into a fashion, namely, that of confounding the names proper to the two sexes. This has been done to a slight extent, however. I once knew a lady named Charles; Joey has been bestowed on a female infant; and Brown, the author of Britannia's Pastorals, is said to have married a Miss Timothy Eversfield, of Den in Sussex. Evelyn is one of the bewildering names without sex. Apropos of romantic names, I have it from a registrar of great experience that these are enormously affected by the lower orders, who get them from the romances in the penny papers. Their taste in this way, however, generally receives two checks. In the first place, they can seldom pronounce the names they admire; and in the second, they nine times out of ten fail in their efforts to set them down on paper with anything like an approximation to correct spelling. The name of the Empress of the French has an enormous fascination for young mothers of romantic views and restricted means. They think Eugénie delicious; nor do they appear conscious that it loses anything of its delicate sweetness when pronounced "You Jenny"! "Good heavens, madam! you have made me the father of an anachronism!" cries Bulwer's Caxton, on learning that his son has been named Pisistratus. "Infamous! Pisistratus christened! Pisistratus, who lived six hundred years before Christ was born!" Unfortunately young Caxton was not the only anachronism of his kind; but such is use, that palpable absurdities in this as in other things pass us unheeded every day. It would not, for example, be more ridiculous to call a child Ramesis, Miamum, or Sesostris, than David or Solomon; yet either of the former names would excite endless comment, while the latter passes as a thing of course. A writer, speaking of such monstrous names as Zerubbabel, Jehu, and Ishmael, asks, "Why should an English Christian be converted into an Old-Testament Jew?" Why, indeed; but it does not strike the writer that the same remark would apply to David, Joseph, Samuel, Jonas, Jesse, and heaps of others, all Jewish names, not a whit more legitimately ours because some of those who held them afterwards became Christians. Is it loyalty or flunkeyism which induces people to name their families after the various members of the royal house? However prompted, the thing itself is absurd. Imagine an Albert, as the case has been put, having to keep up his princely estate with a penniless Victoria! The selection of the great names of poets, philosophers, and military men, again, is only calculated to heap perpetual ridicule on the unfortunate wight who will in all probability have to carry through life a name at variance with his gifts, tastes, acquirements, and individuality generally. Yet this folly is constantly indulged in. Another favourite idea is to atone for a scrubby family name by a gorgeous baptismal prefix. This is not always a success. Incongruous combinations have a comic rather than an impressive effect. Link Smith with Hannibal, Alexander, or Clytemnestra, and Smith gains nothing; the forced association of ideas impresses the mind like a joke. So with Agamemnon Chip, Launcelot Bolster, Lucinda Bowser, and Plantagenet Brown-all real names-Chip and Bolster, Bowser and Brown, are too strong for baptismal amelioration. We "smell the mould above the rose." So, to quote from documents in the Registrar-General's office, Alexander Smut, Sanspareil Scamp, Tryphenia Tub, Faith Hope Charity Green, De Courcy Brill, and Merelthalfiar Lamb, only excite wonder. Poor little surnames overwhelmed with baptismal splendours remind one of the sweep who was found sleeping in the Duke of Norfolk's bed—the more gorgeous the bed, the more audaciously out of place its occupant. Premeditated baptismal jokes are not infrequent; that is to say, cases in which a Christian name has been bestowed with an eye to the family name, and with the clear intention of getting a pleasantry out of the association of the two. Swallow Gosling, Time-of Day, Hoar Frost, Henry Born Noble, Bridelia Bridle, Happy Helen Hovel, John Bottle-of Beer, Acts Apostles, Arch Bishop, Sweet Organ, Master David Norman, are examples as authentic as they are nonsensical. There is a pleasant story told of parents who carefully thought over a name for their newly-born daughter with a view not to a comic but a pleasing effect. Their name was Rose, and they decided that the prefix Wild would be pretty in combination-Wild Rose. Very charming! But unfortunately, when the young lady grew up she married a Mr. Bull, and had the mortification of signing herself through life "Wild Bull," which was not romantic. Of queer Christian names the catalogue would be interminable. Take Libertine, Terrier, Affability, Vile, Belly, Neighbour, Coom, and Conker Kooley. It may fairly be assumed that in the present day the clergymen would refuse to give farcical or eccentric names in baptism; but registrars have no power to dictate in these matters. They will, however, refuse to register in any of the names proper to the Almighty or to Jesus. The Scripture names are often outrageous. Who in his senses would choose to be called Kerenhappuch, Maher-shalal-hashbaz, or Talitha Cumi? And this reminds me of the singular weakness of mind that has dictated the avoidance of certain names because they happen to be borne by actors of ignoble or wicked parts in Scripture history. Who, for instance, ever calls his son Cain? Yet 'tis as good a name as Abel; and the fact that it was borne by a murderer is no argument against it, seeing that every name with which we are familiar has-terrible to think of!