Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/455

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

12 s. vii. NOV. 6, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


375


half after the landing on Plymouth Rock no practice existed of referring to the Mayflower pioneers as ' Pilgrim Fathers.' "

All re aciers of * N. & Q. ' are well acquainted with Mr. Albert Matthews'? Fcholarship, -and by them, I think, hie. opinions will be iregardect as those cf an expert.

JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT.

OWEN McSwiNY (12 S. vii. 190, 236). Referring to the picture by Robert Crone, ' The Ship Cabin, ' painted in Italy for Lord Royne, representing Owen McSwiny, Robert Wood, and others, the question is asked, which Lord Boyne this was.

I have a picture whose description partly ^answers to this one. As far as I know, this picture has been in the family for 120 years or so. On the back of it is a slip cut from a news, or ether printed paper, apparently from its type about 100 years old. This slip was found loose in a portfolio about 1870 and was attached to the picture because it .evidently referred to it. It runs as follows:

"One would like too to know the history of th e common picture also ascribed to Hogarth, of sailors in a ship's cabin, one laying down a course on a chart apparently for the information of a seated figure, said to be the portrait of the second Viscount Boyne, who has been regaling two foreign sailors, apparently Russian, with punch. The story is that 'it represents a scene on Lord Boyne's yacht."

All the details of the picture do not corres- pond to the description of the picture given 'by W. G. Strickland. What is Strickland's authority for the description he gives of .Lord Boyne's 'The Ship Cabin'? The ^second Viscount Boyne was born in 1710 and died in 1746, The third viscount was born in 1718 and died in 1772. SLIGO.

A POEM OF SHELLEY (12 S, vii. 331). "The stanzas beginning " Away ! the moor is dark beneath the moon," had nothing whatever to do with Godwin or Mary. In the first place, there was no quarrel between Godwin and Shelley at that time. Godwin had even accompanied Shelley to Doctor's 'Commons on Mar. 20 or 22 to obtain the licence for the latter 's remarriage to Harriet. Secondly, Shelley did not meet Mary until June. The lines, however, had everything to do with the wretched state of affairs existing between Shelley and Harriet. At Bracknell, with the Boinvilles, the poet was leading a happy life, meeting there with sympatheti" kindness *\~id it was. the th night of returning to the miserable existence with Harriet that prompted him to write these 'lines. For Shelley's state of <mind about


this time I refer G. G. L. to Shelley's letter to Hogg dated Mar, 16, 1814. Shelley's re-marriage to Harriet on Mar. 24 made no difference whatever to the strained relations between them. W. A. HUTCHISON.

32 Hotham Road, Putney, 8.W.

Sir Henry Newbolt must be mistaken : the dates, as your correspondent says, are against him. The poem is dated April 1814. Shelley was then on terms of inti- macy with Mrs. Boinville and her daughter,, Cornelia Turner, who lived near him. He did not, I believe, meet Mary Godwin until May of the same year, and though, as Hogg tells us, they were " Shelley " and "Mary " to one another in June, they did not elope until July 28. C. C B.

"HuN " (12 S. vii. 330). Most probably MB. DE TERNANT means that Viennet was the first French writer to use the term " Hun " to denote " barbarian. " Reference to 12 S. iii. 383, 427 ; iv. 25, 56 will shew that Hannah More called the Germans "Huns and Vandals" in 1800, and that Byron used the term "Huns " for German- Austrians in 1820.

ROBERT PIERPOTNT.

AMERICAN WAR, 1776 (12 S. vii. 331). I find the following in W. Tooiie's 'Chrono- logical Historian ' : 1776.

Oct. 30. Two proclamations were issued for a public fast to be observed in Great Britain and Ireland, on Friday the 13th of December next.

Dec. 14. This being the day appointed for a general fast, the same was observed with devotion by all classes throughout London and Westminster and the country in general.

I suppose that 14 in the latter extract is an error for 13. Friday was probably considered the proper day for a fast, and Dec. 13, 1776 was a Friday.

According to Toone a like order was made on Dec. 13, 1779 for a fast to be observed on Friday, Feb. 4 next. This fast is recorded by Toone to have been observed on Feb. 4, 1780. (It was to be observed in Scotland on Feb. 3.) Feb. 4, 1780 was a Friday. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

The date of the fast day in connexion with the British reverses in this War was Dec. 13. A copy of the Proclamation for a General Fast ' ' will be found with other interesting information in N. and Q. US. xii. 183.

JOHN PATCHING. Lewes.