In Egypt, he became a papyrologist, discovering a papyrus by Theocritus that was 900 years older than any such previously-discovered manuscript.
Pope had urged him to undertake this task in order to ridicule the Arcadian pastorals of Ambrose Philips, who had been praised by a short-lived contemporary publication The Guardian, to the neglect of Pope's claims as the first pastoral writer of the age and the true English Theocritus.
In 1796–1797, he published paraphrases from Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Sappho and Meleager.
Parts of "Theocritus: Idyl I" and "The Orchestra" were used in The Desert Music, a composition for chorus and orchestra or voices and ensemble by Minimalist composer Steve Reich in 1984.