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on the death of the author's grandson Henry Johnston *), are now, 1780, in the hands of Bacon Frank, of Campsal, esq. nephew and heir to the

Recorder.

ALEXANDER GORDON, M. A. a Scotsman, an excellent draughtsman, and a good Grecian, resided many years in Italy, visited most parts of that country, and had also travelled into France, Germany, &c. He published his "Itinerarium Septentrionale" in

late Chancellor Johnston's house by children: that Mr. Thomas Martin had taken off many, and hoped to take off the rest, of which he promised an account. A volume of these drawings, with MS notes, supposed to be one of those carried into Suffolk, was in possession of Mr. Astle, who exchanged them with John Hatfield Kay, of Hatfield hall, Yorkshire, ecq. Another volume of Drawings was recovered by the means of Dr. Ducarel, and sent to the late Mr. Frank, m whose library (now his rerhew's, 1750 theys cmain. See British Topography, vol. II. p.402 —404.

* Henry Johnston, LL. D. rector of Whiton, Northamptonshire, and vicar of Stow-Market, Sulfik; afterwards chancellor of the diocese of Landaff, prebendary of Lincoln, and rector of Stoke and Soham Monks, in the county of Lincoln, at which place he died, Sept. 19, 1755. See the family pedigree in Dr. Ducarel's Anglo-Gallic coins, p. 57.

By the following letter, preserved among the papers of Mr. Ames, it will be seen that the publication of this volume was not achieved without much pecuniary inconvenience to the Author. Tuesday, June 21, 1726.

SIR,

I received your letter of Monday, in which you desire me to meet you at the Quaker's; which I cannot, by reason of a prior engagement with Mr. Mackay and others; nor do I know well what you mean by insisting on my promises, seeing, I think, whatever I promised I have faithfully fulfilled, in a manner sufficient to any services I have had of you; which if you are not content, nor willing of a continuation of friendship, if you have a mind that justice shall decide the matter, let me know, that my attorney may appear, wherever you think proper to let me know, in a friendly manner, and if required, shall have sufficient bail ready, till a judge decide our difference. For my part, I thought by this time, on receipt of your clothes, you had been perfectly satisfied; and that the value of 261. 10s. is reward for all you have done me. I think you go a very strange way to work in gaining friends and people's esteem, by such unreasonable pretensions, when you know with what difficulty I can get the two ends of my book's expence to meet. I did not expect this at your hand. Had you been easy till I had seen what proit I may have if any, or how my matters stand, I still would have exerted myself

1726; in which year, Aug. 29, Sir John Clerk thus wrote to Mr. Gale, "Mr. Gordon is expected here, with his head full of a project to make a communication between Clyde and Forth by a canal; when I see it is probable he will be less fond of it, for his project has been thought of a good many years ago, but it has been judged the profits would not answer the charge." In reply, Mr. Gale observes, "I told Mr.Gordon my thoughts of his project to cut through the Northern isthmus very freely. I could not see what manner of commerce could be so promoted by this new passage, as to repay the immense expence it would require to perfect it; at the same tinie the publick is so poor here, and so many necessary demands upon it, that I am sure it will be impossible to obtain the least sum for such experiments; and I believe your Treasury in Scotland is not much richer: he has, however, communicated it to some great men. My Lord Ilay treated it, as I hear, with great contempt; and if Sir Robert Walpole gave it a more favourable reception; it proceeded from the recommendation of Secretary Johnson, and from his usual affability and desire to dismiss every body that applies to him as well pleased as he Mr. Gordon made trial of all the ways by which a man could get an honest livelihood. He set about the study of Greek; but is said to have been so ill furnished with Latin, as to have translated in one of his publications the concluding sentence of Herodotus' first book*, where horses

