This meaning I cannot find in Bailey's Dictionary, and it has escaped the curious vigilance of Blakie's compilers. The saying, however, is a very old one. Sir Edward Coke employs it (Coke upon Littleton, lib. i. c. 1. sect. 1. p. 3. a.):
"But no simile holds in everything; according to the ancient saying, Nullum simile quatuor pedibus currit."
There is a marginal reference here to 1 Hen. VII. 16.
Perhaps some of your philological correspondents can throw some light on the origin of the phrase, or at least give me some other examples of its use. Is the expression "To be on all-fours with" good English?
C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.
Richard, second Son of the Conqueror,
is said by Hume, and by some minor writers after him, to have been killed by a stag in the New Forest; but William of Malmesbury and Roger of Wendover both say that he died of fever, consequent on malaria, which struck him while hunting there. This is well known to be of frequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of desolated human dwellings; and thus seems to involve even a more striking instance of retributive justice than the fate which Hume assigns to him. The fatality attending most of this name in our history is singular. Of nine princes (three of them kings) who have borne the name of Richard, seven, or, if Hume is right, eight, have died violent deaths, including four successive generations of the House of York.
J. S. WARDEN.
Francis Walkinghame.
—Your correspondent's mention of my Arithmetical Books (Vol. v., p. 392.) reminds me of a Query which I made in it, and which has never obtained the slightest answer—Who was Francis Walkinghame, and when was his work on arithmetic first published? The earliest edition I know of is the twenty-third, in 1787; but I am told, on good authority, that Mr. Douce had the sixteenth edition of 1779.