it was so short.