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myself on your account, as I have already done; which is all from, Sir, your most humble servant, ALEXANDER GORDON. P.S. With the evening tide I go for Richmond to Sir Andrew Fountain; then to Twitnam, with Brigadier Bisset's books; next to Hampton Court, about a particular affair; so when I return I shall be very willing to lay the affair before Mr. Colvill and Mr. Richardson, your two friends; and I hope thereby exonerate myself and conduct in any affair betwixt you and me." * "Your quotation from Herodotus, with regard to the mistake, is nothing without the Greek being quoted at full length: wal Twv IIanŵr anulalso little they knew of Astronomy, and so little did Mr. Blackwell know of either Greek or Latin. By the bye, you see your Deo pernicissimo is quite out of the question.. I had this circumstance from Dr. Taylor, ex ore." Mr. E. Clarke.

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are said to be sacrificed to the sun, as deo pernicissimo, the most pernicious deity.

Mr. Gordon is frequently noticed in the "Reliquiæ Galeanæ *." In 1730 Mr. Maurice Johnson thanks

* It appears by this work (p. 226) that the first intimacy between Mr. Roger Gale and Sir John Clerk arose through the medium of Mr. Gordon; whose "Itinerarium" they both very freely censure, pp. 226. 232; and, in p. 237, Sir John Clerk says, "I had acknowledged your favour of the 26th of April, but delayed giving myself that pleasure till I should see Mr. Gordon's book. I have now seen it; and because the last part concerns me most, I cannot help regretting to you that Mr. Gordon has not at all answered my expectations and the promise he made me. I was in hopes he only would have made use of the contents of my letters as his own; but in place of this I find them not only inserted at length, but in a most incorrect way. I foresaw that this would happen, amongst other inconveniences; so pressed him over and over again not to meddle with them. I cannot now help what is done, but have caused the errata to be printed after the appendix in as many copies as are to be sold here. I likewise ordered the printer to send them to Mr. Gordon, that they night likewise be inserted in other copies. No new thing has been added, except where I speak of the linum asbestinum, I say, it could not resist the force of the vehement fire. The Bishop of Hadria's letter obliged me to this caution, though not very necessary; for, by the very way that the honest Bishop tells his story, it appears that the cloth he saw had never been in a rogus, otherwise all the cineres had been collected, and not a part of them. If he had made a trial, as he says, of its combustible quality, it was only in an Italian fire, and not on a heap of wood exposed to the wind, and sufficient to melt iron itself. I shall only add, by the bye, that all he proves is that this cloth could resist humidity, and after a decent manner in a tomb or an urn preserve the cineres of the dead. To return to Mr. Gordon; though he had done me a great kindness not to put me so much in his records, yet I am obliged to forgive him, for I dare say he had my credit no less in view than his own. As to the errata, I must impute them to my own bad hand and way of writing, with which I doubt you are scarcely acquainted as yet. As to the rest of Mr. Gordon's book, it is really a book above my expectation, and might have pleased every body had he been less precipitate in publishing it. I was not wanting in giving him Horace's advice.

Nonumque prematur in annum.

Membranis intus positis, delere licebit

Quod non edideris; nescit vox missa reverti.

But possibly he has done better, if he has acquired by it new and able friends to get him put in a new way of living. I cannot omit making some apology for him in relation to what he says of the speech of Galgacus, p. 136. I once endeavoured to

persuade

Mr. Gale for his "agreeable donation to the Spalding Library of Mr. Gordon's Translation of the

persuade him that it was only a fiction of Tacitus, conformable to a liberty among historians, and that there was no reasoning from any thing contained in it to the advantage either of Galgacus or his Caledonians: but Mr. Gordon's high respect for his country hath carried him too far, and made him commit a sort of laudable fault. There are other instances of this infirmity in p. 137; but his business as an Antiquary will atone for all: the best that could have been said for the Caledonians was, that though they had been conquered, yet the Romans could not retain their conquests. I am, I confess, of the opinion of some learned men, that it is a reproach to a nation to have resisted the humanity which the Romans laboured to introduce. As to the rest of Mr. Gordon's book,

Ubi plura nitent-non ego paucis offendar maculis.

