Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/543

 i. JUNE 4, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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with the usual mode of forming names of peoples than the latter, and is, I should imagine, the first instance of such a word having been formed with the termination -ese directly in English itself. Natal was, of course, the first name of the territory, Natalia being only introduced as a name for the republic founded by the Boer Voor- trekkers in 1838, and annexed by England as " Port Natal and district " in 1842. Has the termination ever occurred in English in connexion with the name of any European people save the Portuguese? When is it first found as a plural termination? Milton writes of Ohineses. I imagine that " Natalese " is a coinage of the writer of 'Notes about Town' in the Natal Witness, for though I see the paper regularly, I never saw the expression before. It is, therefore, worth recording.

H. 2.

VANISHING LONDON. To the many land- marks scheduled for disappearance from the fashionable quarters of the town must now be added select and old-established "Thomas's Hotel," which was wont to nestle cosily in the north-eastern corner of Berkeley Square. Upon its front a board is exhibited, which bears ominous testimony to attentions at the hands of some " demolishing and excavating contractor," who would seem to have already operated upon the hotel's interior. This definition for the prosaic " house-breaker " certainly strikes one as novel as original, indeed, as that of "road scarifier" to indicate the mender of our streets. Whether a new and glorified " Thomas's " is to arise upon its former site I know not. Or are we to have yet another block of palatial flats, after the pattern of so many which prevail in the immediate vicinity ? CECIL CLARKE.

Junior Athenaeum Club.

MAYOR'S SEAL FOR CONFIRMATION. In 1331 a man obtained the use of the seal of the Mayor of Oxford, because his own seal was " unknown to most" (Boase, 'Register of Exeter College,' O.H.S., p. xviii). I have seen a deed, dated in June, 1775, dealing with two tenements in the parish of St. Laurence, York, to which the seal of the Lord Mayor of York is affixed, and an explanation is given that,

" because the seals of the [grantors] are to most persons unknown, I, John Allanson, esq.. Lord Mayor of the said city, at their special instance and

request have caused the seal of the office of

mayoralty of the said city to be hereunto affixed."

W. C. B.

EURIPIDES, DATE OF HIS BIRTH. In the very interesting 'History of Greek Lite-

rature,' by Dr. F. B. Jevons, of Durham University, we are told (p. 220) that " Euri- pides was born B.C. 485, in the island of Salamis, where his parents, with the rest of the Athenians, had taken refuge on the approach of the Persians."

Now it is indeed stated by ancient authors that the poet was born at Salamis whilst Athens was in the occupation of Xerxes ; but the date of that event was B.C. 480, the first year of the seventy-fifth Olympiad, Callias being archon. The ' Parian Chro- nicle ' places the birth of Euripides five years earlier, in the fourth year of the se\ r enty- third Olympiad, during the archonship of Philocrates. That would correspond to B.C. 485, but not to the year of the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

PASTE Will any one kindly send us an early quotation for "anchovy paste" or "shrimp paste"? A friend whose memory goes back to 1840 says he has known "anchovy paste" all his life. But we have as yet no examples before 1890.

J. A. H. MURRAY.

" PURPLE PATCH." When did the ex- pression "purple patch" or "purple pas- sage" in reference to literary style come into use ? It is apparently a quotation from some modern literary critic.

J. A. H. MURRAY.

JOHN WILLIAMS, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK. I have found among some old papers three drafts of letters entirely in the handwriting of Archbishop Williams. Two are addressed to the king, and one to Prince Rupert. The letter to Prince Rupert is signed, and dated 30 Dec., 1642; and the first letter to the king is probably of that date also, being written upon the same folio sheet. The date of the second letter to the king can, by internal evidence, be fixed at about 20 April, 1643. They are long letters, and of considerable interest, especially the last, which, in astonishingly forcible language, takes the king to task for political and military errors. The key-note lies in one of the concluding sentences: "I write in the phrase of the time, roundly e and boldly e." Can any one tell me whether any of these letters were