away; and he never had cause to repent that he had taken, nor she that she had given it.

A Spanish gentleman who made it his pastime to write books of chivalry, being to bring into his work a furious Giant, went many days devising a name which might in all points be answerable to his fierceness; neither could he light upon any; till playing one day at cards in his friend's house, he heard the master of the house say to the boy muchacho - tra qui tantos. As soon as he heard Traquitantos he laid down his cards, and said that now he had found a name which would fit well for his Giant.*

I know not whether it was the happyminded author of the Worthies and the Church History of Britain who proposed as an Epitaph for himself the words "Fuller's Earth," or whether some one proposed it for him. But it is in his own style of thought and feeling.

Nor has it any unbeseeming levity, like this which is among Browne's poems.

A

that for its oddity shall be in every body's mouth when you are spoken of, as if it were pinned upon your back, or labelled upon your forehead :—Quintin Dick, for example, which would have been still more unlucky if Mr. Dick had happened to have a cast in his eye. The Report on Parochial Registration contains a singular example of the inconvenience which may arise from giving a child an uncouth christian name. gentleman called Anketil Gray had occasion for a certificate of his baptism: it was known at what church he had been baptized, but on searching the register there no such name could be found; some mistake was presumed therefore not in the entry, but in the recollection of the parties, and many other registers were examined without success. At length the first register was again recurred to, and then upon a closer investigation they found him entered as Miss Ann Kettle Grey.

Souvent, says Brantôme, ceux qui portent le nom de leurs ayeuls, leur ressemblent volontiers, comme je l'ay veu observer et en discourir à aucuns philosophes. He makes this remark after observing that the Emperor Ferdinand was named after his grandfather Ferdinand of Arragon, and Charles V. after his great-grandfather Charles the Bold. But such resemblances are, as Brantôme implies, imitational where they And Mr. Keightley's observation, exist. that "a man's name and his occupation have often a most curious coincidence," rests perhaps on a similar ground, men being sometimes designated by their names for the way of life which they are to pursue. Many a boy has been called Nelson in our own days, and Rodney in our father's, because he was intended for the sea service, and many a seventh son has been christened Luke, in the hope that he might live to be a physician.

name

In what other business than that of lottery-office would the Goodluck so surely have brought business to the house? Captain Death could never have practised medicine or surgery, unless under an alias; but there would be no better name with which to meet an enemy

in battle. Dr. Damman was an eminent physician and royal professor of midwifery at Ghent in the latter part of the last century. He ought to have been a Calvinistic divine.

The Ancients paid so great a regard to names, that whenever a number of men were to be examined on suspicion, they began by putting to the torture the one whose name was esteemed the vilest. And this must not be supposed to have had its origin in any reasonable probability, such as might be against a man who, being apprehended for a riot, should say his name was Patrick Murphy, or Dennis O'Connor, or Thady O'Callaghan; or against a Moses Levi, or a Daniel Abrahams for uttering bad money; it was for the import of the name itself, and the evidence of a base and servile origin which it implied.

J'ai été tousjours fort etonné, says Bayle, que les familles qui portent un nom odieux ou ridicule, ne le quitent pas. The Leatherheads and Shufflebottoms, the Higgenses and Huggenses, the Scroggses and the Scraggses, Sheepshanks and Ramsbottoms, Taylors and Barbers, and worse than all, Butchers, would have been to Bayle as abominable as they were to Dr. Dove. "I ought," the Doctor would say, "to have a more natural dislike to the names

should be: Toogood for any human creature, and Best for a subject who is perhaps too bad to be endured."

Custom having given to every Christian name its alias, he always used either the baptismal name or its substitute as it happened to suit his fancy, careless of what others might do. Thus he never called any woman Mary, though Mare he said being the sea was in many respects but too emblematic of the sex. It was better to use a synonyme of better omen, and Molly therefore was to be preferred as being soft. If he accosted a vixen of that name in her worst temper he mollyfied her. On the contrary he never could be induced to substitute Sally for Sarah. - Sally he said had a salacious sound, and moreover it reminded him of rovers, which women ought not to be. Martha he called Patty, because it came pat to the tongue. Dorothy remained Dorothy, because it was neither fitting that women should be made Dolls nor Idols. Susan with him was always Sue, because women were to be sued, and Winifred Winny because they were to be

won.

