Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/186

 182

NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. vn. MAR. s, 1913.

books of the Temple : he was apparently only a sub-tenant. His poverty is evidenced by the opening words of his brief testament : "As I have been for many years chiefly supported by the proprietors of The London Magazine, who have always shown me not only justice, but often much generosity"; so he left them his copyrights, whatever these were worth, and nominated Richard Baldwin, bookseller, Paternoster Row, the publisher of the magazine, as his executor. On 17 Feb., two days after Gordon's death, Edward Kimber, St. Bride's, the literary hack, and Samuel Selfe, printer, Clerkenwell, identified the will as being in his hand- writing, which they knew well, and it was duly proved, without particulars, on 19 Feb.

Now, what were the " writings in the cause of liberty " which had " enlightened and improved thousands " ? So far as I have been able to discover, no book bears his name on its title-page. There is, however, a laborious ' History of our National Debts and Taxes,' 1751, a British Museum copy of which is inscribed (in the handwriting of W. Musgrave ?) as by " George Gordon, author of ' The Annals of Europe.' ' The latter book, as laborious as the ' History of our National Debts,' first appeared in 1740, and editions for the years 1740-43 inclusive were subsequently issued. It shows brains, and contains information to be found nowhere else, but there is not a single iden- tifying mark about it, except, perhaps, a long account of a lightning storm at Grant - field (now Midmar) Castle, Aberdeenshire. It was the pioneer of ' The Annual Register,' first issued in 1758, and of a numerous brood of similar books ,in our time, like ' Whitaker's Almanack ' and ' Hazell's Annual.'

One wonders whether Gordon was not also a pioneer in another region of record- keeping, namely, Parliamentary reporting. Von Ruville, discussing this obscure subject in his ' William Pitt, Earl of Chatham ' (1907), says (i. 118) that Dr. Johnson in 1737 collected speeches for The Gentleman's Magazine, and adds : " He was followed by a Scottish ecclesiastical official, Mr. Gordon, who reproduced the speeches [of Pitt] in The London Magazine," which had been started in 1732. This statement is evi- dently based on Almon (' Life of Chatham,' i. 141), who describes the reporter as " a Mr. Gordon, minister of the Church of Scotland " ; and this in turn is paraphrased by Lord Rosebery, who calls him (' Chatham,' p. 493) " a Scottish clergyman named Gordon," and who informed me (21 Nov.,

1910) that he had not been able to identify Gordon further. Was he a " stickit minister " ?

When Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk came to London about the Window Tax, he says ('Autobiography,' 1910 ed., p. 325) that he interviewed " Dr. Gordon of the Temple, a Scotch solicitor at law " - but he assigns the date 1769 to this visit, whereas George Gordon died in 1768. It is a curious fact that there is not a single reference to- the reporter Gordon in BoswelPs ' Johnson/ It would be very interesting to know whether " Mr." Gordon, the Parliamentary reporter, was identical with George Gordon, because- the latter's kinsman James Perry (1756- 1821), as editor of The Gazetteer, introduced " a succession of reporters for the Parlia- mentary debates, so as to procure their prompt publication in an extended form "" ('D.N.B.'), and also edited ' Debrett's Parliamentary Debates.' Perry was suc- ceeded by a long line of Gallery men from his native county, which has continued down to the present moment, and includes an Aber- deenshire laird, Mr. Francis Hugh Forbes Irvine, twenty-first of Drum (1854-94), who. represented The Times in the House.

The identification of George Gordon " of the Middle Temple " is complicated by the fact that another George Gordon unless- the two were identical was writing books at the same time. This George Gordon wrote ' Remarks on the Newtonian Philo- sophy ' (1719); 'A Compleat Discovery of a Method of Observing the Longitude at Sea' (1724), by " George Gordon, Gent.,'" who lived " at Mr. Graeme's house, the Green Door, over against the Three Pid- geons, in Butcherhall Lane, Newgate Street " ; and ' An Introduction to Geography, Astronomy, and Dialling ' (1726). This was probably the George Gordon who compiled the mathematical terms for Bailey's ' Die- tionarium Britannicum ' (1730), and signed the Dedication of the same, with Bailey, to the Earl of Pembroke. 1 do not know whether this Gordon was connected with the " Mr. Gordon " who helped Bellamy to compile ' A New English Dictionary ' in 1762, nor have I identified the George Gordon who wrote the Latin treatise ' De Rerum Questiones Philosophic^,' published at Glasgow in 1758.

In any case George Gordon " of the Middle Temple " must not be confused with Person's friend George Gordon, a man about town, of the British Coffee-House, who was a brother of Pryse Lockhart Gordon (see the latter's ' Memoirs,' i. 261,