GOEDON'S MEMOIRS.*
Mr. GORDON does not pretend to be a very remarkable man him- self; but in the course if not of an eventful life, an incidental one, he has seen and observed many that are entitled to that distinc- tion. Possessed of the shrewdness and good sense of his country, and having been chiefly thrown on the world as an observer, he has availed himself of the many opportunities that have been pre- sented to him in all kinds of life, high and low, at home or abroad. Our recent memoir writers have chiefly confined themselves to the stale bon mots of a former age, and the record of their own follies. In our late notice of Mr. WARNER, we lauded him for having sketched the biographic/es, the characters and brief lives of such striking persons as time and chance and his pursuits had enabled him to understand thoroughly and to appreciate. The same praise is to be bestowed on the entertaining and instructive performance of Mr. (or Major) GORDON. In his youth an observing boy, he had experience of Scotch life in a manse. Destined to the military service, he was moved from Scotland, to Ireland, to England ; and at each of his stations appears to have seen good society, en- joyed life, and kept his eyes and ears open. Afterwards, accom- Personal Memoirs, or Reminiscences of Men and Manners, at home and abroad, daring .the last.half century,-with occasional sketches of the Author's Life. Being Fragments fr.:MAU Portfolio. of Pryse Lockhart Gordon, Esq. 2 vols. London, IWO. panying a young invalid nobleman into -various countries, during various voyages at different periods, when Europe was agitated by the spirit of NAPOLEON, he could not fail to fall in with the
curious. For the last fourteen years he has been stationed at Brussels, where his former connexions with England have enabled
him to continue at the post of observation ; and we should think there are few better than the capital of Belgium, more especially as Mr. GORDON'S residence there includes the Battle of Waterloo.
Mr. GORDON is at least an amateur of the arts, if not a connois- seur ; and has some curious anecdotes to record of his traffic in virtu. He has made some of those prodigious bargains which ex- cite the cupidity of dealers ; such as buying a neglected and aban- doned article in its dust and rust, and on its being restored, selling it for untold gold. In this way Mr. GORDON rescued a famous picture of VANDYKE, Hamlet and Yorick's skull, at Brussels, front a coach-house, and excited the envy of all Belgium by his good fortune and superior discrimination. He was also the fortunate discoverer of the Lascaris Grammatica, which he bought in Italy for Dr. CHARLES BURNEY, and which is now the pride and glory of the British Museum. He bought it by the instrumentality of a Jew, in Italy, for sixty sequins ; it was valued in the sale of Dr. BURNEY'S library to the nation at 6501. His account of the nego • tiation for the purchase of this rare and almost unique volume is really charming. We have observed that the choice portions of these volumes are the characters of remarkable men whom Mr. GORDON has met with in his time. Character-drawing is a favourite occupation with historians, who have ordinarily but very dubious matenals to work upon : the memoirists usually are well acquainted with their subject, and lack only the descriptive pen. Mr. GORDON is a good sketcher, and is not led away by the ordinary love of caricature. Many are the clever full-lengths these volumes contain. Such is the character and anecdotes of Sergeant afterwards Captain STEINSON. Such also is the character of Colonel ROOKE, who drove his own four horses five-and-twenty thousand miles over Europe during the stirring times of the last war,—the brave, the active, and the accomPlished. Such is the striking and of fecting history of Mr. R— F—R, a roué, whose life is traced from wild and extravagant boyhood to the squalor, disease, and ruin of mind, body, and means, in the Bench. A pleasant and curious history is also that of Captain FIDDES, who made his for- tune by his ugly face, and his having a German flute in his pocket when he called on Lord TOWNSITEND for his patronage. --Parti- cularly interesting also are all Mr. GORDON'S sketches of the rise and progress from poverty in Scotland, to wealth and honour in the South, of individuals with whom he was personally acquainted in his youth or met with in after life. It would be endless to enu- merate instances : suffice it to say, that we have scarcely met with a page in these memoirs of " Mr. GORDON'S Life and Times," which has not repaid us in some way or other for the perusal. We are also pleased with the tone and temper of the writer : he speaks of great people without offensive familiarity, of smaller folk without pride or affectation, and, above all, of himself agree- ably and without conceit. These are rare qualities in a memoir-. writer.
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