Now the most unlikely part of the above to be realised was the ships of Mahomet appearing in the Baltic, but, nevertheless, it happened. “Mahomet’s ships” did actually ride in the Baltic, manned by the corsairs of Algiers, in 1819, so the line was verified, though not as Brown intended. (Quarterly Review, xxvi. 191.)
[18] Van Hasselt.
[19] The name is Flemish: each consonant, therefore, must be sounded, but the second vowel is short, Dam-Dam-mĕ.
[20] The Zwyn has entirely disappeared from the map of Europe. Guide-books say that “mention is made of the harbour of the Zwyn in the laws of the Saxon Ethelred.” I cannot endorse this statement, having failed to confirm it on examination. The Zwyn was the scene of the great maritime victory won by Edward III. over the French fleet in 1340, the harbinger of the naval supremacy of England.
[21] paper read at the Congress of the Archæological Institute at Lewes, July, 1883.
[22] Mrs. Siddons’ maternal grandfather. For the gloves and the story I leave them upon the conscience of the glazier, hereby declaring myself ready to prove the utter falsehood of the whole narrative.—Ed.
[23] Of this John Ward I read that he was a well-known performer in the time of Betterton, and was in 1723 the original Hazeroth in the tragedy of “Mariamne,” by Elijah Fenton, the friend of Pope. It was for his benefit that Mrs. Woffington at Dublin, in 1760, played Sir Harry Wildair for the first time, and he was the maternal grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, his daughter having married Mr. Roger Kemble, and the great Kembles being the issue of that union. In considering the probabilities of this story, we may therefore conclude that John Ward was not likely to play a huge practical joke upon Garrick. We may further assume that he was a man of the world, not over credulous, or to be imposed upon with ease.—S. W. B.
[24] In his interesting remarks on the reduplication of synonyms, Mr. Isaac Taylor gives us a marked example in the instance of Brindon Hill, in Somerset, where “we have first the Cymric bryn, a hill. To this was added dun, a Saxonised Celtic word, nearly synonymous with bryn; and the English word hill was added when neither bryn nor dun were any longer significant words.” Thus, in fact, we are presented with a threefold instance of the kind in question. (See “Words and Places,” p. 141.)
[25] This is actually represented in an accompanying map by a small drawing clearly showing the usual form of the arched Roman gate.
[26] Camden’s “Britannia,” by Gibson, 1695, p. 855.