To begin,then:the influence of our name makes itself felt from the very cradle.As a schoolboy I remember the pride with which I hailed Robin Hood,Robert Bruce,and Robert le Diable as my name-fellows;and the feeling of sore disappointment that fell on my heart when I found a freebooter or a general who did not share with me a single one of my numerous PRAENOMINA.Look at the delight with which two children find they have the same name.They are friends from that moment forth;they have a bond of union stronger than exchange of nuts and sweetmeats.This feeling,I own,wears off in later life.Our names lose their freshness and interest,become trite and indifferent.But this,dear reader,is merely one of the sad effects of those 'shades of the prison-house'which come gradually betwixt us and nature with advancing years;it affords no weapon against the philosophy of names.
In after life,although we fail to trace its working,that name which careless godfathers lightly applied to your unconscious infancy will have been moulding your character,and influencing with irresistible power the whole course of your earthly fortunes.But the last name,overlooked by Mr.
Shandy,is no whit less important as a condition of success.
Family names,we must recollect,are but inherited nicknames;and if the SOBRIQUET were applicable to the ancestor,it is most likely applicable to the descendant also.You would not expect to find Mr.M'Phun acting as a mute,or Mr.M'Lumpha excelling as a professor of dancing.Therefore,in what follows,we shall consider names,independent of whether they are first or last.And to begin with,look what a pull CROMWELL had over PYM -the one name full of a resonant imperialism,the other,mean,pettifogging,and unheroic to a degree.Who would expect eloquence from PYM -who would read poems by PYM -who would bow to the opinion of PYM?He might have been a dentist,but he should never have aspired to be a statesman.I can only wonder that he succeeded as he did.
Pym and Habakkuk stand first upon the roll of men who have triumphed,by sheer force of genius,over the most unfavourable appellations.But even these have suffered;and,had they been more fitly named,the one might have been Lord Protector,and the other have shared the laurels with Isaiah.In this matter we must not forget that all our great poets have borne great names.Chaucer,Spenser,Shakespeare,Milton,Pope,Wordsworth,Shelley -what a constellation of lordly words!Not a single common-place name among them -not a Brown,not a Jones,not a Robinson;they are all names that one would stop and look at on a door-plate.Now,imagine if PEPYS had tried to clamber somehow into the enclosure of poetry,what a blot would that word have made upon the list!The thing was impossible.In the first place a certain natural consciousness that men would have held him down to the level of his name,would have prevented him from rising above the Pepsine standard,and so haply withheld him altogether from attempting verse.Next,the booksellers would refuse to publish,and the world to read them,on the mere evidence of the fatal appellation.And now,before Iclose this section,I must say one word as to PUNNABLE names,names that stand alone,that have a significance and life apart from him that bears them.These are the bitterest of all.One friend of mine goes bowed and humbled through life under the weight of this misfortune;for it is an awful thing when a man's name is a joke,when he cannot be mentioned without exciting merriment,and when even the intimation of his death bids fair to carry laughter into many a home.
So much for people who are badly named.Now for people who are TOO well named,who go top-heavy from the font,who are baptized into a false position,and find themselves beginning life eclipsed under the fame of some of the great ones of the past.A man,for instance,called William Shakespeare could never dare to write plays.He is thrown into too humbling an apposition with the author of HAMLET.Its own name coming after is such an anti-climax.'The plays of William Shakespeare'?says the reader -'O no!The plays of William Shakespeare Cockerill,'and he throws the book aside.In wise pursuance of such views,Mr.John Milton Hengler,who not long since delighted us in this favoured town,has never attempted to write an epic,but has chosen a new path,and has excelled upon the tight-rope.A marked example of triumph over this is the case of Mr.Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
On the face of the matter,I should have advised him to imitate the pleasing modesty of the last-named gentleman,and confine his ambition to the sawdust.But Mr.Rossetti has triumphed.He has even dared to translate from his mighty name-father;and the voice of fame supports him in his boldness.
Dear readers,one might write a year upon this matter.Alifetime of comparison and research could scarce suffice for its elucidation.So here,if it please you,we shall let it rest.Slight as these notes have been,I would that the great founder of the system had been alive to see them.How he had warmed and brightened,how his persuasive eloquence would have fallen on the ears of Toby;and what a letter of praise and sympathy would not the editor have received before the month was out!Alas,the thing was not to be.Walter Shandy died and was duly buried,while yet his theory lay forgotten and neglected by his fellow-countrymen.But,reader,the day will come,I hope,when a paternal government will stamp out,as seeds of national weakness,all depressing patronymics,and when godfathers and godmothers will soberly and earnestly debate the interest of the nameless one,and not rush blindfold to the christening.In these days there shall be written a 'Godfather's Assistant,'in shape of a dictionary of names,with their concomitant virtues and vices;and this book shall be scattered broadcast through the land,and shall be on the table of every one eligible for godfathership,until such a thing as a vicious or untoward appellation shall have ceased from off the face of the earth.