It is a fortunate thing when men who have been branded with names intended to make them hateful or ridiculous, can thus turn the tables on their dénigreurs, by accepting and glorying in their new titles. It was this which Lord Halifax did when he was called “a trimmer.” Instead of quarrelling with the nickname, he exulted in it as a title of honor. “Everything good,” he said, “trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims between the climate in which men are roasted, and the climate in which men are frozen. The English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities, any one of which, indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate without disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the world.”[41]
The nicknames “Quaker,” “Puritan,” “Roundhead,” unlike those we have just named, were never accepted by those to whom they were given. “Puritan” was first heard in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was given to a party of purists who would have reformed the Reformation. They were also ridiculed, from their fastidiousness about trivial matters, as “Precisians”; Drayton characterizes them as persons that for a painted glass window would pull down the whole church. The distinction between “Roundhead” and “Cavalier” first appeared during the civil war between Charles I and his Parliament. A foe to all outward ornament, the “Roundhead” wore his hair cropped close, while the “Cavalier” was contra-distinguished by his chivalrous tone, his romantic spirit, and his flowing locks.
All readers of history are familiar with “The Rump,”—the contemptuous nickname given to the Long Parliament at the close of its career. The “Rump,” Mr. Disraeli remarks, became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits, till at length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in burning rumps of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the people, like children, come at length to make a plaything of that which was once their bugbear.
A member of the British Parliament in the reign of George III is known as “Single-speech Hamilton,” and is referred to by that designation as invariably as if it were his baptismal name. He made one, and but one, good speech during his parliamentary career. “Boot-jack Robinson” was the derisive title given to a mediocre politician, who, during a crisis in the ministry of the Duke of Newcastle, was made Home Secretary and ministerial leader of the House of Commons. “Sir Thomas Robinson lead us!” indignantly exclaimed Pitt to Fox; “the duke might as well send his boot-jack to lead us!” It is said that Mr. Dundas, afterward Lord Melville, got his nickname from a new word which he introduced in a speech in the House of Commons, in 1775, on the American war. He was the first to use the word “starvation” (a hybrid formation, in which a Saxon root was united with a Latin ending), which provoked shouts of contemptuous laughter in the House; and he was always afterward called by his acquaintances, “Starvation Dundas.” This poor specimen of word-coining was long resisted by the lexicographers; and one modern philological dictionary omits it even now; but it has long been sanctioned by usage. One of the most fatal nicknames ever given to a politician was one fastened by Sheridan upon Addington, the Prime Minister of England, in a speech made in Parliament in 1803. Addington was the son of an eminent physician, and something in his air and manner had given him, to a limited extent, the name of “the Doctor.” Sheridan, alluding to the personal dislike of Addington felt by many, quoted the well known epigram of Martial:
“Non amo te, Sabine, nec possum dicere quare;
Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te;”
and added the English parody:
“I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this, I’m sure, I know full well,