Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/374

---

GRAINGER, JAMES, M.D. (1721?–1766), physician and poet, was born probably at Dunse in Berwickshire. The year of his birth is variously given as 1721 and 1724. He was the son, by a second marriage, of John Grainger of Houghton Hall, Cumberland, who, in consequence of some unsuccessful mining speculations, and, it is said, his attachment to the house of Stuart in 1715, was obliged to sell his estate, and take an appointment in the excise at Dunse. On the death of his father, his half-brother, William Grainger of Warriston, a writing-master in Edinburgh, and subsequently clerk in the office of the comptroller of excise, sent him to school at North Berwick. He afterwards attended the medical classes at Edinburgh University for three years, and was apprenticed to George Lauder, surgeon, of that city. Entering the army as a surgeon, he served in Pulteney's regiment of foot during the rebellion of 1745, and in the same regiment in Holland in 1746–8. In his leisure he read the Latin poets. Upon quitting the army after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, he made the tour of Europe, and, returning to Scotland, graduated M.D. at Edinburgh on 13 March 1753. His inaugural dissertation, ‘De Modo excitandi ptyalismum, et morbis inde pendentibus,’ was reprinted by Haller in the first volume of his ‘Disputationes ad morborum historiam et curationem facientes,’ 1757. In 1753 Grainger also printed ‘Historia febris anomalæ Batavæ annorum 1746, 1747, 1748, &c. Accedunt monita siphylica,’ 2 parts, 8vo, Edinburgh, 1753; another edit., 2 pts., 8vo, Altenburg, 1770. Sir John Pringle's elaborate work on the same subject had appeared a year earlier, and Grainger's effort failed to attract attention. The second part is a reprint of his exercise for the M.D. degree. Settling in London after 1753, he established himself in Bond Court, Walbrook, and became acquainted with Johnson, Shenstone, Armstrong, Glover, and Dodsley. For a while he was friendly with Smollett, and Percy was warmly attached to him. He went at certain times daily to the Temple Exchange Coffee House, near Temple Bar, in quest of practice, and there met Goldsmith, whom he introduced to Percy in 1758. In spite of his reputed ability, Grainger failed to obtain patients, and depended chiefly on his pen for a livelihood. He courted the daughter of a rich city physician, but his poverty brought his suit to nothing. In 1755 appeared his ‘Ode on Solitude’ in Dodsley's ‘Collection’ (vol. iv.), the opening lines of which Johnson thought ‘very noble’ (Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, iii. 197). From May 1756 to May 1758 he wrote about poetry, the drama, and physic in the ‘Monthly Review.’ A list of his principal contributions is given in Nichols's ‘Illustrations of Literature’ (vii. 226 n.) Not wholly neglectful of medicine, he published in ‘Essays Physical and Literary,’ 1756 (ii. 257), a paper on ‘An obstinate Case of Dysentery cured by Lime Water.’ With Percy and others he became connected with the ‘Grand Magazine of Universal Intelligence,’ a short-lived journal started in 1758. About the same time he translated ‘Leander to Hero’ and ‘Hero to Leander’ for Percy's projected version of Ovid's ‘Epistles.’ Grainger was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians on 20 March 1758. In the following November he published a ‘Poetical Translation of the Elegies of Tibullus, and of the Poems of Sulpicia; with the original Text and Notes critical and explanatory,’ 2 vols., 12mo, London (dated 1759), which he had begun while in the army. Percy revised the translation, while another friend, Robert Binnel, rector of Kemberton in Shropshire, furnished most of the notes. The book was unmercifully censured in the ‘Critical Review’ for December, then edited by Smollett. Grainger avenged himself (January 1759) in ‘A Letter to Tobias Smollett, M.D., occasioned by his Criticism upon a late Translation of Tibullus.’ He addressed Smollett throughout as ‘good Dr. Tobias’ and ‘Dr. Toby,’ because Smollett detested his baptismal name. Smollett, in his ‘Review’ for January, contemptuously referred to Grainger as ‘one of the Owls belonging to the proprietor of the “M**thly R****w,”’ and in the ‘Review’ for February Grainger was furiously attacked as a contemptible hack-writer. Reference was made to his having compiled from materials left by the author the second volume of William Maitland's discreditable ‘History and Antiquities of Scotland,’ 1757 (cf. Gent. Mag. 1791, pt. ii. p. 614), and to the failure of his application to write for the ‘Biographia Britannica.’ Grainger did not reply. With many others he assisted Charlotte Lennox with her translation of Pierre Brumoy's ‘Théâtre des Grecs,’ 1759. In April 1759 he began a four years' tour with John Bourryau, a former pupil and heir to property in the West Indies. Grainger was to receive for his attendance a life annuity of 200l. Their first destination was the island of St. Christopher. Soon after their arrival there Grainger married Miss Daniel Mathew Burt, whose mother, widow of a Nevis planter, Grainger attended for small-pox on the voyage out. The lady's brother sneered at Grainger's