spear. Gounod derives his name appropriately from garlan, to sing. Hugo means intelligence. The name of Victor Hugo would therefore signify victorious intelligence. Sarcy means switch, a fit name for a critic. Sibour, the Archbishop of Paris who was killed at the Barricades, bore an old German name which signifies victorious protector. Bennett is a form of Benedict, but the bachelor proprietor of the Herald does not seem bent on justifying its signification. Coincidence has even determined that the name of a person should be felicitously linked with his profession. Thus, Dr. Physick was one of the most famous of Philadelphia doctors, and that city now boasts several lawyers named Law, one named Lex, and another named Judge. In the same city Mr. Loud and Mr. Thunder were both organists at one time. Among other instances authenticated by trades directories and parish registers are Mr. Toe and Mr. Heel, one a shoemaker, the other a clog-maker, at York. Foot and Stocking were the names of two hosiers, and Treadaway and Last were shoemakers. Trulock was a gunsmith, Pie was a pastry-cook, Pickles sold pickles in a provincial town, Rideout did business as a livery-stable-keeper, Pickup was an omnibus-owner, Lightfoot a dancing-master, Rod (an ominous name) a school-master, Henry Moist a waterman, Dabb a painter, and Copper a copper-plate engraver. No better name could have been suggested for the editor of Punch than Mark Lemon. The church militant during our civil war was significantly typified in the names of two chaplains of the Federal army, Mr. Camp and Mr. Drum. The Prohibitionists would probably think that Bones and Death were admirable names for two tavern-keepers. Odd juxtapositions of names without reference to the trades carried on are very frequent. Violet, Primrose, and Wallflower was a former London firm; Blood and Hoof had a sign in Liverpool; Heath and Waterfall were partners; Jones and Huggs seems a harmless enough name for school-teachers, but a parent might well be alarmed at learning from their circular that “Jones teaches the boys, and Huggs the girls." The proprietor of an Illinois newspaper felt obliged to decline an otherwise desirable partnership proposal from the impossibility of arranging the name satisfactorily, since the title of the firm must read either "Steel and Doolittle" or "Doolittle and Steel," so he wrote, "We cannot join: one partner would soon be in the workhouse and the other in the penitentiary." Names in Fiction. If the influence of a right name is felt in real life, how much more so in fiction! In real life it is a matter of chance or of lucky accident if the baptismal name prove a just and congruous one, suited to the character and the circumstances of the owner. The natural parent may claim forgiveness for error on the score that he could not foresee the possible career of the child whom he may have handicapped at the altar. The author of a work of fiction can make no such plea. His characters should take form in his brain, like Minerva in the skull of Jupiter; they should be armed at all points, and the most vulnerable point of their equipment is an unworthy name. Yet knowledge of the thing desired does not necessarily lead to its easy discovery. It is a matter for thought, for research, for studious inquiry. Great skill and nicety of perception must be called into play. The effect must not be too crudely palpable. Suggestion, not insistence, is needed. The good old trick which pleased our simpler forefathers, that which consists in merely labelling a character,-an ingenuous, but not ingenious, stratagem,-has had its day. It was carried to an extreme in the early English drama, where even Shakespeare gives us such names among his minor characters as Mouldy, Feeble, Shallow, Shadow, etc., and it retained its hold on the comic stage down to the time of the Lydia Languishes, the Sneerwells, the Mrs. Malaprops of Sheridan, the Sir Fopling Flutters of Vanbrugh. At first sight no man would appear to offend more than Bunyan. Yet Bunyan never becomes offensive; indeed, he is a master of nomenclature. In an avowed allegory an author may do what he never could do in a novel. We should not care to meet with Mr. Lechery or Mrs. Filth in contemporary fiction in Bunyan they are meet and proper. We feel that his names came to him with a flash. None is an after-thought. The quality, the Christian grace, the virtue or the vice, which he would impersonate, takes form and name with him at the same instant of time. We recognize the inspiration, we welcome the inevitable. The change from the bluntness of early labelling to the more modern refinement of names that in themselves are possible and may even be current, yet suggest a