Twa at a blow.’

The ‘No Popery’ cry, raised a little while ago, let loose all the lurking spite and prejudice which had lain rankling in the proper receptacles for them for above a century, without any knowledge of the past history of the country which had given rise to them, or any reference to their connection with present circumstances; for the knowledge of the one would have prevented the possibility of their application to the other. Facts present a tangible and definite idea to the mind, a train of causes and consequences, accounting for each other, and leading to a positive conclusion—but no farther. But a nickname is tied down to no such limited service; it is a disposable force, that is almost always perverted to mischief. It clothes itself with all the terrors of uncertain abstraction, and there is no end of the abuse to which it is liable but the cunning of those who employ, or the credulity of those who are gulled by it. It is a reserve of the ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance of weak and vulgar minds, brought up where reason fails, and always ready, at a moment’s warning, to be applied to any, the most absurd purposes. If you bring specific charges against a man, you thereby enable him to meet and repel them, if he thinks it worth his while; but a nickname baffles reply, by the very vagueness of the inferences from it, and gives increased activity to the confused, dim, and imperfect notions of dislike connected with it, from their having no settled ground to rest upon. The mind naturally irritates itself against an unknown object of fear or jealousy, and makes up for the blindness of its zeal by an excess of it. We are eager to indulge our hasty feelings to the utmost, lest, by stopping to examine, we should find that there is no excuse for them. The very consciousness of the injustice we may be doing another makes us only the more loud and bitter in our invectives against him. We keep down the admonitions of returning reason, by calling up a double portion of gratuitous and vulgar spite. The will may be said to act with most force in vacuo; the passions are the most ungovernable when they are blindfolded. That malignity is always the most implacable which is accompanied with a sense of weakness, because it is never satisfied of its own success or safety. A nickname carries the weight of the pride, the indolence, the cowardice, the ignorance, and the ill-nature of mankind on its side. It acts, by mechanical sympathy, on the nerves of society. Any one who is without character himself may make himself master of the reputation of another by the application of a nickname, as, if you do not mind soiling your fingers, you may always throw dirt on another. No matter how undeserved the imputation, it will stick; for, though it is sport to the bye-standers to see you bespattered, they will not stop to see you wipe out the stains. You are not heard in your own defence; it has no effect, it does not tell, excites no sensation, or it is only felt as a disappointment of their triumph over you. Their passions and prejudices are inflamed by the charge, ‘as rage with rage doth sympathise;’ by vindicating yourself, you merely bring them back to common sense, which is a very sober, mawkish state. Give a dog a bad name, and hang him, is a proverb. ‘A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.’ It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe it, it still haunts our apprehensions. Let a nickname be industriously applied to our dearest friend, and let us know that it is ever so false and malicious, yet it will answer its end; it connects the person’s name and idea with an ugly association, you think of them with pain together, or it requires an effort of indignation or magnanimity on your part to disconnect them; it becomes an uneasy subject, a sore point, and you will sooner desert your friend, or join in the conspiracy against him, than be constantly forced to repel charges without truth or meaning, and have your penetration or character called in question by a rascal. Nay, such is the unaccountable construction of language and of the human mind, that the affixing the most innocent or praiseworthy appellation to any individual or set of individuals, as a nickname, has all the effect of the most opprobrious epithets. Thus the cant name ‘The Talents,’ was successfully applied as a stigma to the Whigs at one time; it held them up to ridicule, and made them obnoxious to public feeling, though it was notorious to every body that the Whig leaders were ‘the Talents,’ and that their adversaries nicknamed them so from real hatred and pretended derision. ‘The Party’ is now substituted for ‘the Talents,’ since success has given their own set the monstrous affectation of being men of talents; and the poor Morning Chronicle is persecuted daily as the Party as it formerly stood the brunt (innocently enough) of all the abuse and sarcasms that were showered on the Talents. Call a man short by his Christian name, as Tom or Dick such a one, or by his profession, (however respectable), as Canning pelted a noble lord with his left-off title of Doctor,—and you undo him for ever, if he has a reputation to lose. Such is the tenaciousness of spite and ill-nature, or the jealousy of public opinion, even this will be peg enough to hang doubtful inuendos, weighty dilemmas upon. ‘With so small a web as this will I catch so great a fly as Cassio.’ The public do not like to see their favourites treated with impertinent familiarity—it lowers the tone of admiration very speedily. It implies that some one stands in no great awe of their idol, and he perhaps may know as much about the matter as they do. It seems as if a man whose name, with some contemptuous abbreviation, is always dinned in the public ear, was distinguished by nothing else. By repeating a man’s name in this manner you may soon make him sick of it, and of his life too. Mr. Southey has by this time, I should suppose, a tolerable surfeit of his title of Laureate! Children do not like to be called out of their names. It is questioning their personal identity. A writer, who has made his vocabulary rich in nicknames, (the late Editor of the Times,) thought he had made a great acquisition to his stock, when it was pretended at one time that Bonaparte’s real name was not Napoleon but Nicholas. He congratulated himself on this discovery, as a standing jest and a lasting triumph. Yet there was nothing in the name to signify. Nicholas Poussin was an instance of a great man in the last age, and in our own times, have we not Nicholas Vansittart? The same writer has the merit of having carried this figure of speech as far as it would go. He fairly worried his readers into conviction by abuse and nicknames. People surrendered their judgments to escape the persecution of his style, and the disgust and indignation which his incessant violence and vulgarity excited, at last made you hate those who were the objects of it. Causa causæ causa causati. He made people sick of a subject by making them sick of his arguments. Yet he attributed the effect he produced to the eloquence of his phraseology and the force of his reasonings!

