I am afraid that this lucubration leaves the concrete question raised by De Minimus unsolved. But it may be remarked parenthetically that whoever is responsible for the poem of the 'Patres Conscripti' fell into the common error of treating them as a body corporate instead of, as they were, two entirely separate and distinct entities, as was lucidly explained in 'N. & Q.' of Dec. 17, 1870 (4 S. vi. 528).
Let me add that in my copy of the 'Comic Latin Grammar' (1840) the lines
Patres conscripti, &c.,
are prefaced by a N.B. as follows:—
"The following familiar piece of poetry would not have been admitted into the 'Comic Latin Grammar,' but that there being many various readings of it, we wished to transmit the right to posterity."
So that in 1840 it was familiar "Unde et quo?"
Mr. Palmer's quotation is correct according to my copy. I would lend Mr. Gwyther, as an old Etonian, my copy if
1. He won't lend it.
2. Will return it. Hic et Ubique.
Skull and Iron Nail (US. xii. 181, 306, 389, 409, 490).—With all due deference to M.D., I beg to submit that the subject has to be considered rather from a mechanical than a surgical point of view. The problem is to drive with a hand hammer and without any special appliances, such as the slaughter mask used in French abattoirs, a wooden nail about eight or nine inches long through the two temporal bones into the ground. Without some such special appliance to guide the nail and prevent it from breaking, a pretty stout peg would have to be used, requiring heavy blows with a sledgehammer to drive it home. At the same time the point would have to be and remain sharp enough to pierce both the bones.
Col. John Hayes St. Leger (12 S. i. 26).—The following is in "The Prince of Wales's Lodge, No. 259, List of Members.… with notes, compiled by Thomas Fenn, 1890":—
"On May 18, 1789, joined Lieut.-Col. John Hayes St. Leger, afterwards major-general. Commonly called 'Handsome Jack St. Leger," the friend and associate of the Prince of Wales And the Duke of York. He was cousin to the famous Lady Freemason, the Hon. Miss Elizabeth St. Leger, only daughter of the first Viscount Doneraile."
Accompanying it is a portrait of Col. St. Leger, from a print by Dupont after Gainsborough. The colonel is included in the list of members of the Je Ne Sais Quoi Club given in The Attic Miscellany, vol. ii. 313-14 (1790), the club being described as having then been formed three or four years. Its perpetual chairman was H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who proposed whom he thought proper. The club met at the Star and Garter Tavern, Pall Mall. W. B. H.
The Newspaper Placard (11 S. xii. 483; 12 S. i. 13).—This, as a broadside or sheet making known the contents or special interest of a newspaper or periodical, probably originated with the Napoleonic wars. I am writing this far from my collections on the History of the Press, which I am confident includes handbills or small broadsides announcing some special issues of The Bristol Mercury circa 1812. Possibly the newspaper placard was a development of booksellers' announcements of impending publications, or the contents of works issued in parts. Printsellers' broadsides or placards announcing the publication of some print of public interest also had their origin at this date. Aleck Abrahams.
Clerks in Holy Orders as Combatants (11 S. xii. 10, 56, 73, 87, 110, 130, 148, 168, 184, 228, 284, 368).—It is, perhaps, worth while to remind readers who are interested in this topic of "my Lord John of Voisey," priest of the good Sieur de Joinville, who, single-handed, ran upon eight Saracens with his spear and put them all to flight. They had been shooting from behind an entrenchment volley after volley into the Crusaders' camp, where Joinville and many of his knights were lying wounded after hard fighting. From that time forward Joinville says that his priest was very well known in the host, and pointed out by one to the other as the priest who discomfited the eight Saracens. E. R.
Dublin Topography c. 1700 (12 S. i. 28).—The earliest plan of Dublin is dated 1610. It appears in the corner of the map of the Province of Leinster in John Speed's 'Prospect of the World.' A contemporary copy occurs in Braun and Hogenberg's 'Geography.' Speed's map was reissued in 1676 with no printing on the back. T. Phillipps's map came in 1685. L. R. Strangeway published 'An Attempt to Identify the Streets as depicted by T. Phillipps,
