Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/69

 vm. JULY 20, loci.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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although he does not say so, was printed in the Morning Post, 1 February, 1802, and not, as Canon Ainger says, in the Reflector. In a letter dated merely February, 1802, he tells Manning that he has given up two guineas a week at the Post. " I grew sick and Stuart unsatisfied." This is probably right, for the late Mr. Dykes Campbell, in a communication to the Athenaeum, 4 August, 1888, stated, on the evidence of an unprinted letter of Lamb's, that Lamb gave up his two guineas at the Post early in February, 1802, chiefly because Stuart wanted his dramatic criticisms written on the same night, and Lamb could not manage this. On 11 October, 1802, Lamb is negotiating to supply Coleridge with light things for the Morning Post, which Stuart is to believe are by Coleridge. On 23 October, 1802, he refers to the matter again ; and that is the end.

These Morning Post difficulties are to a certain extent soluble by a study of a file of the period. But in the absence of a file of the Albion the student is necessarily per- plexed. Perhaps some reader of *N. & Q.' knows of a file of the Albion in Fenwiok's day. E. V. LUCAS.

THE ' MARSEILLAISE.' Mr. Karl Blind in the Nineteenth Century, among " some facts not generally known concerning the origin of the * Marseillaise,' " tells us, as the reviewer (ante, p. 27) says, that it was "made in Germany, being part of a mass composed in 1776 by Holtzmann, the Kapellmeister of the Elector of the Palatinate." This is an old false story (see the Gartenlaube, 1861, p. 256), which more recent inquiry (August, 1879) on the spot from the curate of Meersburg, where the mass is preserved, has proved to be entirely unfounded. It is a pity that any one with a character for honesty to lose should go on repeating such ill-natured fiction as this. See Grove's ' Dictionary of Music and Musi- cians,' vol. ii. p. 220, for evidence, where the writer states that Rouget did receive a pension, which he did not decline, from Louis Philippe. JULIAN MARSHALL.

" JENKINS'S EAR." It may interest some of your readers to know that, having occasion to go somewhat minutely into the corre- spondence between the Duke of Newcastle, as Secretary of State, and Benjamin Keene, the British envoy at Madrid, for the year 1731, I came on the original affidavit on which the famous story of " Jenkins's ear," one of the main factors in bringing about the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole, is based. It will be found, in State Papers, Foreign, Spain

199, at the Record Office, under date 18 June, 1731, and does not contain the famous exclamation " I recommend my soul to God and my cause to my country." The name of the Spanish officer by whom the ear was slit is given as De Freeze, of the guarda costa San Antonio of Havana, and the incident is alleged to have taken place off Havana on 9 April, 1731.

The affidavit was sworn to by Jenkins shortly after his arrival in the Thames, before an official of the Admiralty, and appears to have excited but little attention at the time, as it is not even alluded to either by Keene himself or the Commissaries then at Seville, who were endeavouring to come to an agreement with Spain as to damages due to merchants under the Treaty of Seville.

On the whole, I am inclined to think that Jenkins's story was true in its main particu- lars, as the reports of the consuls at Alicante and Malaga at that moment are full of com- plaints of the insults offered to British mer- chantmen in the Mediterranean by Spanish war vessels, whilst, on the other hand, a formal complaint was laid by inhabitants of Malaga against a captain of one of his Britannic Majesty's vessels for kidnapping five of their slaves and conveying them to Gibraltar.

H.

" SARE "= DRY. The other day I was talk- ing to a porter in the station at Bury St. Edmunds about a large wooden rake of which a prong had been broken. He touched the broken wood and said, " It 's very sare dry." He was conscious of having used a word which he thought I might not under- stand, and so he immediately corrected himself, and translated sare into "dry." See " sear, sere," in Skeat's ' Etym. Diet.'

S. O. ADDY.

Sheffield.

GENERAL SIR JAMES VINEY, K.C.H. It is stated in biographical sketches of Lord Beaconsfield that his wife, Lady Beaconsfield, was the niece and heiress of the above General Sir James Viney, K.C.H. He owned an estate at Tainton, near Gloucester. It would appear that Lady Beaconsfield came into possession of that estate, for it was sold by auction at the " Bell " Hotel, Gloucester, by Mr. Knowles, the auctioneer. Benjamin Disraeli was present at the sale. It was sold to Mr. Laslett, a barrister, and M.P. for Worcester or one of the divisions of the county. I am certain he was the purchaser, for he many years ago lent me the title-deeds and papers connected with the estate. Mr. Laslett caused some astonishment by coming