'RULE BRITANNIA.'-A subscriber to the Strathearn Herald has favoured me with a copy of that paper of June 5 with the query, "Who wrote 'Rule Britannia'?" As this is a matter of public interest, pray permit me to answer through your columns. Dr. Arne wrote the music, and James Thomson, the well-known poet of The Seasons,' wrote the words. The music was first printed at the end of the masque of The Judg. ment of Paris,' which appeared before 'Alfred,' Arne having composed the music to both.

The object of the writer in the Strathearn Herald seems to be to claim a share of the credit for having written the words of 'Rule Britannia' for David Mallet; but he is not well informed as

to the date of Thomson's death, after which Mallet put in a pretentious claim, against all evidence. Dr. Johnson was the contemporary of both Thomson and Mallet, and wrote the lives of the two in his 'Lives of the Poets,' 1779-80, from which I extract the following:

"James Thomson, the son of a minister well esteemed for his piety and diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor."

Thomson received a pension of 100%. a year from Frederick, Prince of Wales, and was soon after employed in conjunction with Mallet to write the masque of Alfred,' which was acted before the Prince at Cliefden House, Maidenhead, August 1, 1740. A fever put an end to Thomson's life,

August 27,1748, and he was buried in the church of Richmond, Surrey, without an inscription; but a monument has been erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Dr. Johnson quotes a letter which he had obtained from Boswell to prove the amiability of Thomson's character. He gives a very different account of David Mallet ::

became about sixty years ago, under the conduct of "He was by origin one of the Macgregors, a clan that Robin Roy, so formidable and so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themselves anew, the father, I suppose, of this author called himself Malloch......His first production was 'William and Margaret'; of which, though it contains nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the reputation; and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved."

Dr. Johnson adds in a note :

"Mallet's William and Margaret' was printed in Aaron Hill's Plain Dealer, No. 36, July 24, 1724. In its original state it was very different from what it is in the last edition of his works."

'William and Margaret' was Mallet's first forgery, and it imposed upon Bishop Percy, who printed one of the forged copies in his 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' vol. iii. p. 310, 1765. It is remarkable how long a time the theft should have remained undetected, for it was printed correctly in Ambrose Phillips's 'Collection of Old Ballads,' 1725, vol. iii. p. 218, and in 'The Hive: a Collection of Songs, vol. i., 1726, third edition, p. 159. Neither of the above gives the true old tune, which is now only to be found in my edition of the 'Roxburghe Ballads,' vol. iii. p. 669, or in the British Museum Library by giving the reference, 1876, f. i. p. 107, Lond., fol., n.d. That edition is only one of Queen Anne's reign, but the ballad is quoted by Old Merrythought in Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burning Pestle'; therefore, there are still earlier copies. Our Scotch friends may view very lightly the forging of an old English ballad; but when it leads up to robbing a famous Scotsman of his deserved merit, no one will wonder that, as said by Dr. Johnson of Mallet," What other proofs he gave of disrespect to his native country I know not; but it was remarked of him, that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend."

"Not long after this," says Chalmers, "Mallet was employed by Lord Bolingbroke in an office [to attack Pope] which he executed with all the malignity that his employer could wish." That is the man. Chalmers's 'Biographical Dictionary,'p. 195. WM. CHAPPELL.

EDITIONS OF 'THE VICAR Of Wakefield.' Since the publication in 1885 of the tentative "Bibliography of the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'" prefixed to Mr. Elliot Stock's facsimile reprint of the editio princeps, my attention has been called to the following additional issues. I record them in the

and that its meaning is "warriors"? Another reason for regarding them as a Celtic people is the terminations of their local names. Zeuss considers them Celts, and that, even if they claimed kinship with the Germani, it was from the desire to be separately regarded from the beaten and subdued Gauls. For a like reason Tacitus (Germania,' 28) thinks the Treviri and Nervii called themselves Germani. Rhys ('Celtic Britain,' p. 276) asserts that there is "no reason to suppose that the Belgae were Teutons." After reading Guest (Origines Celticæ') and Beale Poste (Belge of Britain,' Journal Archeolog. Assoc., xi. 205) I feel satisfied that the Belgae were of the same race as the Galli, but that there were German fugitives amongst them, and that some few of the tribes comprehended within the fifteen or sixteen nations of the Belgic confederation may have been Germanic originally. But in spite of this, before the arrival of Cæsar, the Celtic element preponderated and they had practically become one people, Celtic in sentiment, manners, and speech. J. MASKELL.

