his communication I propose to notice briefly some of the leading
arguments that have been latterly brought forward both against and for
the belief that the Catstane commemorates the ancestor of the Saxon
conquerors of Kent.

"1. One anonymous writer has maintained, that if the Catstane was a
monument to the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, the inscription upon
it should not have read 'In hoc tumulo jacet Vetta f(ilius) Victi,' but,
on the contrary, 'Victus filius Vettae.' In other words, he holds that
the inscription reverses the order of paternity as given by Bede,
Nennius, etc.[1] But all this is simply and altogether a mistake on the
part of the writer. All the ancient genealogies describe Hengist and
Horsa as the sons of Victgils, Victgils as the son of Vetta, and Vetta
as the son of Victus. The Catstane inscriptions give Vetta and Victus in
exactly the same order. When I pointed out to the writer the mistake
into which he had, perhaps inadvertently, fallen, he turned round, and
argued that in such names the vowels _e_ and _i_ were more trustworthy
as permanent elements than the consonants _c_ and _t_.[2] He argued, in
other words, that Vecta as a proper name would not be found spelled
with an _i_. If it were never so spelled with an _i_, that circumstance
was no argument in favour of the strange error of criticism into which
the writer had fallen; but the fact is, that in the famous chapter of
Bede's history, in which the names Hengist and Horsa, and their
genealogies, first occur, there is an instance given, showing that,
contrary to the opinion of this writer, a proper name having, like
_Vetta_, the letter _e_ as a component, _may_ change it to _i_. For
Bede, in telling us that the men of Kent and of the Isle of Wight
(Cantuarii et Victuarii) were sprung from the Jutes, spells the Isle of
Wight (Vecta) with an _e_, and the inhabitants of it (Victuarii) with an
_i_.

"The same writer states it as his opinion that the lettering in the
Catstane inscription is not so old as I should wish to make it. 'It is,'
says he, 'in our opinion, of later date even than Hengist himself, both
in the formula of the inscription and in the character of the writing.'
Perhaps the writer's opinion upon such a point is not worth alluding to,
as it is maintained by no proof. But Edward Lhuyd--one of the very best
judges in such questions in former days--stated the lettering to be of
the fourth or fifth century, without having any hypot