206
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. MARCH is, 1902.
i. 5, is called Gaviston Street in some ancient
records. W. F. PRIDEAUX.
THE FIRST BRITISH SUBJECT BORN IN NEW SOUTH WALES. In the obituary notice ol Charles Kent in last week's number of
- N. & Q. } mention is made of his father,
William Kent, R.N., who was born at the old Government House in Sydney on Decem- ber 23rd, 1799. He was the first British subject born in the colony, his great-uncle, Admiral John Hunter, being at that time the Governor of New South Wales. Charles Kent's grandfather, Capt. Kent, was the first Government Surveyor of the Australian coast, and was the discoverer of Kent Islands and the Gulf of St. Vincent. His wife is buried in St. Mary's, Paddington Green, where a mural monument commemorates her travels. N. S. S.
MISTAKES IN MICHELET. I should be sorry to be considered one of those envious indi- viduals who think to detract from the fame of a great writer by disclosing unimportant errors, yet when I find them the temptation to send them to ' N. & Q.' is not to be resisted. Here are two small ones from Michelet's ' Histoire de France ' :
" La dupe universelle Henri VIII. voit qu'on 1'a
joue, qu'on se soucie peu de sa fille De rage il
donne sa fille a qui ? au pauvre Louis XII." Vol. ix. p. 287.
For " fille" of course sceur should be read.
" La reine Catherine d'Aragon etait une sainte espagnole du XII C siecle d'une perfection desolante; son inari ne pouvait la joindre qu'a genou au prie- Dieu. Ni jeune, ni feconde, du reste: un seul enfant qui etait une fille." Vol. x. p. 130. Catherine had several children.
T. P. ARMSTRONG.
ROYAL ADJECTIVES. It is strange that neither the force of character of some of our sovereigns nor the exigencies of literature should have provided us with a complete set of adjectives derived from their names, in order to describe the manners and influence of their times. Of William, Henry, Stephen, Pdchard, John, and Anne there are none. An adherent of William III. was called a " Williamite" in 1689 ; the 'N.E.D.' gives one solitary quotation for "Henrician" of 1893 "Johannine" relates to the Apostle only. I' Edwardian" does not occur until 1861, but " Marian " was certainly known in the seven- teenth century. " Elizabethan " is no older than 1817, and although a "Jacobite" was so called in 1689, "Jacobean" did not come in until 1844. " Caroline," however, is as old as 1652. A follower of the great Protector was
termed a "Cromwellian" in 1725. "Georgian,"
used earlier of the star, was not applied to
the period until 1855. "Victorian" is now
in common use. When did it rise ?
W. C. B.
THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Considerable attention is being paid just now to the subject of the National Anthem and its various versions, and before long the public will be in possession of the accredited and authorized text.
There has always been much speculation as to its origin. Nothing seems positively known, except that it came into vogue during the reign of the early Georges. But expert opinion appears now to incline strongly to the theory that it sprang at the outset from a purely Jacobite source, and was subse- quently adopted by the Whigs for the benefit of the Hanoverian monarchs.
This curious and remarkable conclusion is greatly strengthened by an analysis of some of the verses. For instance,
Send him victorious, happy, and glorious ; Long to reign over us,
punctuated, as is usual, like the above, is not English at all, but ungrammatical nonsense, whereas
Send him (victorious, happy and glorious)
Long to reign over us,
is intelligible and good sense.
As the Georges were already on the throne when the anthem was written, they were scarcely in need of an invocation to send them there ; and if the latter punc- tuation is correct, the lines can only refer to some uncrowned king, like the Chevalier St. George, for whose restoration the Deity is thus entreated. The following also Lord our God, arise ! Scatter his enemies- is peculiarly applicable to the case of the unhappy fugitive Stuarts, who were, indeed, urgently in need of such an interposition of Providence on their behalf ; whilst, on the other hand, the Georges succeeded to the crown in peace and quietness, had few serious enemies, and were well established in this country before the rising of the '45 took place, which happened late in the reign of the second George, and from the start had little chance of success.
Again, instead of the modern reading
On Thee [God] our hopes are fixed, it ran in the first known editions
On him [the king] our hopes are fixed implying some one about whose future there still existed much doubt and anxiety.