A parrot may be taught to call names; and if the person who keeps the parrot has a spite to his neighbours, he may give them a great deal of annoyance without much wit, either in the employer or the puppet. The insignificance of the instrument has nothing to do with the efficacy of the means. Hotspur would have had ‘a starling taught to repeat nothing but Mortimer,’ in the ears of his enemy. Nature, it is said, has given arms to all creatures the most proper to defend themselves, and annoy others: to the lowest she has given the use of nicknames.

There are some droll instances of the effect of proper names combined with circumstances. A young student had come up to London from Cambridge, and went in the evening and planted himself in the pit of the play-house. He had not been seated long when, in one of the front boxes near him, he discovered one of his college tutors, with whom he felt an immediate and strong desire to claim acquaintance, and called out in a low and respectful voice, ‘Dr. Topping!’ The appeal was, however, ineffectual. He then repeated in a louder tone, but still in an under key, so as not to excite the attention of any one but his friend, ‘Dr. Topping!’ The Doctor took no notice. He then grew more impatient, and repeated ‘Dr. Topping, Dr. Topping!’ two or three times pretty loud, to see whether the Doctor did not or would not hear him. Still the Doctor remained immovable. The joke began at length to get round, and one or two persons, as he continued his invocations of the Doctor’s name, joined with him in them; these were reinforced by others calling out, ‘Dr. Topping! Dr. Topping!’ on all sides, so that he could no longer avoid perceiving it, and at length the whole pit rose and roared, ‘Dr. Topping!’ with loud and repeated cries, and the Doctor was forced to retire precipitately, frightened at the sound of his own name. There is sometimes an inconvenience in common as well as uncommon names. On the night that Garrick took his leave of the stage, an inveterate playgoer could not get a seat in any part of the house. At length he went up into the gallery, but found that equally full with the rest. In this extremity a thought struck him, and he called out as loud as he could, ‘Mr. Smith, you’re wanted. Your wife’s taken suddenly ill, and you must go home immediately.’ In an instant, half a dozen persons started up from different parts of the gallery to go out, and the gentleman took possession of the first place that offered. No doubt these persons would be disposed to quarrel with their names and their wives for some time after.

The calling people by their Christian or surnames is a proof of affection, as well as of hatred. They are generally the best good fellows with whom their friends take this sort of liberty. Diminutives are titles of endearment. Dr. Johnson’s calling Goldsmith ‘Goldy’ did equal honour to both. It shewed the regard he had for him. This familiarity may perhaps imply a certain want of formal respect; but formal respect is not necessary to, if it is consistent with, cordial friendship. Titles of honour are the reverse of nicknames,—they convey the idea of respect as the others do of contempt, and equally mean little or nothing. Junius’s motto, Stat nominis umbra, is a very significant one, it might be extended farther. A striking instance of the force of names, standing by themselves, is in the respect felt towards Michael Angelo in this country. We know nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of fame and greatness. Our admiration of him supports itself, and our idea of his superiority seems self-evident, because it is attached to his name only. Some of our artists seem trying to puff their names into reputation from an instinctive knowledge of this principle,—by talking incessantly of themselves and doing nothing. It is not, indeed, easy to deny the merit of the works—which they do not produce. Those which they have produced are very bad.

THOUGHTS ON TASTE

The Edinburgh Magazine.][Oct. 1818.

Taste is nothing but sensibility to the different degrees and kinds of excellence in the works of art or nature. This definition will perhaps be disputed; for I am aware the general practice is to make it consist in a disposition to find fault.

A French man or woman will in general conclude their account of Voltaire’s denunciation of Shakespeare and Milton as barbarians, on the score of certain technical improprieties, with assuring you, that ‘he (Voltaire) had a great deal of taste.’ It is their phrase, Il avait beaucoup du goût. To which the proper answer is, that that might be; but that he did not shew it in this case; as the overlooking great and countless beauties, and being taken up only with petty or accidental blemishes, shews as little strength of understanding as it does refinement or elevation of taste. The French author, indeed, allows of Shakespeare, that ‘he had found a few pearls on his enormous dunghill.’ But there is neither truth nor proportion in this sentence, for his works are (to say the least),

‘Rich as the oozy bottom of the sea,