is beautifully printed goes for granted when the publishers' name is read. Altogether, "Loch-Fishing" is a manual which all beginners will be thankful for, and from which even a veteran may take a hint or two.

Did any loch fisherman ever wind up his lines and give the order to return home without regret? Even dinner appears at such a time to have lost its usual attraction. Many and many a time. have we dared the chef's wrath and outstayed on the loch the hour of that repast, although it had been fixed, taking the long days of Sutherlandshire into consideration, at nine, or it might be even ten. Many and many a time have we found that chef, alike goodhumoured, alike prepared even at eleven o'clock P.M. with an excellent meal, Those who would enjoy a dinner should eat it after such a day as we have depicted, which has been spent in hard exercise amongst the keenest of summer breezes. But even a Sutherlandshire day comes to an end at last. The most enthusiastic angler must lay down his pen as well as his rod. At all events, let us end with the sweet accents of the North lingering in our earssooner or later "the e'en brings a' hame."

M. G. WATKINS.

"N1

PERSONAL NICKNAMES.

ICKNAMES should never be despised: it is by such means men are governed." So runs one of the "Idées Napoléoniennes," a goodly proportion of which are traceable to an origin remote from Napoleon. Fortunately, in the estimation of the value of any universal proposition, the truth is discernible apart from the circumstances of utterance. In the proposition here made, there is indeed an underlying sentiment of varying applicability: falling in with too marked exactitude to history in some epochs and in some countries, and at others of greater breadth of thought sitting shapelessly upon the post factum wearers. But this is but one side of the contention. For if men and nations are influenced-are influenced to action-by nicknames and the inessential: do not yet nicknames embody a characteristic, seize nicely the predominant spirit of a movement or a man? And if so, is it not rather favourable to rightwiseness (as our ancestors wrote the word) than otherwise that such essential should have development, and should be thrown into a form in which the public are capable of grasping it, and in which it alone becomes capable of development? But here the bias is equally one-sided. The fact is, that the mere statement of the two views shows that in the mean, or rather in class distinction, lies the truth. If then it be true that nicknames do govern men, and have governed them, we can only tell how far the government is in harmony with what might have been anticipated, and how far it has been directed by what is of accident, in telling what is the origin individually, not collectively, of this and that nickname. As an interpreter of history, or more properly as a part of history, the principal scope of the study thus suggested is no doubt in political names. But of these-though there are among them numbers of instances each representing a lively faction or party of some time influence, one may yet safely suppose unfamiliar to the general reader -it is not our intention at present to speak. And if from time to time we cross the path of politics, guarded as fame reports by a nocuous chameleon whose discernment is balked only by those clothed in its temporary colour, it will be without reference either

to the living, or to bodies of men, or to the kings and monarchs of the world.

Still less is it our purpose to consider how far personal nomenclature shows that surnames have very generally origin in nicknames. Mr. Lower, Mr. Bardsley, Mr. Fergusson, Mr. Finlayson, Mr. Lordan, Mr. Long, Mr. Kemble, Miss Yonge, Verstegan, Camden, Spelman, Pegge, Noble, Duke, Oliver, Brady, and Eusebius Salverte have done much in this-much helpful, if a little unsound. And they show that the custom has not been confined to modern Europe that Plautus was flat-footed; Crassus, fat; (Horatius) Cocles, one-eyed; Claudius, a limper; (Sallustius) Crispus, curlpated; Marcellus, hammer-headed; Varus, bow-legged; Scaurus, club-footed; (Horatius) Flaccus, flap-eared; (Ovidius) Naso, bottlenosed; and Balbus, a stammerer; that Cicero is connected with vetch, Galba with maggot, Strabo with a squint ; that the Macri were presumably lean, the Albinovani possibly pale, hollow-faced fellows; hat it is likely Alferus Varus was covered with pimples; Brutus, clownish; Cæcilius, fond of lettuces; that (Cassius) Hemina, unlike our own Mat. Prior, who attained to the dignity of Matthew Pintpot, was connected with only a fractional part of that measure of liquids; while (Nigidius) Figulus was a potter; and Scævola certainly without the right hand. Our concern is merely with the names in general of directly ascertainable origin, of the kind noticed in the collections of Dr. Cobham Brewer, or Mr. William Wheeler, but for the most part disregarded by them.

