Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/174

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166


NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. n. AUG. 27,


out that, although failing of fulfilment, it was still very shrewdly devised. Bentham clearly foresaw the rise of these Southern colonies into a young and flourishing nation within a period of six or seven decades, and this forecast is fully verified. But what even old Jeremy's penetrating sagacity could not foresee as even remotely possible was the imminence of that mighty, silent revolution in English colonial policy that has brought about, as this nineteenth century is drawing to a close, not the severance from the Mother- land of her seven Australian daughters, but their federation into one nation, bound by unbreakable ties of loyalty to her from whom they sprang. DAVID BLAIR.

Armadale, Melbourne.

" ALARMIST," Apparently this word was invented by ii. B. Sheridan. John Taylor, in ' Records of my Life,' 1832, says, vol. i. p. 119 :

"I ventured to suggest, not as a politician, but as an alarmist, to use my old friend Sheridan's word," &c. ; and again in vol. ii. p. 233 :

" However, as I really was an alarmist, to use Mr. (Sheridan's word."

S. J. A. F.

[The earliest use chronicled in the 'H.E.D.' is by Sydney Smith in 1802.]

THE SURNAME DRINKWATER. As I turn the leaves of Dr. Palmer's ' Folk-Etymology ' for another word, my attention is arrested by the following (p. 528) : " Drinkwater, a surname, is stated by Camden to be a cor- ruption of the local name Demventivater ('Remaines,' 1637, p. 122)." Dr. Palmer makes no comment, evidently approving. I dissent. Why should Drinkwater be ques- tioned any more than Boileau or Bevilacqua? Boileau speaks for itself, and Bevilacqua is a surname which I have occasionally met with in my Italian reading. Probably all three were originally sobriquets for abstainers from alcoholic liquor, as the French surname Boivin may have been a sobriquet for wine- tippler. May not a Norman form of this last name be the original of our Bevan ? I have been told that Trinkwasser is a German family name. F. ADAMS.

ZACHARY MACAULAY. It is not generally known that Zachary Macau lay, the aboli- tionist, founder of the once celebrated Clap- ham sect and father of Lord Macaulay, is buried in the disused burial-ground belonging to the church of St. George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, at the rear of the Foundling Hospital, which is now maintained as an open space by the St. Pan eras Vestry, The


fact is duly chronicled in the 'Diet. Nat. Biog.,' but the place of interment is loosely described as "the now disused ground at Mecklenburgh Square." It would be more accurate to say the ground is at the rear of Brunswick Square. Sir George Trevelyan does not appear to have been aware of the fact, as in his 'Life of Lord Macaulay' he says :

"His [Z. M.'s] tomb has for many years been cut off from the body of the nave [of Westminster Abbey] by an iron railing equally meaningless and unsightly ; which withdraws from the eyes of his fellow-countrymen an epitaph at least as provoca- tive to patriotism as those of the innumerable military and naval heroes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who fell in wars the very objects of which are now for the most part forgotten or re- membered only to be regretted. 'Life and Letters of Macaulay,' ii. 3.

Sir James Stephen speaks of Zachary Macaulay's tomb in Westminster Abbey in the following passage :

"Of Mr. Macaulay no memorial has been made public, excepting that which has been engraved on his tomb in Westminster Abbey by some eulogist less skilful than affectionate." ' Essays in Eccle- siastical Biography,' p. 545.

The monument in Westminster Abbey is a

cenotaph, as the inscription on the flat stone

in the burial - ground of St. George the

Martyr, which is as follows, clearly shows :

Zachary Macaulay,

born May, 1768,

died May, 1838.

A monument erected

to his memory

by many who loved and

honoured him

stands in

Westminster Abbey. His remains lie beneath this stone.

Where was Zachary Macaulay residing at his death, and why was he buried in the burial - ground of St. George the Martyr ? The Gentleman's Magazine for 1838 (p. 224) says he died in Clarges Street, but I cannot find any confirmation of this, and the Chris- tian Observer, of which he was for a long time the editor, is silent on the point.

Macaulay lived from 1823 to 1831 at 50, Great Ormond Street; and if he had died there that would have accounted for his being buried in the burial-ground attached to the parish in which he died. The burial-ground was at first very unpopular, and it was not until after 1715, when Robert Nelson, the author of ' Fasts and Festivals,' was buried there, that it rose to importance. It was afterwards known as Nelson's burying- ground, Red Lyon Fields. Mrs. Gibson,

granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, was uried there with considerable pomp in 1727.