"I return you many thanks for the account you sent me of the Society [of Antiquaries]. I wish it were still under a greater encouragement. A little of the Royal bounty and favour would be of singular use to it, but it will be hard persuading a true Courtier that there is any thing in the study of Antiquities above other trifling studies; and yet it may be demonstrated that nothing will tend more to promote true British spirits in the love of this country, liberty, and glory. One must be of a very abject frame of soul who cannot receive any impressions of this kind from the sentiments or valiant actions of the Greeks and Romans. We see what use the learned Bishop of Cambray made of his knowledge of the antients to form the mind of a prince. What are the heroes of antiquity but so many models by which we may square our lives and actions?"- Mr. Gale answers, "By what Mr. Gordon had said to me, I concluded he had your free leave to publish your letters; otherwise should by no means have parted with them to him, much less have suffered my crude and hasty answers to have attended them into the world, had not the printing of yours indispensably required it. The errors you complain of must be wholly imputed to the stupidity and perverseness of the printers. I corrected the sheets myself with all the care I could; and finding, when the book was finished, most of their faults still left, I persuaded Mr. Gordon to stop the publication of it for a week, whilst those sheets might be once more corrected and re-printed, which he did; but then returning from the press with some of the old errata set right and new ones added in their room, stop them again he could not, having engaged a second time in the public prints to deliver them at a certain day to his subscribers; which promise having broke, upon pretence the map was not ready (though the delay in reality was only to re-print the afore-mentioned sheets), he thought he could by no means excuse another non-performance of his engagements. I offered him to peruse every sheet of the whole book as it came out of the press; for which he seemed very

thankful,

Marquis Maffei's History of Amphitheatres * ;" and in 1735 Mr. Gordon gave to the Spalding Society an impression from a Persian or Armenian intaglio, stamped on paper; with his description and draught of the same, and some conjectures thereupon. His observations on Capt. Lethieullier's and Dr. Mead's mummies were given him by Mr. Roger Gale and Dr. Mead. He was grand-master of the Society of Free Masons; and in 1736 was ap

thankful, but never sent me one except those of the Appendix containing our letters. I wish it was not his, being persuaded that he was perfectly right in all his notions which occasioned it, though you see as well as myself that he is not clear of mistakes; to which I must add, an impatience of getting the work abroad, upon the prospect of getting a little money by it, his circumstances, as I believe, requiring and prompting him to it. I hope also that it has been a recommendation to him to some of our great men here, who, as he tells me, have given him some reason to expect they will do something for him. He may urge in his defence that strong plea of Res angusta domi for his hasty publication; as he may that other of Vincit amor Putriæ, where his zeal for the honour of his country has sometimes caused him to enforce his arguments too far."-" I never saw Mr. Gordon's Supplement till within these eight days: he had done well either not to have printed at all, or done it with less precipitation. His dispute with Dr. Hunter [of Durham] is amazing; for both what he and the Doctor says, about the time of erecting the Basilica, may be true. I was out of all patience, when I found him making remarks on some of your observations, which, I believe, were never printed; but, it seems, he is one of those that would rather lose their friend than their jest, and a little more learning would make him a complete modern critic. I have been sorry often to observe such weaknesses; but I was so much obliged to him for the happiness he introduced me to of your acquaintance, that I could overlook many faults in him. I beg it of you not to discountenance him altogether; but continue to give him your good advice, though he may be very little capable of benefiting by it. I see he has helped off some of his errata in the Itinerarium:' but has taken no notice of some ridiculous things he made me say; wherefore I have sent him a few corrections, if there be place for them in his Latin edition." * Mr. Johnson adds, “Our Society is augmented lately by the admission of Mr. Pegge, an ingenious member of St. John's College, Cambridge, I think a fellow, and studious of antiquities; a merchant, and a surgeon of this town; and we have every week full meetings. Our library increases, so that we are about making two larger classes for our books," &c.

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