Eliza arose before Elizabeth died; was popular in the seventeenth, much resorted to in the eighteenth, and is still familiar in the nineteenth century. Thomas Nash, in “Summer’s Last Will and Testament,” has the audacity to speak of the queen as—
“that Eliza, England’s beauteous queen,
On whom all seasons prosperously attend.”
Dr. Johnson, in an epigram anent Colley Cibber and George II., says—
“Augustus still survives in Maro’s strain,
And Spenser’s verse prolongs Eliza’s reign.”
But by the lexicographer’s day, the poorer classes had ceased to recognize that Eliza and Betty were parts of one single name. They took up each on her own account, as a separate name, and thus Betty and Eliza were commonly met with in the same household. This is still frequently seen. The Spectator, the other day, furnished a list of our commonest font names, wherein Elizabeth is placed fourth, with 4610 representatives in every 100,000 of the population. Looking lower down, we find “Eliza” ranked in the twenty-first place with 1507. This is scarcely fair. The two ought to be added together; at least, it perpetuates a misconception.
CHAPTER II.
PURITAN ECCENTRICITIES.
“And we have known Williams and Richards, names not found in sacred story, but familiar to our country, prove as gracious saints as any Safe-deliverance, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith, or such like, which have been rather descriptions than names.”—Thomas Adams, Meditations upon the Creed, 1629.