gnd §, No 25., June 21. °56.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
493 
“ The Laughable Lover,” Sc. — Who wrote the 
following works? 1. The Laughable Lover, a 
comedy in five acts, by Carol O‘Caustic, 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. R. 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. 4 j 
S. M¢Arthur.— Could any of your readers give 
me 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 : 
“At sea, Lat. 2° 42’ S., Long. 19° 14’ W., the day 
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 90 fathoms; 
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. Spowarr, 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. ? 
Joun Huspanp. 
MS. of Thomas & Kempis. — The elegant little 
edition of Thomas i Kempis, published by Mr. 
Pickering in 1851, bears on its title-page, “ Co- 
dex de Advocatis Szculi XIII.;” while the bio- 
graphical sketch by Chas. Butler, prefixed to the 
text, states the birth of Thomas 3 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 ? 
QuipaM. 
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 Hotel de Ville 
is pointed out as the one where the abdication 
took place ; and on referring to the Guide Illustré 
du Voyageur en Belgique, I find the following 
remark ; 
“ La principale salle de I’hétel de ville, appellée la salle 
Gothiaue, est celle ou Charles Quint, dans tout l’éclat 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. R.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? Ihave never seen any 
other allusion to the badge of the “ silver grey- 
hound,” C. D. Lamont. 
