Hobbler or Clopinel, Jehan de Meung, the French poet, who was lame (1260-1320). Meung was called by his contemporaries Père de l’Eloquence.
⁂ Tyrtæus, the Greek elegiac poet, was called “Hobbler” because he introduced the alternate pentameter verse, which is one foot shorter than the old heroic metre.
Hobbler (The Rev. Dr.), at Ellieslaw Castle, one of the Jacobite conspirators with the laird of Ellieslaw.—Sir W. Scott The Black Dwarf (time, Anne).
Hobby-horse (The), one of the masquers at Kennaquhair Abbey.—Sir W. Scott, The Abbot (time Elizabeth).
Hobinol or Hobbinol is Gabriel Harvey, physician, LL.D., a friend and college chum of Edmund Spenser, the poet. Spenser, in his ecl. iv., makes Thenot inquire, “What gars thee to weep?” and Hobinol replies it is because his friend Colin, having been flouted by Rosalind (ecl. i.), has broken his pipe and seems heart-broken with grief. Thenot then begs Hobinol to sing to him one of Colin’s own songs, and Hobinol sings the lay of “Elisa, queen of the shepherds” (Queen Elizabeth), daughter of Syrinx and Pan (Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII.). He says Phœbus thrust out his golden head to gaze on her, and was amazed to see a sun on earth brighter and more dazzling than his own. The Graces requested she might make a fourth grace, and she was received amongst them and reigned with them in heaven. The shepherds then strewed flowers to the queen, and Elisa dismissed them, saying that at the proper season she would reward them with ripe damsons (ecl. iv.) Ecl. ix. is a dialogue between Hobinol and Diggon Davie, upon Popish abuses. (See Diggon Davie).—Spenser, Shephearde’s Calendar (1572.)
Hobnel´ia, a shepherdess, in love with Lubberkin, who disregarded her. She tried by spells to win his love, and after every spell she said:
With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground,
And turn me thrice around, around, around.
Gay, Pastoral, iv. (1717).
Hob´son (Thomas), a carrier who lived at Cambridge in the seventeenth century. He kept a livery stable, but obliged the university students to take his hacks in rotation. Hence the term Hobson’s choice came to signify “this or none.” Milton (in 1660) wrote two humorous poems on the death of the old carrier.