CHAPTER CCXXIII.

they are to me (the first excepted) less odious than names like these: and even preferable to Bull, Bear, Pig, Hog, Fox or Wolf."

"What a name," he would say, "is Lamb for a soldier, Joy for an undertaker, Rich for a pauper, or Noble for a taylor: Big for a lean and little person, and Small for one who is broad in the rear and abdominous in the van. Short for a fellow six feet without his shoes, or Long for him whose high heels hardly elevate him to the height of five. Sweet for one who has either a vinegar face, or a foxey complexion. Younghusband for an old bachelor. Merryweather for any one in November and February, a black spring, a cold summer or a wet autumn. Goodenough for a person no better than he

Tal nombre, que a los siglos extendido,

Se olvide de olvidarsele al Olvido. LOPE DE VEGA.

CONSIDERING the many mysteries which our Doctor discovered in the name of Dove, and not knowing but that many more may be concealed in it which will in due time be brought to light, I am particularly desirous,

I am solicitous, I am anxious, — I wish (which is as much as if a Quaker were to say "I am moved," or "it is upon my mind,") to fix for posterity, if possible, the true pronunciation of that name. If possible, I say, because whatever those readers may think, who have never before had the sub

ject presented to their thoughts, it is exceedingly difficult. My solicitude upon this point will not appear groundless, if it be recollected to what strange changes pronunciation is liable, not from lapse of time alone, but from caprice and fashion. Who in the present generation knows not how John Kemble was persecuted about his a-ches, a point wherein, right as he was, he was proved to be wrong by a new norma loquendi. Our allies are no longer iambic as they were wont to be, but pure trochees now, like Alley Croker and Mr. Alley the counsellor. Beta is at this day called Veta in Greece, to the confusion of Sir John Cheke, to the triumph of Bishop Gardiner, and in contempt of the whole ovine race. Nay, to bring these observations home to the immediate purport of this chapter, the modern Greeks when they read this book will call the person, on whose history it relates, Thaniel Thove! and the Thoctor! their Delta having undergone as great a change as the Delta in Egypt. Have I not reason then for my solicitude?

Whoever examines that very rare and curious book, Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse, printed by Johan Haukyns, 1530, (which is the oldest French grammar in our language, and older than any that the French possess in their own,) will find indubitable proof that the pronunciation of both nations is greatly altered in the course of the last three hundred years.

Neither the Spaniards nor Portuguese retain in their speech that strong Rhotacism which they denoted by the double rr, and which Camden and Fuller notice as peculiar to the people of Carlton in Leicestershire. Lily has not enumerated it among those isms from which boys are by all means to be deterred; a most heinous ism, however, it is. A strange uncouth wharling Fuller called it, and Camden describes it as a harsh and ungrateful manner of speech with a guttural and difficult pronunciation. They were perhaps a colony from Durham or Northumberland in whom the burr had become hereditary.

Is the poetry of the Greeks and Romans

ever read as they themselves read it? Have we not altered the very metre of the pentameter by our manner of reading it? Is it not at this day doubtful whether Cæsar was called Kæsar, Chasar, or as we pronounce his name? And whether Cicero ought not to be called Chichero* or Kikero? Have I not therefore cause to apprehend that there may come a time when the true pronunciation of Dove may be lost or doubtful? Major Jardine has justly observed that in the great and complicated art of alphabetical writing, which is rendered so easy and familiar by habit, we are not always aware of the limits of its powers.

