Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/202

513 ::When fortune's storms assail this weary head
 * Where cares long since have shed untimely snow!
 * Ah! now for ever whither shall I go?
 * No more thy soothing voice my anguish cheers,
 * Thy placid eyes with smile no longer glow,
 * My hopes to cherish and allay my fears.

'Tis meet that I should mourn—flow forth afresh, my tears.

Dr Gregory was considerably above the middle size, and although he could not be called handsome, yet he was formed in good proportion. He was slow in his motion, and had a stoop forward. His eye and countenance had a rather dull appearance until they were lighted up by conversation. His conversation was lively and always interesting; and although he had seen much of the world, he was never given to that miserable refuge of weak minds—story-telling. In his lecturing he struck the golden mean between formal delivery and the ease of conversation. He left two sons and two daughters: Dr James Gregory, who was the able successor of his father in the university of Edinburgh; William Gregory, rector of St. Mary's, Bentham; Dorothea, the wife of the Rev. A, Allison, of Baliol college; and Margaret, wife of J. Forbes, Esq. of Blackford.

GREY,, a surgeon in the service of the honourable East India Company, and founder of an hospital for the sick poor of the town and county of Elgin, was the son of deacon Alexander Grey, a respectable and ingenious tradesman of Elgin, who exercised the united crafts of a wheel-wright and watchmaker, and of Janet Sutherland, of whose brother, Dr Sutherland, the following anecdote is related by some of the oldest inhabitants of Elgin. It is said that the king of Prussia, Frederick William I. being desirous to have his family inoculated with small pox, applied in England for a surgeon to repair to Berlin for that purpose. Though this was an honourable, and probably lucrative mission, yet from the severe and arbitrary character of the king, it was regarded by many as a perilous undertaking to the individual, as it was not impossible that he might lose some of his patients. Sutherland, at all hazards, offered his services, was successful in the treatment of his royal patients, and was handsomely rewarded. On his return to England, his expedition probably brought him more into public notice, for we afterwards find him an M.D. residing and practising as a physician at Bath, until he lost his sight, when he came to Elgin, and lived with the Greys for some years previous to 1775, when he died.

Deacon Grey had a family of three sons and two daughters, and by his own industry and some pecuniary assistance from Dr Sutherland, he was enabled to give them a better education than most others in their station. Alexander, the subject of this memoir, born in 1751, was the youngest of the family. Induced by the advice or success of his uncle, he made choice of the medical profession, and was apprenticed for the usual term of three years to Dr Thomas Stephen, a physician of great respectability in Elgin. He afterwards attended the medical classes in the college of Edinburgh, and having completed his education he obtained the appointment of an assistant surgeoncy on the Bengal establishment. It does not appear that he was distinguished either by his professional skill or literary acquirements, from the greater proportion of his professional brethren in the east. When advanced in life, he married a lady much younger than himself, and this ill-assorted match caused him much vexation, and embittered his few remaining years. They had no children, and as there was no congeniality in their dispositions nor agreement in their habits, they separated some time before Dr Grey's death, which happened in 1808. By economical