tunity of reviling and humiliating him, and pursued his system of hostility with the most unrelenting bitterness.
Soon after the publication of the "Elegies," Dr Grainger went out as a physician to the island of St Christopher's, where an advantageous settlement had been offered him. On the voyage out he formed an acquaintance, in his professional capacity, with the wife and daughter of Matthew Burt, esq., the governor of St Christopher's; the latter of whom he married soon after his arrival en the island. Having thus formed a connexion with some of the principal families, he there commenced his career with every prospect of success. To his medical avocations he now added those of a planter, and by their united profits soon realized an independency.
On the conclusion of the war, Dr Grainger returned for a short time to England. While there, he published (1764) the result of his West India experience, in a poem entitled the "Sugar Cane." This work was also much praised at the time, and certainly does possess many passages of great beauty; but without arraigning the author's talents, since his subject precluded any thing like sentiment or dignity, it cannot be considered in any other light, than as an ill-judged attempt to elevate things in themselves mean and wholly unadapted for poetry.
In the same year (1764) he also published "An Essay on the more common West India diseases, and the remedies which that country itself produces; to which are added, some hints on the management of negroes." Besides these works, Dr Grainger was the author of an exceedingly pleasing ballad, entitled "Bryan and Pereene." After a short residence in England, he returned to St Christopher's, where he died on the 24th December, 1767, of one of those epidemic fevers so common in the West Indies.
GRANT, Sir Francis, of Cullen, a judge and political writer, was the son of Archibald Grant of Bellinton,[1] in the north of Scotland, a cadet of the family of Grant of Grant, the various branches of which, at that period, joined the same political party, which was supported by the subject of this memoir. He was born about the year 1660, and received the elementary part of his education at one of the universities of Aberdeen. He was destined for the profession of the law ; and as at that period there were no regular institutions for the attainment of legal knowledge in Scotland, and the eminent schools of law on the continent furnished admirable instruction in the civil law of Home, on which the principles of the greater part of the Scottish system are founded, along with most of the aspirants at the Scottish bar, Mr Grant pursued his professional studies at Leyden, where he had the good fortune to be under the auspices of the illustrious commentator John Voet; an advantage by which he is said to have so far profited, that the great civilian retained and expressed for years afterwards a high opinion of his diligence and attainments, and recommended to his other students the example of his young Scottish pupil. He seems indeed to have borne through his whole life a character remarkable for docility, modesty, and unobtrusive firmness, which procured him the countenance and respect of his seniors, and brought him honours to which he did not apparently aspire. Immediately on his return to Scotland, and in consequence of the exhibition of his qualifications at the trial preparatory to his passing at the bar, we find him attracting the notice of Sir George M'Kenzie, then lord advocate, at the head of the Scottish bar, and in the full enjoyment of his wide-spread reputation; a circumstance creditable to the feelings of both, and which must have
- ↑ Such is his paternity, as given in Haig and Brunton's History of the College of Justice, on the authority of Milne's genealogical MS. Wodrow, in one of his miscellaneous manuscripts, says, he understood him to be the son of a clergy man.