Now, circumstances as diverse have given rise to the sobriquet of modern as of ancient times. What complication-and complication necessarily tends to diversity-could, for instance, be more unforeseen than that bringing the epithet "Nullity" on Bishop Bilson's son? The Countess of Essex, we are told, was desirous of marrying Rochester, but no cause of divorce from her lawful lord appearing, t was suggested "that in case the Earle was so unable (as she reported) to execute the office of a husband, and that upon search, by the verdict of twelve matrons, shee appear still to be a maid," it would be "lawful that there might be a divorce." Wherefore a jury of twelve matrons returned the verdict (the Earl, who was not altogether averse, setting up an absurd distinction of frigiditas versus hanchumorously compared to the case of a man whose stomach could digest everything except Bagshot mutton), that the Countess was still "a true maide." It was, however, said that Sir Thomas Monson's daughter was searched in place of the Countess, and, this getting abroad, when the case came to be tried by the bishops and other

lords, under commission from the great seal, though a bill of divorce was eventually granted, their lordships, some prevailed on by duty and evident justice, others by interest, were divided. Archbishop Abbot, on one side, was so much scandalised that he not only voted against the nullity of the marriage, but published his reasons for doing so; and these the King was at the pains to answer with his own pen. But Bishop Bilson, on the other, was more tractable. Unfortunately it was immediately after this display of episcopal amiability, if indeed the amiability was not a cause of it, that the bishop's son was knighted. The giving of a new title naturally called to the mind of the populace its own rights, and suggested the exercise of them by dubbing the knight "Sir Nullity Bilson." This genealogical ennoblement is seen in a somewhat different direction in the case of Prince Rupert. The Prince was the recipient of a number of those pensions that have so curious a tendency to accumulate in the hands of such as need them not. The Earl of Shaftesbury, through his post at the Treasury, could regulate the practical meaning of "having pensions." On the other hand, the Prince was courted because "he had access to the King, and was useful in promoting projects on account of the mountainous shares he was let into the conceit of for support of his luxury." "The result," says North, was that the Railleurs (a powerful nation in those times) styled him the Earl of Shaftesbury's Footman,' as though the Prince ran about errands to the King in matters personal to the Earl."

But Prince Rupert was not the only one to whom Lord Shaftesbury bequeathed a name. Sir P. Neal, a "deformed little old man," who is credited with having sat to the author of "Hudibras" for the character of Sidrophel, gained from his attention to his Lordship's Hyde Park horses, "with Rhenish wine, and sugar, and not seldom with a bait of cheese-cake," the suitable epithet of "Lord Shaftesbury's Groom." It is noticeable, then, that Lord Shaftesbury himself should have been familiarly called under a name other than his own. The gift of the mob is thus commented on in the "Examen”:

In place or out of place he moved not the least for the purpose, or cast an eye towards returning into the interest of the crown, upon any emergency that happened either of favour or displeasure; therefore he was not a person so given to change as many thought, when they nicknamed him my Lord Shiftsbury.

The dignity conferred on Samuel Horsey has been questioned on an opposite side. Horsey's style was "King of the Beggars." To this the English Cartouche objects. To say nothing of the claims of Bampfylde Moore Carew, though this kingship is, like others, we suppose, enjoyed by different persons at different times, Horsey had

not any transcendent qualities; he maintained no superiority over the beggars of even his own district; he was, in brief, in no way distinguished, except so far as that he was shockingly and constantly drunk. This, however, is, if one may so say, a sort of chronic exploit, in which we perfectly agree with Mr. Thomas Smith, there is nothing worthy of notoriety. Its presence was recognised in Mirabeau (not the distinguished tribune, but his brother, Boniface Riquetti, Viscount de Mirabeau), whose affinity to a barrel was celebrated in the imposed name "Mirabeau-Tonneau," and was imagined in the case of Frederick William, King of Prussia, ignorantly sneered at by English lads as Cliquot. On the other hand, with peculiar disregard to the fiery nature of Old Tom, Thomas Laugher, an abstainer when Father Mathew had not crusaded and abstinence was phenomenal, was well known as "Old Tommy." This individual, who, with due deference to Mr. Thoms (the jingle of names is fortuitous), lived to the age of 112, did not succeed in imparting to his son like qualities with his own. The consequence, as all Good Templars should note, was that the son so aged, the father so juvenesced, that when, in one of the son's better moods but seedier humours, father and son trudged together, a good-natured pilgrim was driven to remonstrate with Old Tommy on his hurrying his father along. If one is to accept, what few will be disposed to accept, the evidence of an ultra-conservative county paper of many years' standing, and therefore presumably in the enjoyment of traditions of hardy and violent language, a more modern advocate of the course of Tom Laugher is in some circles designated "the Pump Buffoon."

The restraint of Old Tommy led to the substitution of persons : the boldness of Cæsar to the engulfing of others in his individuality. Suetonius tells, to adopt the phraseology of a learned gossiper of the early years of the seventeenth century, of "certain pleasant men, who would seale bonds, thus, Caio Caesare ac Julio Caesare consulibus, whereas Caius Julius was but one man. But Bibulus, his fellow-consul, was counted a gull and a cypher, according to the verses,

This done, Caius and Cæsar consuls were,
For under Bibulus nought done we heare."

Still Bibulus's ill fate is not comparable to Laurentia's. He was merely blotted out, where he had some claims to remembrance; she, at the hands of an offended people, has undergone a hateful metamorphosis. She assumes various shapes, like those beneath the power of Black Crook, from maid to fawn, from wife to wolf. Her case was