Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/140

 228 NOTES AND QUERIES. i*> s. iv. sept, ic, -99. to call to see it. I believe another medal was struck in the following year. Arthur Schomberg. Seend, Melksham, Wilts. The Poultry.—A friend of mine has a book the title of which is " Bentivolio and Urania. (Fourth Edition.) By Nathaniel Ingelo. Published in London in 1682 at the King's Arms in the Poultry." I have made thorough search in ' N. & Q.,r from 1st S. to 7th S. inclu- sive, in an effort to find out the locality of the Poultry. Will some reader kindly tell me what is known of.it ? Theo. Reynolds. Monson, Mass. [The Poultry, as Londoners are well aware, is a street connecting Cheapside and Cornhill, once famous for its taverns (see Ned Ward's ' London Spy'). It was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, and after its re-erection was more or less famous for booksellers' shops. No. 22 was that of Dalby, the first publisher of Boswell's ' Life of Johnson.' No. 31 was the shop of Vernor & Hood, booksellers, the latter the father of Thomas Hood, born here in 1798. The Poultry has now changed its character. For further particulars as to its literary associations see Cunningham and Wheatley's 'London' (1891), vol. iii. pp. 116-7.] The Bottle at Ship Launches.— Down to Charles II.'s time it was customary to name and baptize a ship after she was launched —sometimes a week or two after. The old Tudor method used for men - of - war was still in use. Pepys's ' Diary' shows that. The ship was safely got afloat, after which some hign personage went on board with a special silver " standing cup," or " flaggon," of wine, out of which he drank, naming the ship, and poured a libation on the quarterdeck. The cup was then generally given to the dockyard master-shipwright as a memento. When did the present usage of naming and baptizing a ship before she is sent afloat come in ? I trace the last explicit mention of the old method to 1664, when the Royal Katherine was launched (see Pepys). The first mention of smashing a bottle of wine on the bows of a British man-of-war that I have found is in a contemporary newspaper cutting of May, 1780, describing the christening of H.M.S. Magnanime at Deptford, but nothing is hinted that it was then a new custom. Can the readers of 'N. & Q.' help me with any note or description of a launching ceremonial between 1664 and 1780, or suggest where I might seek for any reference to it 1 Edward Eraser. "Hard." —In the Rolls Series 'Political Songs'will be found (ii. 223) one, assigned by the editor to c. 1449, in which the follow- ing lines occur, and are annotated as shown : The Cornysshe Chowgh* offt with his trayne Hath made oure Egutlet blynde ; The white Harde* is put out of mynde Because he wolle not to hem consente. What is a "harde";§ and how does it repre- sent the Earl of Arundel, whose family badge is stated in Cussans's' Handbook of Heraldry' (1882, p. 135) to have been an acorn 1 Robt. J. Whitwell. C.C.C., Oxford. Chodowiecky.—1. Is any second copy of the following engraving known to exist t " Ziethen sitzend fur seinen Konig. Den 25ten Januar, 1785. Zu finden bey Joh. Babtista Klein, in Leipzig. D. Chodowiecky fee... Carl Dornheim sculps." It measures 24 by 20 inches. This engraving contains portraits of Frederick the Great and twenty-five of his generals interviewing the invalided old officer seated in an armchair, most of them wearing their decorations, swords, and spurs. Frede- rick, with serious face, grasps the sitting figure by the shoulder with his right hand, and leans on a stick with his left. We might imagine Frederick, when in an angry mood, thus grasping Voltaire, if he dared. This print was purchased in Berlin in the thirties by Mrs. Stamer, wife of Col. Stamer, of Ennis (mother of the Duchess of the second Duke de Rovigo, Savary), and she assured me in 1870 that it was unique, and I inferred from her conversation that for some reason, which I now forget, it was suppressed by Frederick. 2. What is known of the Carl Dornheim here mentioned as an engraver ; and what cause can be assigned for Chodowiecky not engraving his own striking picture! 3. Is there any record of Chodowiecky having visited the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in 1772, when in England for the purpose of sketching the details of the ' Jardin de Stowe,' which number twelve plates, 4 by 2J inches? They appear in the 'Almanach de Gotha' for the following year 1773. Nine pages of description of the 'Garden of Stow and its details, forming a very able short essay on landscape garden- ing, were written — judging from internal evidence—by the great engraver himself in this volume (1773). William Walker, editor of 'Engraving' (Cassell, 1886), says Chodowiecky constituted in himself a school of engraving outside of t "The king." t " Wm. Fitz-Alan, E. of Arundel." § Reference to MS. Cotton ii. 23 might prove this to be a misprint.
 * " David Trevillian."