WAS JOHN BUNYAN OF GIPSY ORIGIN?

In his own account of himself and his family, John Bunyan speaks of his "father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land." It has always been popularly understood that this admission, coupled with the fact of his employment at first being that of a tinker, pointed to gipsy birth and origin. In another notable passage of his autobiography, "the Bedfordshire tinker" tells us that at one time he wondered "whether his family were of the Israelites," another of " the meanest and most despised" races in England. This was when he was troubled about his soul's salvation, and he thought he could take some comfort if he were one of God's chosen people, though they were now downtrodden and in exile. 66 At last," he says, "I asked my father of it, who told me, 'No, we were not.'" This answer threw him back on the tinkers, as the mixed gipsy race were usually called.

This led Sir Walter Scott to say that "Bunyan was most probably a gipsy reclaimed"; and led Mr. Offor, a laborious editor of Bunyan's works, to say "His father must have been a gipsy." With still more elaborate statement and cogent argument, Mr. James Simpson, a Scotchman long resident in New York, author of a History of the Gipsies,' affirms that the Bunyan family were gipsies, who, on settling in Bedfordshire, took the name of the family on whose soil they chiefly lived, as had been the common usage since feudal times.

That this humble origin, so far from being a disgrace or discredit to the illustrious John Banyan, gives greater lustre to his genius and worth we have always been accustomed to think,

Yet, in spite of all this, the latest and best biographer of Bunyan, the Rev. John Brown, of Bedford, has the weakness to claim for him a remote connexion with a Norman family that came over with the Conqueror! Mr. Brown collects all the names of Bonyons and Bunians who figure in ancient archives to prove that "the Bunyan family flourished before gipsies were heard of in England." Mr. Simpson shrewdly remarks that we might as well affirm that a Lancashire or Cheshire gipsy, assuming and bearing the name of Stanley, must belong necessarily to the house of the Earls of Derby, because he is the head of the Stanleys.

Mr. Brown's book is so meritorious in the main, that this weak point, of ignoring the disputed question of Bunyan's gipsy origin, is the more to be regretted. Mr. Simpson, in a review of Mr. Brown's book, has noticed the omission; and among other interesting facts as to there being no discredit in gipsy blood, reminds us that Dr. Robert Gordon, formerly minster of the High Church of Edinburgh, a divine and preacher well known and much honoured, was of gipsy origin; and that Mrs. Thomas Carlyle had pride in telling that her grandmother was a Baillie, one of a gipsy tribe who had adopted the name of an ancient Scottish family. This explains her reference to Tennyson as "having something of the gipsy in his appearance, which to me is perfectly charming."

That the popular idea of Bunyan's origin prevailed throughout his own lifetime we know from the famous anecdote about Charles II. and Dr. Owen. The king asked the doctor" how a learned man, such as he was, could sit and hear an illiterate tinker prate." "May it please your Majesty," was Dr. Owen's reply, "could I possess the tinker's ability for preaching, I would gladly relinquish all my learning." I do not affirm the gipsy origin of "the immortal dreamer," but only say that the question has not been settled by showing that there were Bunyans in England ever since the Conquest; nor is it fair to ignore the discussion, in the face of Bunyan's own statements in his autobiography, as has been done not only by Mr. Brown, but also by Mr. Froude in his memoir.

JAMES MACAULAY, M.D.

BYRONIC LITERATURE.
(Continued from p. 426.)

Class III.-Poetry relating to Byron. Five fugitive pieces addressed to Lord Byron at various intervals. Rev. F. Hodgson. Circa 1810. and Smith. Circa 1812. Cui Bono. From the Rejected Addresses.' Horace

Anti Byron a Satire. Circa 1814.

Julian and Maddalo. Percy B. Shelley. 1818. Childe Harold's Monitor. Rev. F. Hodgson. 1818. Lines written among the Euganean Hills. Percy B. Shelley. 1818.

Adonais. Stanza xxx. Percy B. Shelley. Pisa, 1821. Uriel Poetical Address to Lord Byron. 1822.

I do not in the least doubt Anderson's word; but I confess I am at a loss to understand how such a thing could be done with the point of the finest needle that was ever manufactured. It is also difficult to understand how any reasonable mortal who was not shut up in the Bastille could employ his time in accomplishing such a sorry piece of ingenuity, which, when accomplished, could be of no sort of use or ornament to any man, woman, or child! It reminds one of dearly beloved Monsieur Jourdain's taking infinite pains to learn exactly how he put his tongue, teeth, and lips when he pronounced the different letters of the alphabet, a scene which is, I imagine, the best satire on useless knowledge

that was ever written.

