No love between this two was lost,
Each was to other kind:
In love they lived, in love they died,
And left two babes behind.
THE FORLORN HOPE.
Military and civil writers of the present day seem quite ignorant of the true meaning of the words forlorn hope. The adjective has nothing to do with despair, nor the substantive with the “charmer which lingers still behind;” there was no such poetical depth in the words as originally used. Every corps marching in an enemy’s country had a small body of men at the head (haupt or hope) of the advanced guard; and which was termed the forlorne hope (lorn being here but a termination similar to ward in forward,) while another small body at the head of the read-guard was called the rere-lorn hope. A reference to Johnson’s Dictionary shows that civilians were misled as early as the time of Dryden by the mere sound of a technical military phrase; and, in process of time, even military men forgot the true meaning of the words. And thus we easily trace the foundation of an error to which we are indebted for Byron’s beautiful line:—
The full of hope, misnamed forlorn.
QUIZ.
This word, which is only in vulgar or colloquial use, and which some of the lexicographers have attempted to trace to learned roots, originated in a joke. Daly, the manager of a Dublin play-house, wagered that a word of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in twenty-four hours. In the course of that time the letters q u i z were chalked on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.