Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1872-01-05

VAoC WIN bhS ~ Atat~A Vi hAbiN AhttAAkt
BILE precipitancy But this style cannot
be initiated without of'ense. By the
width aud daring Of his range Bunyan
has secured to himself in perpetuity the
field Of the religious allegory in the
English tongue. ,tr 1,t
SIR WALTER SCOTT
is great in his names; it is one Of his
speeialties. DR.. Dryasdust is classic.
He has the art of'giving an air Of prob
ability to q name full Of meaning.
Richie Moniplies, DIR. Heavystone, An
drew Fairseryice, especially when veiled
in Scottish, tickle the sir with lasting
relish. What does not his poetry owe TO
felicitous rush OF ordered names, as in
+" Marmion," or the Lord OF the Isles, u
or to the stately union Of name and title
in which his ear guides the pen so we'll
Names are much more things to some
people than to others, and .heraldry
which embalms names to such Ian
guage full Of meaning What passion
for the science is expressed in these
sounding lines, passion in which the
reader cannot for the time help sympa-
thizing:
Still Is thy name Of high account,
And still thy verso has charms,
Sir David Lindsay Of the Mount.
Lord Lion King-at-Arms.
Satire naturally expresses itself in no
menclature. Mr.. Trollope's DR.. Filgroye
is good, the lawyer Chaffanbrass is ex-
pressive, though little too broad; but
some Of his lawyers name have no af-
6nity in sound to any possible English
surname, and this is mistake. Dick
ems names are his own, which is the
most that can be said Of them. They
express one vein of humor. 1t is ex-
tremely difficult to assign satisfactory
names TO creatures of the imagination.
Swift succeeds in his Gulliver.
Mira. Camp is lucky name. If she
had been Mrs. Chuzzlewit she would not
have established herself in the English
heart as she had done. Farquahar
could have expected his Lady Bountiful
to live as type as she had done. ST.
mon Pure is another success, and peo-
pie talk of the real Simon Pure who
don't know where to look for his origi-
nal. Paul Pray is another; but allitera-
ton is the secret Of a good deal of such
fame. Then, again, flowers have
their luck; asphodel, molly and eg.
lantine are talked of and fingered
over by poets and readers who are
utterly ignorant of what they are like
If from names we come to titles, we
note the same decadence, the same loss
of knack, in authors and poets. And
yet title to a book is quite as important
to it's success as name is to Christian.
Where in modern days do we find such
harmonious felicities as "A Midsummer
Nights Dream, ~" Cynthia's Revels, the
"Faerie Queene," the Shepherds Cal
endar" OF such stimulants to the reader
as the Anatomie of Melancholy" the
!" Marriage Ring" Annus Mirsbilis,
the Tale of Tub, borrowed by Swift
from Ben Jonson2 Our more advanced
poets affect contempt for the tiattery Of
a fair name as though it were paying
court 10 ignorance and eRominancy.
What name has Mr.. Browning chosen
as the title of his latest poem and its
heroine and as for Mr.. Clough, the poet,
who according to some American critics.
is TO represent our poetry of the nine
teenth century TO the twentieth, the title
of his largest work is simply Greek to
the ordinary English reader, and is
slurred over by him as any other long
word is by child of six.