Notes and Queries, Number 39, July 27, 1850

is death, {132} which took place just before the time of the carnival in 1829, the usual festivities were omitted, which gave occasion to the following pasquinade, which was much, though privately, circulated--

"Tre cose mat fecesti, O Padre santo: Accettar il papato, Viver tanto, Morir di Carnivale Per destar pianto."

J. Mn.

_Shakspeare a Brass-rubber._--I am desirous to notice, if no commentator has forestalled me, that Shakspeare, among his many accomplishments, was sufficiently beyond his age to be a brass-rubber:

"What's on this tomb I cannot read; the character I'll take with wax."

_Timon of Athens_, v. 4.

From the "soft impression," however, alluded to in the next scene, his "wax" appears rather to have been the forerunner of gutta percha than of _heel-ball_.

T.S. LAWRENCE.

_California._--In the _Voyage round the World_, by Captain George Shelvocke, begun Feb. 1719, he says of California