"Alphabetical writing," says that always speculative writer," was doubtless a wonderful and important discovery. Its greatest merit, I think, was that of distinguishing sounds from articulations, a degree of perfection to which the eastern languages have not yet arrived; and that defect may be, with those nations, one of the chief causes of their limited progress in many other things. You know they have no vowels, except some that have the a, but always joined to some articulation: their attempt to supply that defect by points give them but very imperfect and indistinct ideas of vocal and articulate sounds, and of their important distinction. But even languages most alphabetical, if the expression may be allowed, could not probably transmit by writing a compleat idea of their own sounds and pronunciation from any one age or people to another. Sounds are to us infinite and variable, and we cannot transmit by one sense the ideas and objects of another. We shall be convinced of this when we recollect the innumerable qualities of tone in human voices, so as to enable us to distinguish all

The well-known verses of Catullus would be against Chichero, at least.

Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
Dicere, et hinsidias Arrius insidias:
Et tum mirificè sperabat se esse locutum,
Cum quantum poterat, dixerat hinsidias, &c.
CARM. LXXXIV.

The appears to have been an old Shibboleth, and not restricted either to Shropshire or Warwickshire. Mr. Evans' verses will occur to many readers of "The Doctor, &c."

our acquaintances, though the number should amount to many hundreds, or perhaps thousands. With attention we might discover a different quality of tone in every instrument; for all these there never can be a sufficient number of adequate terms in any written language; and when that variety comes to be compounded with a like variety of articulations, it becomes infinite to us. The varieties only upon the seven notes in music, varied only as to pitch and modulation throughout the audible scale, combined with those of time, are not yet probably half exhausted by the constant labour of so many ages. So that the idea of Mr. Steel and others, of representing to the eye the tune and time only of the sounds in any language, will probably ever prove inadequate to the end proposed, even without attempting the kinds and qualities of tones and articulations which would render it infinite and quite impossible."

Lowth asserts that "the true pronunciation of Hebrew is lost,-lost to a degree far beyond what can ever be the case of any European language preserved only in writing; for the Hebrew language, like most of the other Oriental languages, expressing only the consonants, and being destitute of its vowels, has lain now for two thousand years in a manner mute and incapable of utterance, the number of syllables is in a great many words uncertain, the quantity and accent wholly unknown."

In the pronouncing Dictionary of John Walker, (that great benefactor to all ladies employed in the task of education,) the word is written Duv, with a figure of 2 over the vowel, designating that what he calls the short simple u is intended, as in the English tub, cup, sup, and the French veuf, neuf. How Sheridan gives it, or how it would have been, as Mr. Southey would say, uglyographised by Elphinstone and the other whimsical persons who have laboured so disinterestedly in the vain attempt of regulating our spelling by our pronunciation, I know not, for none of their books are at hand. My public will forgive me that I have not taken the trouble to procure them.

It has not been neglected from idleness, nor for the sake of sparing myself any pains which ought to have been taken. Would I spare any pains in the service of my Public! I have not sought for those books because their authority would have added nothing to Walker's: nor if they had differed from him, would any additional assistance have been obtained. They are in fact all equally inefficient for the object here required, which is so to describe and fix the true pronunciation of a particular word, that there shall be no danger of it ever being mistaken, and that when this book shall be as old as the Iliad, there may be no dispute concerning the name of its principal personage, though more places should vie with each other for the honour of having given birth to Urgand the Unknown, than contended for the birth of Homer. Now that cannot be done by literal notation. If you think it may, "I beseech you, Sir, paint me a voice! Make a sound visible if you can! Teach mine ears to see, and mine eyes to hear!"

The prosody of the ancients enables us to ascertain whether a syllable be long or short. Our language is so much more flexible in verse that our poetry will not enable the people of the third and fourth millenniums even to do this, without a very laborious collation, which would after all in many instances leave the point doubtful. rhyme decide the question; for to a foreigner who understands English only by book (and the people of the third and fourth millenniums may be in this state) Dove and Glove, Rove and Grove, Move and Prove, must all appear legitimate and interchangeable rhymes.

Nor will

I must therefore have given up the matter in despair had it not been for a most fortunate and felicitous circumstance. There is one word in the English language which, happen what may, will never be out of use, and of which the true pronunciation, like the true meaning, is sure to pass down uninterruptedly and unaltered from generation to generation. That word, that one and only word which must remain immutable wherever English is spoken, whatever other