r more melodious
than other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of them is
the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the
dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of
our country heard in a strange land, these names produce upon us an
effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One transports us
back to a remote period of history. Another places us among the novel
scenes and manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear,
classical recollections of childhood--the schoolroom, the dog-eared
Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the
splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance--the trophied lists, the
embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the
enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the
smiles of rescued princesses.'

To tell the whole truth, I rather suspect that Macaulay appreciated
this subtle art so highly in Milton because he himself had mastered the
trick so thoroughly. He knew what magic slumbered in that wondrous
wand. His own dexterity in conjuring with heroic names is at least as
marvellous as Milton's. In his _Victorian Age in Literature_, Mr. G.
K. Chesterton says that Macaulay felt and used names like trumpets.
'The reader's greatest joy is in the writer's own joy,' he says, 'when
he can let his last phrase fall like a hammer on some resounding names,
such as Hildebrand or Charlemagne, the eagles of Rome or the pillars of
Hercules. As with Sir Walter Scott, some of the best things in his
prose and poetry are the surnames that he did not make. That is
exactly where Macaulay is great. He is almost Homeric. The whole
triumph turns upon mere names.' We have all wondered at the uncanny
ingenuity that Bunyan and Dickens displayed in the manufacture of names
to suit their droll and striking characters; but we are compelled to
confess that Homer and Milton and Macaulay reveal a still higher phase
of genius, for they succeed in marshalling with rhythmic and dramatic
effect the actual names that living men have borne, and in weaving
those names into glorious pageants of extraordinary impressiveness and
splendour.

It is very odd, the way in which history and prophecy meet and mingle
in the naming of the baby. A friend of mine has just named his child
after John Wesley. He has clearly done so in the fond hope that the
august virtues of the great Methodist may be duplicated a