double meaning of peculiar appropriateness to the character,-this change was a gradual one. The Commodore Trunnions, Lieutenant Hatchways, and Tom Pipes of Smollett are bad, but they are better than the Lovewits and Abel Druggers of Ben Jonson, or the Sir Pertinax MacSycophants, Sir Brilliant Fashions, and Sir Politick Wouldbes of the eighteenth-century drama. The nomenclature of Fielding is better than that of Smollett. To be sure, his Allworthys, Courtlys, and Slipslops all belong to the label order; but Tom Whipwell, which at least sounds like reality, is not a bad name for a coachman, while Blifil and Trulliber are good examples of that grotesquerie lit up by some undefinable nuance of undermeaning which was later to be carried to an extreme length by Dickens. Richardson was still better. Lovelace is very good. So is Sir Charles Grandison. Swift's Lemuel Gulliver is a masterpiece, and shows what he might have done if he had directed his attention in this line. But Swift was only a pioneer. It was Scott who, in George Saintsbury's words, made "the first attempt to unite the advantage of the play upon words with the advantage of not taxing the reader's credulity and good nature too greatly." He has the art to give an air of probability to a name full of meaning. Richie Moniplies, Dr. Heavysterne, Andrew Fairservice, especially when veiled in Scottish, tickle the ear with a lasting relish. Dr. Dryasdust is a classic. So is Kennaquhair. Killancureit is less happy, yet to those who are acquainted with the oddities of Scotch nomenclature it has a certain false plausibility. It is better, for example, than Dotheboys Hall, which is evidently modelled upon it. Waverley itself, the very beginning of his work, could hardly be improved upon. It is a real and not a manufactured name. It is sonorous as a title and as a name. As applied to a hero "who was not exactly famous for knowing his own mind," it is pleasantly yet not too obtrusively descriptive. And Scott's other names, Captain Coffinkey, Roger Wildrake of Squattlesea Mere, Rev. Simon Chatterly, Dr. Quentin Quackleben, each is a more or less felicitous example of the novelist's method,-to make a little gentle appeal to the intelligent and risible faculties, without quite such a demand on general credulity as may be tolerated in an allegory or on the stage. Few or none of Scott's contemporaries caught the knack from him. Marryat goes back to the old straightforward style in his Faithfuls, Easys, and Muddles. Miss Austen never even attempts it. Miss Edgeworth occasionally tries and fails. Peacock once in a while strikes off an excellent name, like Glowry, but usually produces an unpleasant impossibility, like Mr. Feathernest Derrydown, or elaborately dull polyglot puns, like Scythrops and Escot. Dickens struck out a new line for himself, which was to take note of all the oddest and most eccentric names he could find in real life and apportion them among his characters with a nice sense of their onomatopoetic qualities. "During my boyish days," says a writer in Notes and Queries, "when Dickens always stayed at Broadstairs, near Ramsgate, it was generally remarked among his friends and acquaintances that he had taken all the names of the characters in 'Pickwick' from persons residing in Ramsgate. There was Weller, the straw-hat manufacturer and hosier in High Street, near the market; Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass lived higher up; Mrs. Bardell also lived near; and more names than I can now remember were inhabitants of either Ramsgate or Broadstairs." With Balzac, he held that names which were invented gave no life to imaginary creations. It has been asserted that none even of the most fantastic of Dickens's names was an actual coinage. Yet some of his names, the moment they are detached from real life, read like mere labels. Lord Verisopht, Alderman Cutt, Gradgrind, Slyme, Scrooge, Veneering, Mould, are all of this order. They grate upon our modern ear. It is no excuse to say that they occur in real life, often with startling appropriateness. Truth is stranger than fiction, that is only another way of saying that fiction may not dare to be so strange as truth. Cheeryble, on the other hand, is excellent, and so, in their way, are Quilp, Nickleby, Oliver Twist, Micawber, Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp. One can hardly believe that these names were once non-significant, that they were borne by persons who were neither condemned nor classified by them. Enthusiasts have gone so far as to say that from Simon Wegg's bare name they divined the whole man, wooden leg and all. Surely these enthusiasts could not allow the possibility of a matter-of-fact, every-day, ablebodied