10 MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



very appropriately calls the Outer Hebrides. On one 

 occasion he tells us he walked from Aberdeen to 

 London with his journal and Smith's Flora Britannica 

 on his back, for the purpose of seeing the country and 

 visiting the British Museum. 



MacGillivray's study of medicine was begun in 

 1814-15, as pupil to George Barclay, M.D., physician 

 to the Aberdeen Infirmary and Lecturer on Surgery in 

 King's and Marischal Colleges. Dr. Barclay was him- 

 self then quite a young man only about three years 

 older than MacGillivray his pupil. He was a native of 

 Aberdeenshire youngest son of Charles Barclay, Esq., 

 of Templeland, in the parish of Auchterless. He was 

 much respected and trusted as a physician, and beloved 

 by all who had relationships with him, whether profes- 

 sionally or as friends. MacGillivray's attachment to 

 him was deep and sincere ; and on his death, of typhus 

 fever, on 20th December 1819, in the twenty-seventh 

 year of his age, MacGillivray, then resident in Edin- 

 burgh, wrote and printed " A Tribute to the Memory 

 of a Friend ; being a Poem on the Death of George 

 Barclay, M.D.," to which was prefixed a short account 

 of Dr. Barclay's life and character. In the poem he 

 warmly expresses his feelings of attachment towards 

 his deceased teacher and friend, and his warm sense of 

 indebtedness to him. He had sent the poem to Mrs. 

 Barclay in manuscript, accompanying it with a letter 

 dated 4th March 1820, in which he writes : " The 

 poem which accompanies this, such as it is, is the pure 

 offering of feeling, and such as its title indicates. I 



