Dec. 10. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



569 



As " good John Pugh " sold excellent cider, I did 

 not repent complying with the injunction. 



W. J. Bebnhard Smith. 

 Temple. 



This is at a roadside public-house near Maiden- 

 head, known by the sign of the " Gate." It is 

 thus : 



" This gate hangs high, 



It hinders none ; 



Drink hearty, boys, 



And travel on." 



I remember a sign near Marlborough of the " Red 



Cow," and the landlord, being also a milkman, had 



inscribed under the rude drawing of a cow these 



lines : 



«' The Red Cow 

 Gives good milk now." 



Newburiensis. 



HOMO UNIUS LIBRI. 



(Vol. vlii., p. 440.) 



I have not verified in the works of St. Thomas 

 this saying ascribed to him, but I subjoin a pas- 

 sage from Bishop Taylor, where it is quoted : 



" A river cut into many rivulets divides also its 

 strength, and grows contemptible and apt to be forded 

 by a lamb and drunk up by a summer sun ; so is the 

 spirit of man busied in variety, and divided in itself; 

 it abates its fervour, cools into indifferency, and becomes 

 trifling by its dispersion and inadvertency. Aquinas 

 was once asked, with what compendium a man might 

 best become learned ? He answered. By reading of one 

 hook ; meaning that an understanding entertained with 

 several objects is intent upon neither, and profits not." 

 — Life of Christ, part ii. s. xii. 16. 



He also quotes Ecclus (xi. 10.), St. Gregory, 

 St. Bernard, Seneca, QuintlUian, and Juvenal to 

 the same purpose. 



Southey quotes part of this passage from Bishop 

 Taylor (in the Doctor) and adds : 



" Lord Holland's poet, the prolific Lope de Vega, 

 tells us to the same purport. The Homo Unius Libri 

 is indeed proverbially formidable to all conversational 

 figurantes : like your sharpshooter, he knows his piece, 

 and is sure of his shot." 



The truth of this dictum of St. Thomas cannot 

 be too much insisted on In this age of many books, 

 which affords such Incentives to literary dissipa- 

 tion and consequent shallowness. 



" An intellectual man, as the world now conceives 

 of liim, is one who is full of ' views,' on all subjects of 

 philosophy, on all matters of the day. It is almost 

 thought a disgrace not to have a view at a moment's 

 notice on any question from the Personal Advent to the 

 Cholera or Mesmerism. This is owhig in a great 

 measure to the necessities of periodical literature, now 

 so much in request. Every quarter of a year, every 

 month every day, there must be a supply for the 



gratification of the public, of new and luminous 

 theories on the subjects of religion, foreign politics, 

 home politics, civil economy, finance, trade, agriculture, 

 emigration, and the colonies. Slavery, the gold fields, 

 German philosophy, the French empire, Wellington, 

 Peel, Ireland, must all be practised on, day after day, 

 by what are called original thinkers." — Dr. Newman's 

 Disc, on Univ. Educ., p. xxv. (preface). 



This writer follows up the subject very ably, 

 and his remarks on that spurious phllosophism 

 which shows itself In what, for want of a better 

 word, he calls " viewlness," are worth the atten- 

 tion of all homines tinius libri. 



P.S. — As I think of it, I shall make a cognate 

 Query. Some facetious opponent of the school- 

 men fathered on St. Thomas Aquinas an ima- 

 ginary work in sundry folio volumes entitled De 

 Omnibus Rebus, adding an equally bulky and 

 imaginary supplement — Et Quibusdam Aliis. This 

 is as often used to feather a piece of unfledged 

 wit, as the speculation concerning the number 

 of angels that could dance on the point of a 

 needle, and yet I have never been able to trace 

 out the inventor of these visionary tomes. 



EiRIONNACH. 



THE FORLORN HOPE. 

 (Vol. vlii., p. 411.) 



My attention was directed to the consideration 

 of this expression some years ago when reading in 

 John Dymmoks' Treatise of Ireland, written about 

 the year 1600, and published among the Tracts 

 relating to Ireland, printed for the Irish ArchcBO' 

 logical Society, vol. Ii., the following paragraph : 



" Before the vant-guard marched the forelorn hope, 

 consisting of forty shott and twenty shorte weapons, 

 with order that they should not discharge untill they 

 presented theire pieces to the rebells' breasts in their 

 trenches, and that sooddenly the short weapons should 

 enter the trenches pell mell : vpon eyther syde of the 

 vant-guarde (which was observed in the batle and reare- 

 guarde) marched wings of shott enlerlyned with pikes, to 

 which were sent secondes with as much care and dili- 

 gence as occasion required. The baggage, and a parte 

 of the horse, marched before the battell ; the rest of the 

 horse troopes fell in before the rearewarde except thirty, 

 which, in the head of the rearelorne hope, conducted by 

 Sir Hen. Danvers, made the retreit of the whole army." 

 — P. 32. 



The terms rearelorne hope and forlorne hope 

 occur constantly in the same work, and bear the 

 same signification as In the foregoing. 



Remarking upon this circumstance to my friend 

 the late Dr. Graves, he wrote the following notice 

 of the word in the Dublin Quarterly Journal of 

 Medical Science, of which I was then the editor, in 

 Feb. 1849 : 



" Military and civil writers of the present day seem 

 quite ignorant of the true meaning of the words for- 