Simon Wegg? But the greatest master of allusive nomenclature was Thackeray. He developed it early and it flourished apace. Those two capital flunkies, Charles Yellowplush and Jeames de la Pluche, are nicely differentiated by their names, Deuceace, though obvious, is a striking name for a gambler. Bareacres is an admirably suggestive title for a fallen family of haughty bearing, especially when Thistlewood is made their family name. Beatrix Esmond is as fine in its way as Di Vernon. Newcome, with its subtle suggestion of the militaire on one hand and the parvenu on the other, is admirably differentiated by the help of the first names. Hobson Newcome is evidently a snob, Barnes Newcome is a cad, Colonel Newcome is a simple-hearted old warrior, Clive Newcome is pleasant but unimpressive, Ethel Newcome has a melody of its own. Perhaps Becky Sharp is a trifle too insistent in its suggestiveness, and Dobbin leaves out all the native poetry in the honest Major's composition, and illustrates only his thick-hided patience. Yet we could spare neither of these names. And what a wealth of humor and satire is contained in the names of the minor characters,-characters that often appear only for a moment and then disappear, but leave their memory in the ear forever, transfixed there by the magic of a name! "Tiler and Feltham, Hatters and Accoutrement-Makers" is full of fun, and of plausibility as well. The Count von Springbock-Hohenlaufen, Madame de la Cruchecassée, MM. de Truffigny (of the Perigord family), Baron Pitchley and Grillsby, Mr. Zeno Poker, the American ambassador, these are almost as good in their way as the names of more important characters, as Arthur Pendennis, or Captain Costigan, or Harry Foker, or Blanche Amory. Thackeray suggests the great Frenchman to whom he has often been likened. One at least of Balzac's similarities to the English author was the felicity of his nomenclature. Yet his method was that of Dickens rather than of Thackeray. He never invented names; he found them in real life. Léon Gozlan dwells with much humor upon the almost superstitious reverence which Balzac paid to names. He believed in a mysterious affinity and reciprocal influence between names and people in actual life. Philosophers and the mob, he claimed, were at one in holding this view; there was no room left for a single heretic outside of the pale. "Except for me," interjected Gozlan. What! didn't Gozlan believe that there were names which recalled special objects, a sword, a flower? that there were names which at once veiled and revealed the poet, the philosopher, the painter? Racine, for example,―the very name depicted a tender passionate poet. On the contrary, to Gozlan it gave only the idea of a botanist or an apothe Still the stubborn heretic was recalcitrant. From Corneille he got only the idea of some insignificant bird. He accounted for the meaning which both names bore to Balzac by the fact that the characteristics of the poets had become associated in his mind with the sounds of the names. Therefore it was only through sheer good humor and good fellowship that he joined Balzac one morning on a certain exploring trip. Balzac had written a story which he could not let go to the printer's because the name of the hero had not yet been discovered. He held that there was but one name which could fit all the qualities of the imaginary person, that that name was already in actual existence, and that it might be found by a careful consideration of the signs in the Paris streets. He had thought of many names; none filled the character; none expressed it; none would do. So he drags Léon Gozlan for hours through the streets. Gozlan reads the signs on one side, Balzac on the other. In vain Gozlan proposes name after name. Balzac is pitiless. Suddenly Gozlan feels Balzac's arm on his. It trembles with excitement. In a broken voice he whispers, "There, there; read!" Gozlan looks round and reads the name of Marcas. "In this name," says Balzac, "there is the philosopher, the great mathematician, the unrecog nized poet." The name is chosen. Balzac decides to add the initial Z, which would give it "une flamme, une aigrette, une étoile." He discourses volubly on the subject. "Marcas must be a great artist, perhaps a Benvenuto Cellini." Gozlan, less confident of the physiognomy of names, makes inquiries at the house. "Marcas is a tailor!" he cries, exultingly. "A tailor!" repeats the novelist, with an air of discouragement: "he deserved a better fate. Never mind, I will immortalize him." In spite of this living refutation, Balzac clung to his theory, and in the preface to his story of “Ž. Marcas” he insists that no man so cognomened could be other than a great