-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 book-sellers would refuse to publish, and
the world to read them, on the mere evidence of the fatal appellation.
And now, before I close 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._ His 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. A lifetime of
comparison and research could scarce suffice for its elucidation. So
here, if