Minor Queries Answered.
An early Printer.
—I have seen an old black-letter book of homilies in Latin, with the following imprint:—
"Sermones Michaelis de Ungaria prædicabiles per totū annum licet breves. Et sic est finis sit laus et gloria trinis Impressū suburbiis sācti germani de praetis per Petrū Leuet, anno dn̅i millesimo quadringēte sino nonagesimo septimo primo die vero. xiij. Novembris."
I should be glad if any of your correspondents could furnish any information regarding the printer.
ABERDONIENSIS.
[Petrus Levet was one of the early Paris printers, and several of the works printed by him are noticed in Gresswell's Annals of Parisian Typography, pp. 96. 100. 104. At p. 178. will be found his device, copied from the Destructorium Vitiorum, anno 1497.]
Nimble Ninepence.
—What is the origin of this expression?
P. S. KG.
["A nimble ninepence is better than a slow shilling."—Old Proverb.]
Prince Rupert's Balls.
—Why are the glass balls filled with floating bubbles called Rupert balls? Was the prince a glass-blower?
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[The earliest experiments upon glass tears were made in 1656, both in London and Paris; but it is not certain in what country they were invented. They were first brought to England by Prince Rupert, and experiments were made upon them by the Right Hon. Sir Robert Moray, in 1661, by the command of his Majesty. An account of these experiments is to be found in the Registers of the Royal Society, of which he was one of the founders. See Edinburgh Encyclopædia, vol. x. p. 319.]
Knock under.
—To knock under, in the sense of succumb, yield: unde derivatur?
NOCAB.
["From the submission expressed among good fellows by knocking under the table."—Johnson.]
Freemasons.
—Where can be found a good account of the origin of freemasons? And is there any truth in the story that Lord Doneraile made his daughter, the Honorable Miss E. St. Leger, a freemason?
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[For a circumstantial account of the origin of Freemasons, see a curious pamphlet published in 1812, entitled Jachin and Boaz; or an authentic Key to the Door of Freemasonry, both Ancient and Modern, &c.; also, Oliver's Antiquities of Freemasonry. A very interesting historico-critical inquiry into the origin of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, from the pen of the English Opium-eater, who in it has abstracted, arranged, and in some respects re-arranged the German work of J. G. Buhle, Ueber den Ursprung und die vornehmsten Schicksale der Orden der Rosenkreuzer und Freymaurer, will be found in the London Magazine for January and February, 1824.
We believe it is perfectly true that the Hon. Miss E. St. Leger was made a mason, and that she always accompanied her lodge in its processions.]