Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/501

 2 nd S. N 25., JUNE 21. '56. ]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

" The Laughable Lover" Sfc. Who wrote the following works? 1. The Laughable Lover, a comedy "in five acts, by Carol OCaustic, printed by J. G. Goodwyn, at Tetbury, 1806. At the end of the play there is " An Occasional Epilogue, by way of Tribute to the Memory of Admiral Lord Nelson," dated Bath, Nov. 6, 1805. There is also announced as preparing for the press, by the same author, 2. The School for Squires ; es- pecially for Married Ones. With Lectures, by- the-bye, for various descriptions of Persons ; but particularly for meanly proud, selfish Grandees, and worthless worldly Parsons. 3. A Satire in many Cantos. K,. J.

" A Trip to Portsmouth." Could any of your readers give me any information regarding the following play and its author ? A Trip to Ports- mouth, or the Wife's Election, a new farce, Gos- port, 4to., 1710. By Essex Waller. There seems to have been a reprint of 100 copies in 8vo., 1822. See Lowndes' Bibliographers' Manual, vol. iv.

K. J.

S. M c Arthur. Could any of your readers give rne any account of S. M Arthur, author of The Duke of Rothesay, a tragedy ? From the notice of this play in the Biographia Dramatica, it seems to have been written in 1764, and published (after the author's death) in 1780, at Edinburgh. R. J.

Bottles filled by Pressure of the Sea. In p. 507. of the Travels in South Africa, by John Campbell, minister of Kingsland, published in 1815, is the following statement, viz. :

" We drove a cork very tight into an empty bottle. The cork was so large that more than half of it could not be driven into the neck of the bottle. We then tied a cord round the cork, which we also fastened round the neck of the bottle, to prevent the cork sinking down, and put a coat of pitch over the whole. By means of lead we sunk it in the water. When it was let down to about the depth of fifty fathoms, the captain said he was sure that the bottle had instantaneously filled ; on which he drew it up, when we found the cork driven down into the inside, and of course the bottle was full of water.

" We prepared a second bottle exactly in the same way, only with the addition of a sail-needle being passed through the upper part of the cork, which rested on the mouth of the bottle, and all completely pitched over. When about fifty fathoms down, the captain called out as before, that he felt by the sudden increase of weight that the bottle was filled, on which it was drawn up. We were not a little surprised to find the cork in the same position, and no part of the pitch broken, yet the

bottle was full of water The porousness of the

glass seems to be the only consideration by which we can account for the fact."

A bottle was presented to myself last year with a label attached, containing the following :

being calm, I corked, wired, and sealed this bottle up tight. I then tied a piece of parcelling over all (the bottle being empty) ; 1 sank it to the depth of { JO fathoms ;
 * ' At sea, Lat. 2 42' S., Long. 19 14' W., the day

when we hauled it up, it was just as you see it, full (to within two inches of the cork) of water, the cork being still tight.

" (Signed) S. SPOWART, Captain of

the ' Wilberforce.' " March 10th, 1855."

Can any of the readers of " N. & Q." refer me to a work in which a satisfactory discussion of the phenomenon is given, or can any of them under- take to make a set of experiments with bottles, or hollow globes of different materials (some of them might be filled with oil, mercury, &c.), to ascer- tain if these could be displaced by the water, &c. ?

JOHN HUSBAND.

MS. of Thomas a Kempis. The elegant little edition of Thomas a Kempis, published by Mr. Pickering in 1851, bears on its title-page, " Co- dex de Advocatis Sseculi XIII. ;" while the bio- graphical sketch by Chas. Butler, prefixed to the text, states the birth of Thomas a Kempis to have been in 1380, and his death in 1471. Will you, or one of your correspondents, favour me with some authentic notice of the MS. in question ?

QoiDANT.

Abdication of Charles V. In Mr. Lowthrop Motley's very interesting History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic, he states the abdication of Charles V., and the well-known ceremony which accompanied it, to have taken place in the old ducal palace of Brabant, which was situated very nearly on the site where the present royal palace stands at Brussels. Now in that city, to the best of my recollection, a room in the fiotel de Ville is pointed out as the one where the abdication took place ; and on referring to the Guide lllustre du Voyageur en Belgique, I find the following remark :

" La principale salle de 1'hotel de ville, appelle'e la salle Gothique, est celle ou Charles Quint, dans tout 1'eclat de sa gloire et de sa puissance, abdiqua le pouvoir royal en faveur de son fils Philip."

Which is right, the historian or the guide-book ? If the former, the statement in the latter must be an invention for the benefit of sight-seers and travellers. E. C. C.

Manchester.

The Silver Greyhound. In the little tale by Sir Walter Scott, called " My Aunt Margaret's Mirror" (at p. 341. of vol. xli. of Cadell's edition of 1832 of the Waverley Novels), is this passage alluding to the conjuror's flight :

" Oh, he was too good a fortune-teller not to be able to foresee that his own destiny would be tragical if he waited the arrival of the man with the silver greyhound upon his sleeve."

This means an officer of the criminal court, but to what office does it refer? I have never seen any other allusion to the badge of the " silver grey- hound." C. D. LAMONT.