Sterne has touched on this unreasonable propensity of judging by names, in his humorous account of the elder Mr. Shandy’s system of Christian names.  And Wilkes has expressed, in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, all the influence of baptismal names, even in matters of poetry!  He said, “The last city poet was Elkanah Settle.  There is something in names which one cannot help feeling.  Now Elkanah Settle sounds so queer, who can expect much from that name?  We should have no hesitation to give it for John Dryden in preference to Elkanah Settle, from the names only, without knowing their different merits.”

A lively critic noticing some American poets, says “There is or was a Mr. Dwight who wrote a poem in the shape of an epic; and his baptismal name was Timothy;” and involuntarily we infer the sort of epic that a Timothy must write.  Sterne humorously exhorts all godfathers not “to Nicodemus a man into nothing.”

There is more truth in this observation than some may be inclined to allow; and that it affects mankind strongly, all ages and all climates may be called on to testify.  Even in the barbarous age of Louis XI., they felt a delicacy respecting names, which produced an ordinance from his majesty.  The king’s barber was named Olivier le Diable.  At first the king allowed him to got rid of the offensive part by changing it to Le Malin; but the improvement was not happy, and for a third time he was called Le Mauvais.  Even this did not answer his purpose; and as he was a great racer, he finally had his majesty’s ordinance to be called Le Dain, under penalty of law if any one should call him Le Diable, Le Malin, or Le Mauvais.  According to Platina, Sergius the Second was the first pope who changed his name in ascending the papal throne; because his proper name was Hog’s-mouth, very unsuitable with the pomp of the tiara.  The ancients felt the same fastidiousness; and among the Romans, those who were called to the equestrian order, having low and vulgar names, were new named on the occasion, lest the former one should disgrace the dignity.[21]

When Burlier, a French wit, was chosen for the preceptor of Colbert’s son, he felt his name was so uncongenial to his new profession, that he assumed the more splendid one of D’Aucour, by which he is now known.  Madame Gomez had married a person named Bonhomme; but she would never exchange her nobler Spanish name to prefix her married one to her romances, which indicated too much of meek humility. Guez (a beggar) is a French writer of great pomp of style; but he felt such extreme delicacy at so low a name, that to give some authority to the splendour of his diction, he assumed the name of his estate, and is well known as Balzac.  A French poet of the name of Theophile Viaut,