Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/347

 io- s. in. APKIL is, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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was standing by the bedside, diving and plunging into the pockets of his wet trousers for his keys, money, &c. ' Poor Mr. Dyer ' said she, whimper- ing 'He has had an accident.' ' Oh, I 'm very well now,' replied he. ' But it certainly was very extra- ordinary; I really thought it was the path. I walked on and on, and suddenly-i was in But 1 soon found where I was,' added he. ' I should think so ' said I ; to which Dyer answered, Oh, yes ! left him to the care of a sort of itinerant doctor with one eye who lodged at the public-house close by. He prescribed nothing but cognac ; I suppose for the benefit of the house."

There seems some reason to believe that Dyer's portrait was painted about 1809, pro- bably by Matilda Betham, who was his friend for many years, and who was with him when he died. It was sent to Southey, who, in acknowledging its receipt, writes :

"Dyer's picture is a roost happy likeness. He does me wrong if he supposes that I do not set

freat value upon it, for I have a great regard for im and so much respect for his better part, that I never lose sight of it, even when his oddities and weaknesses provoke a smile. It is melancholy to see so many of the ingredients both of genius and happiness existing in that man's mind and spoilt in the mixing, and to think how trifling an altera- tion in his character would have made him as useful as he is good, and as happy as useful."

It is to be hoped that Mr. Lucas has been able to secure a copy of George's " counter- feit presentment " for his ' Life of Charles Lamb,' which we are all so eagerly expecting.

Lamb,

In conclusion,

I will add a stanza by

Charles Lamb, taken from Mrs. De .Morgan's 'Three Score Years and Ten,' which has not appeared in any of the numerous editions of his works. Mrs. De Morgan, who was the daughter of William Trend, tells us that it was written at Dyer's lodgings in Clifford's Inn Chambers one day after her father and Lamb had had a con- versation there :

Friend of the friendless, friend of all mankind, To thy wide friendships I have not been blind ; But looking at them nearly, in the end I love thee most that thou art Dyer's Frend.

S. BUTTEEWORTH.

PATRICK GORDON, THE GEOGRAPHER :

PETER GORDON.

THE Rev. Patrick Gordon wrote a 'Geo- graphy' which ran into twenty editions between 1693, when it first appeared, and 1754, and which had an immense influence on the youth of its day. He had something to do with the founding 'of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and seems to have been on terms of friendship with members of the Gresham Society, notably with Sir Hans Sloane, who carefully pre-

served his letters ; but, so far as I know, he is not dealt with in any of the dictionaries of biography.

He seems to have been a Scot by birth, for in writing to Sloane, 27 April, 1702 (Sloane MSS., Brit. Mus., 2038, f. 330), he refers to a " brother of mine whom I daily expect from Scotland " ; while his praise of Scotland in his ' Geography ' seems to indicate the fervour of the native.

He had a younger brother who had gone to France to study surgery and pharmacy. He introduced him to Sloane 23 June, 1701 : " Being very desirous to be acquainted with some able physicians well versed in the latest discoveries, I can recommend him to none in England so fitt a person as your worthy self." Writing on the same date to Mr. Pettive, he says his brother may make a voyage "some time hence" to one of the Carri bee Islands.

The only Patrick with whom I can at all identify him is the Rev. Patrick Gordon, of Abberley, in Worcestershire, a member of the Gordons of Kethocksmill, Aberdeen, who gave no fewer than six professors to the University of Aberdeen, and who were re-

E resented in our own time by Newman's riend the Rev. John Gordon, of the Oratory, Birmingham. This suggestion is somewhat strengthened by the fact that the geographer dedicated his book to the Hon. Thomas Coventry, eldest son of the Right Hon. Thomas, Lord Coventry, Baron of Ales- borough, in Worcestershire. This, however, is the merest guess, as Gordon was un- doubtedly a chaplain in the navy at the time that the Kethocksmill Gordon was incumbent of Abberley. Another guess is that the geographer may have been the brother of the William Gordon, a soldier in Dumbarton Castle, who left 5l. to the S.P.C.K. in 1752 surely a rare form of bequest for a soldier to make.

Patrick Gordon was chaplain on H.M.S. Salisbury in 1700-1. In the July of 1701 he- was on board the Swiftsure. He finally went to America. Writing from the Swift- sure on 17 September, 1701 (Allen and McClure's ' History of the S.P.C.K.,' p. 108>, he says he frequently thinks upon his voyage- to America ; while the Bishop of London, writing on 3 July, 1702, to the Lord High Treasurer, announced that Mr. Patrick Gor- don was to depart as chaplain to New York (' Treasury Papers'). After that date I have lost all trace of him.

The first edition of his ' Geography ' bears the following elaborate title-page :

" Geography Anatomized : Or, a Compleat Geo- graphical Gramraer [sic] Being a short and exact-