14 MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



while in another passage he says — 



" Friend to the friendless, he was all to mc 

 That my fond heart could wish." 



Indeed, again and again throughout the poem his 

 love and respect for Dr. Barclay is expressed with 

 evidently unfeigned sincerity, although at times in 

 language which may to the reader appear bordering on 

 exaggeration — not unnatural in a youthful mind so 

 deeply affected, but which to him was no exaggeration. 



The midnight scene in the Hebrides — the subject 

 of the last of the poetic extracts given in this volume — 

 is specially fine, although quite in the Beattie spirit and 

 style — especially tlie last line, which suggests tiie effect 

 of it as wooing " the contemplative mind to midnight's 

 bower." 



The poem is highly valued, and is carefully pre- 

 served, by Dr. Barclay's still surviving son, JMr. George 

 Barclay, of 17 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh. 



Mr. Barclay has a distinct recollection of his mother 

 telling him of the first impression made on her by her 

 husband's "wild Highland pupil," when as a young 

 wife she went to Aberdeen in October 1816. No doubt 

 MacGillivray had just then returned from his annual 

 summer stay in Harris — his clothing and his person 

 probably still betraying more or less the effects of his 

 long pedestrian journey, in which there had been much 

 scrambling over rocks, wading through marshes, and 

 wandering among peat bogs in search of rare plants, or 

 for observation of the habits of birds, which had 



