Uncertain which most sure to kill is,
Baillie, Heberden, or Willis."
M. H.
Venda (Vol. vii., p. 179.).—This word, in Portuguese, signifies a place where wine and meat are sold by retail in a tavern. It also appears to answer to the Spanish Venta, a road-side inn; something between the French and English inn, and the Eastern caravansaries. In the places which C. E. F. mentions, Venda in Portugal is like Osteria in Italy, of which plenty will be seen on the plains of the Campagna at Rome.
T. K.
Meaning of "Assassin" (Vol. vii., p. 181.).—We owe this word to the Crusaders, no doubt; but Muhammed will find a very interesting account of the word in the Rev. C. Trench's admirable little work On the Study of Words. See also Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. lxiv.; to which, if I remember rightly, Mr. Trench also refers.
R. J. S.
If Muhammed would take the trouble of looking into the translation of Von Hammer's Geschichte der Assassinen, or, a more common book, The Secret Societies of the Middle Ages, he would find that there was "a nation of the assassins;" and that his idea of the derivation of the name, which was first indicated by De Sacy, is the received one.
T. K.
Dimidium Scientiæ (Vol. vii., p. 180.).—Mr. B. B. Woodward will find Lord Bacon's sententia, "Prudens interrogatio quasi dimidium scientiæ," in his De Augmentis Scientiarum, lib. v. cap. iii., "Partitio Inventivæ Argumentorum in Promptuariam et Topicam."