Perhaps when Burns submitted his lines, ‘On seeing a wounded hare limp by me, which a fellow had just shot at,’ he hoped for as kindly a criticism as Dr Gregory had given to Clarinda’s verses, which the poet had shown him in December 1787; but if so, he was much disappointed. ‘Dr Gregory is a good man, but he crucifies me,’ wrote Burns soon after; and again, ‘I believe in the iron justice of Dr Gregory; but like the devils I believe and tremble.’ It was a curious friendship, but friendship it was. There is an English translation of Cicero, which the physician had given to Burns in Edinburgh in 1787, and on the fly-leaf of this is written, ‘This book, a present from the truly worthy and learned Dr Gregory, I shall preserve to my latest hour as a mark of the gratitude, esteem and veneration I bear the owner—so help me God.—Robert Burns.’ Clarinda’s desire to make Gregory’s acquaintance which is surely an indication of how much her Sylvander admired him, finds utterance in a letter of 1787, ‘Pray is Dr Gregory pious? I have heard so, I wish I knew him.’ It was at Lord Monboddo’s that Gregory first met Burns. Besides the queer old judge, who was made a laughing stock for saying that men originally had tails, there was his charming daughter, the beautiful Miss Burnet, to whom Gregory is said to have offered his heart and hand. One of the stories that Lord Cockburn tells of Gregory is in connection with Miss Sophia Johnston (generally known in the Edinburgh of that day as ‘Suphy’) one of the Hilton family; about whom, because of her curious upbringing, there were many odd stories. ‘When Suphy’s day was visibly approaching, Dr Gregory prescribed abstinence from animal food, and recommended “spoon-meat” unless she wished to die. “Dee, doctor, odd, I’m thinking they’ve forgotten an auld wife like me up yonder!” However, when he came back next day, the doctor found her at the spoon-meat, supping a haggis—she was remembered.’ Gregory lived now, as we know, in St Andrew Square, having left the old home in the Canongate, but besides this he bought a house called Canaan Lodge, which was then at a sufficient distance from Edinburgh to be in the real country. Walking towards this house he might often be seen of an evening with his all too warlike stick over his shoulder, possibly the very stick with which he smote his brother physician Professor Hamilton within the sacred precincts of the university. The story does not end here, nor even at the Law Courts, where he was made to pay £100 damages to the infuriated object of his attack, but with Gregory, who as usual had the last word, and the last laugh in the matter, and said as he paid his fine, that he would willingly pay double for another chance. ‘A’ the country, far and near, Hae heard Macgregor’s fame, lady.