The Oxford picture mentioned by Addison and Anderson's lilliputian liturgy naturally bring to one's remembrance the old saying of the Iliad' in a nutshell. Pickering's diamond edition of Homer (1831) contains both the Iliad' and the 'Odyssey,' and this would, I should say, certainly go into a large cocoa-nut shell. The book is beautifully, and, so far as I am able to judge, very correctly printed, but it is almost useless for all practical purposes. It is only useful for occasional reference, as one would require a magnifying-glass to read it for fifteen minutes consecutively.

Haydn, in his 'Dictionary of Dates' (ed. 1866), gravely tells how among the thousands of volumes burnt at Constantinople, A. D. 477, were the works of Homer written in golden letters on the gut of a dragon 120 ft. long. Was this the Dragon of Wantley, or the dragon that Sir Otto in Hood's poem vanquished? It is true that Haydn qualifies this remarkable statement by the words, said to have been." There is "much virtue" in on dit, as well as in Touchstone's "if."

Ropley, Hants.

JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

are

ANTICIPATED REVIVAL OF SEDAN CHAIRS.The notes on the subject of sedan chairs were on their disuse (6th S. xii. 308, 332, 498; 7th S. i. 37). When I was at Bath, in the past month of May, I was told, on good authority, that there was an idea of reviving the use of sedan chairs in that city. By level entrances, specially arranged for that purpose, the Bath chairs can be drawn inside the Assembly Rooms and Pump Rooms, and the occupants of the Bath chairs can thus get out of them under cover. But they may have had to get into them during a pelting storm or fall of snow, as it is, in most cases, impracticable to get the Bath chairs up the flights of steps and into the entrance halls of the private houses. But this can be done with sedan chairs; and the lady, in full dress for her ball at the Assembly Rooms or elsewhere, can in her own hall step into the sedan chair, and not emerge therefrom until she has been

carried under cover to her destination. (See the note by A. J. M., 6th S. xii. 498.) There is a possibility, therefore, of the revival in Bath of the sedan chairs described in the thirty-fifth chapter of 'Pickwick'; though the readers of that book will remember (in its twenty-fourth chapter) the incident connected with the sedan chair at Ipswich. CUTHBERT BEDE.

HAIR TURNED WHITE BY SORROW.-I believe

that modern scientific students deny the possibility of the human hair suddenly becoming white through intense sorrow or a sudden shock. That this was formerly believed is certain, and many not otherwise ill-informed persons still cling to the opinion. In a letter from D. Evans to Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary, dated November 10, 1709, the following passage occurs: "D. Jones...... shew'd me his head, & his coal black hair was turned milk white of a night, he said, for ye greatness of his troubles" (Letters to Thomas Hearne,' ed. Ouvry, p. 31). ANON.

TRADES AND STREETS.-Prof. Maine writes, in his 'Village Communities,' second edition, 1872, p. 126:

"There are several English parishes in which certain pieces of land in the common field have from time immemorial been known by the name of a particular trade; and there is often a popular belief that nobody, not following the trade, can legally be the owner of the lot associated with it. And it is possible that we here have a key to the plentifulness and persistence of certain names of trades as surnames among us."

The following particulars supply an illustration not only of the custom, but also of its survival down to quite recent times. In the little East Yorkshire town of Hedon there is a street now called Souttergate, and a pretty numerous family bearing the name of Soutter. The street and its name are ancient, for the "via sutorum" is mentioned 1389-90, although Poulson clumsily translates it "Cobler-street" (Holderness,' ii. 116, 117).

I cannot, unfortunately, connect the family of Soutters, in the past or the present, with Souttergate, but doubtless evidence of the connexion could be found. John Soutter there has been, but I do not known that he was, like Tam O'Shanter's friend, "Souter Johnny." Nevertheless, original evidences which I have seen show that "a messuage or tenement and burgage-house in Soutergate " was occupied from 1670 to 1717 by James Hunter, "cordwinder or shooemaker." After a time there was formed in part of the same premises a separate shop, which in 1707 was held by Jeremiah Berry, cordwainer, and by him was transferred in 1717 to William Ward, cordwainer. In 1762 the whole property passed to John Beedall, of Hornsea, cordwainer, was occupied in 1786 by Benjamin Bedell, cordwainer, and in 1792 became the possession of John Hansley, of Hedon, cordwainer. Here