ALEXANDER GORDOIsr, THE ANTIQUARY. 29 



had laboured on a thankless task, and tlie fruits of his painstaking 

 researches were lost to the woi'ld. 



" How profitless the relics that we cull, 

 Troubling the last holds of ambitious Rome ;" - 



SO might the disappointed author have exclaimed, eA'^en in a more 

 literal sense than the poet meant. This disappointment may have 

 influenced the incidents of his later career, though he still found some 

 recognition of his sei'vices in the cause of letters and archseology. 

 In 1730^ he was ajDpointed Secretai-y of the Society for the Encoui-age- 

 ment of Learning, and soon after succeeded to the more congenial 

 office of Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London. It was 

 probably through the influence of his brother antiquary, Dr. Stukeley, 

 that he also obtained the secretaryship of the Egyptian Society, of 

 which that amiable enthusiast was one of the founders ; and so had 

 a new bent given to his researches, which is proved by his will to 

 have been thenceforth the ruling passion of his life. The Society 

 was chiefly composed of gentlemen who had visited Egypt, and were 

 thereby assumed to have achieved some special mastery of its antique 

 lore. Their Secretary, without apparently having enjoyed such op- 

 portunities, turned his indefatigable zeal in this neAv direction, pub- 

 lished a succession of very learned and uiareadable folios, undertook 

 to solve the mysteries of hieroglyphics before the Rosetta Stone was 

 heard of, and to ilkistrate "all the Egy^itian mummies in England!" 

 Hence followed, in especial, " Two Essays towards explaining the 

 hieroglyphical figures on the cofiin belonging to Cajjtain W. Le- 

 thieullier, and on the Egyptian mummy in the museum of Dr. 

 Mead ;" another folio of twenty -five plates of Egyptian mummies, 

 engraved by Tander Guclit ; and, indeed, endless hieroglyphic eluci- 

 dations and mystifications, carried on to the close of a life terminated 

 under circumstances well calculated to have weaned anyone but 

 such an enthusiastic devotee from this unprofitable toil 



Of dropping buckets into empty wells, 

 And growing old in drawing nothing up. 



Alexander Gordon, it may be surmised, was somewhat of a fossil 

 mummy himself. Had his northern Alma Mater been able to 

 furnish it, his fittest niche would have been some snug College 

 Fellowship, with a Bodleian Library to browse in at his will. But 

 it has rather been the fashion in the North to let such Fellows culti- 

 . vate their learning on a little oatmeal. I confess to a kindly feeling 



