"_The Forlorn Hope_" (Vol. viii., pp. 411. 569.).--For centuries the "forlorn hope" was called, and is still called by the Germans, _Verlorne Posten_; by the French, _Enfans perdus_; by the Poles and other Slavonians, _Stracona poczta_: meaning, in each of those three languages, a detachment of troops, to which the commander of an army assigns such a perilous post, that he entertains no hope of ever rescuing it, or rather gives up all hope of its salvation. In detaching these men, he is conscious of the fate that awaits them; but he sacrifices them to save the rest of his army, _i. e._ he sacrifices a part for the safety of the whole. In short, he has no other intention, no other thought in so doing, than that which the adjective _forlorn_ conveys. Thus, for instance, in Spain, a detachment of 600 students volunteered to become a _forlorn hope_, in order to defend the passage of a bridge at Burgos, to give time to an Anglo-Spanish corps (which was thrown into disorder, and closely pursued by a French corps of 18,000 men) to rally. The students all, to the last man, perished; but the object was attained.
It much grieves me thus to sap the foundation of the idle speculation upon a word the late Dr. Graves indulged in, and which Mr. W. R. Wilde inserted in the _Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science_ for February, 1849; but, on the other hand, I rejoice to have had the opportunity of endeavouring to destroy the very erroneous supposition, that Lord Byron had fallen into an error in his beautiful line:
What the late Dr. Graves meant by _haupt_ or _hope_, for head, I am at a loss to conceive. _Haupt_, in German, it is true, means _head_; but in speaking of a small body of men, marching at the head of an army, no German would ever say _Haupt_, but _Spitze_. As to _hope_ (another word for _head_) I know not from what language he took it; certainly not from the Saxon, for in that tongue _head_ was called _heafod_, _hefed_, or _heafd_; whilst _hope_ was called _hopa_, not _hope_.
_Two Brothers of the same Christian Name_ (Vol. viii., p.338.).--I have recently met with another instance of this peculiarity. John Upton, of Trelaske, Cornwall, an ancestor of the Uptons of Ingsmire Hall, Westmoreland, had two sons, living in 1450, to both of whom he gave the Christian name of John. The elder of these alike-named brothers is stated by Burke, in his _History of the Landed Gentry_, to have been the father of the learned Dr. Nicholas Upton, canon of Salisbury and Wells, and afterwards of St. Paul's, one of the earliest known of our authors on heraldic subjects. The desire of the elder Upton to perpetuate his own Christian name may in some way account for this curious eccentricity.