artist, and launches out into a disquisition on the influence exercised by names over the destiny of men. It is not often that we have the history of a name so accurately set forth. The nearest approach to it is in Daudet's own story of the name of Landouzie. Landouzie, like Sir Fretful Plagiary or Fadladeen in England, has recently become in France a synonyme for a jealous and backbiting critic. The name and the character first appeared in Daudet's "Jack," but acquired greater prominence in the dramatization of that novel by Daudet and the actor Lafontaine. Daudet was supposed to have invented the name, but in one of his recent prefaces he explains that it was found by him under such unusual circumstances that he made an oath to employ it some day in a story. During the siege of Paris he was invited by the commandant of a company of francstireurs to accompany him to their head-quarters at Nanterre. While the two friends were conversing there, a messenger hastened up with the news that the Prussians were attacking Rueil. Every man, save the novelist, seized his gun. Daudet asked for a weapon. "There is only one available," said the commandant, "poor Landouzie's." "Landouzie! what an odd name!" said Daudet. "Who is he?" "Our sergeant-major. He will never use a gun again he has not many hours to live." The civilian set forward with his friends. Next morning they reached the station of Rueil, and found themselves in the midst of a company of gardes mobiles. "Who is that man?" asked the corporal, eying Daudet suspiciously. In vain explanations were offered. The corporal felt convinced the civilian was a German spy, and led him before the major. "I went trembling," says Daudet, "with Landouzie's gun in my hand. Happily for me, the major had read my 'Lettres de mon Moulin.' Had he not, I should cer tainly have been shot." Hence the name of Landouzie became impressed on his mind. Nancy, Miss, an opprobrious epithet for an exceedingly effeminate, overnice young man. The original Miss Nancy, however, was a Mrs. Anna Oldfield, a celebrated actress, who died in 1730 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. She was extremely vain and nice about her dress, and as she lay in state, attended by two noblemen, she was attired, as she had directed shortly before her death, in "a very fine Brussels lace head-dress, a Holland shift with a tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, a pair of new kid gloves," etc., a circumstance alluded to by Pope in the lines, "Odious! in woollen? 'twould a saint provoke!" Moral Essays, The horror expressed against woollens is a reference to the ancient custom, originally introduced by act of Parliament as a compulsory regulation, intended to encourage the manufacture of woollen cloth within the kingdom, of burying the dead in woollen shrouds. Natick Cobbler, The, Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United States, elected with General Grant in 1872. He was born in Natick, Massachusetts, where he in his boyhood learned the trade of shoemaker. National characteristics. Carlyle, writing in 1827, records the fact that, except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter was at that time little known out of Germany. "The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,-imported by Madame de Staël and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,-Providence has given_to_the French the empire of the land; to the English, that of the sea; to the Ger. mans, that of the air.” Probably this still remains his most-quoted saying, as the best-known of Heine's witticisms is his comparison of the Englishman and the Frenchman: "I verily believe that God loves a blaspheming Frenchman better than a praying Englishman." On the other hand, Dr. Johnson very naturally thinks that even British taciturnity is better than French volatility: "A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say." (BOSWELL: Life, ch. x.) Emerson, in his "English Traits," under the head of "Manners," says, "I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes." There is an old saying of uncertain parentage which affirms that an Englishman is never happy save when he is miserable, a Scotchman is never at home save when he is abroad, an Irishman is never at peace save when he is fighting, a Welshman never keeps anything till he has lost it. This paradoxically but effectively touches off the chief characteristics of the inhabitants of Great Britain. Separate proverbs affirm the same truths in detail. "The Englishmen take their pleasures sadly," is a well-known French saying. Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom, is a couplet which reaffirms the judgment of many proverbial sayings, as, e.g., |