-been owned by a murderer at some time or other. So, again, with Judas. It would be considered a name of illomen, and unquestionably would be a misfortune to the man who bore it. So deeply rooted are religious prejudices, that to this day there prevails a cruel prejudice against red-haired people, who are believed to be treacherous, simply from the tradition that Judas had red hair. The silly fancy as to the unluckiness of being the thirteenth guest at dinner may be traced to a similar source-Judas was the thirteenth at the Last Supper. Prejudices of this sort show that, in spite of our boasted enlightenment, ignorance and superstition yet hold society in leading-strings. The association of ideas with names opens up a curious field. The poets have touched on this, particularly in the way of regarding female names as indicating the character of those bearing them. A few lines from a Ms. lent me by a friend will illustrate what I mean: "Blanche is a blonde with laughing eyes; Eliza 'tis well known's a flirt; Lucy is pretty, quiet, pure; and so on. Names certainly have character; but so much depends on those with whom they have been associated in our individual experience, that I suspect most of us would find cause to dissent from the poet's impressions. It is curious to note the contractions or corruptions of familiar names. They seem to follow no particular rule. In some cases the first syllable only is retained, as Will, Tom, Joe, Phil, Rob, Nat, Dan, Matt, and Fred. In a second class we have these first syllables, or even the whole name, softened down, as in Dick-where Rich would present a slight difficulty-Bob, Bill, Harry, Charlie. In Ned or Ted we find, on the contrary, a strengthening of the first syllable of Edward for convenience. But some names are altered on quite a different principle: thus, Mary becomes Polly, Ann changes to Nancy, Bridget to Biddy, Sarah to Sally, and John to Jack, which last was originally the nickname for James, through its Latin and French forms, Jacobus and Jacques. If there is any law about the matter, it would appear to be that female names undergo the greater change in their diminutive forms. Readers of Dickens will recall as felicitous instances of the use of pet names those of Pecksniff's daughters, Merry and Cherry, and Clemency as derived from Clementina. By way of winding up our gossip pleasantly, it may be as well to preserve here a Scotch anecdote I have somewhere met with. A Fifeshire man brought his child to the minister to be baptised. The latter was evidently one of those earnest men who have sprung up as successors to the indolent pastors of the old school, and he asked, "Are you prepared for so important, so solemn an occasion?" "Prepared!" echoed the man with some indignation; "I hae a firlot o' bannocks bakin', twa bacon hams, a gude fat kebbuck, an' a gallon o' the best Hielan' whusky; an' I wad just like to ken what better preparation ye could expeck frae a man in my condition o' life?" He was thinking, not of the sacred rite, but of the rejoicings to follow it—a state of mind which has once or twice been known at christenings farther south than Fifeshire! WILLIAM SAWYER. LONDON THEATRES AND LONDON ACTORS BY WALTER THORNBURY No. V. Drury-lane Theatre (concluded)—Olympic Theatre. ELLISTON-ASTLEY-BRAHAM-MADAME VESTRIS. IN 1819 Colman was solicited by the Drury-lane Committee to enter on the management of the embarrassed theatre. George Colman declining to interfere, Stephen Kemble accepted the sceptre, undertaking to bring out a new piece every fortnight; but Stephen fell heavily, and, what was worse, the receipts dropped with him. Lord Byron, disgusted with the whole management, then wrote a public statement. When he entered on his work, he had found five hundred plays on the shelves, but not one of them was endurable. Byron himself procured Maturin's Bertram, and tried Coleridge and Sotheby; but the first had nothing feasible, and the second quarrelled with Kean. Sir James Bland Burgess, a vile poet, sent in four bad tragedies, which were really farces, and one farce which was no joke. "Then," says Byron pathetically, "the scenes I had to go through!-the authors and authoresses-the milliners and the wild Irishmen, the people from Brighton and from Blackwall, from Chatham, from Cheltenham, from Dublin, from Dundee—who came in upon me; to all of whom it was proper to give a civil answer and a hearing-ah me, sometimes a reading! Mrs. Glover's father, an Irish dancing-master of sixty, wanted to play Archer before us, in silk-stockings on a frosty morning, to show his well-developed calves. Then came Miss Emma Somebody with a play, the Bandit of Bohemia, or some such title; and Mr. O'Higgins, a savage Irishman, with a very Irish tragedy, in which the hero spoke his longest speeches chained to a pillar." Disliking to give pain, the sensitive and vain poet sent all persons to be dismissed to Douglas Kinnaird, a business man, sufficiently ready with a negation. Byron says players are impracticable people, but his only dispute was one with the elder Byrne about a Miss Smith's pas-de-something, and he always protected this Miss Smith because she was like a Lady Jane Harley, whom he esteemed. His graver and more bustling colleagues (Peter Moore, who contradicted Kinnaird, and Kinnaird, who contradicted everybody) complained, however, that Byron buffooned with the actors, and threw things into confusion by his ill-timed levity. Hobhouse furnished prologues to the revised old English plays, and took it very much in dudgeon when he was called the Upton of Drury-lane, Upton being the song-writer for Astley's. The same year it was decided to let the theatre, as Kean had been only playing to 877. houses, and Dowton and the other actors had refused to reduce their salaries. Kean offered a 1007. subscription, and 10,0007. a-year. "Talpa cæcior," he said with his usual sham Latin; "the more I read the Drury-lane accounts, the more I am constipated for the sake of my brothers and sisters of the art. I now stand forward to devote my property, reputation, and experience to cleanse the Augean stable, and raise a new Palmyra." Tom Dibdin and Mr. Arnold also sent in offers, but Elliston sailed in and carried off the doubtful prize; perhaps a galleon, perhaps a fire-ship full of powder. He took the great theatre for fourteen years at a yearly rent of 10,2007., with a nightly free admission for six hundred and fifty-three persons reserved; 50l. to be taken nightly; and a fine of 187. 15s. for every night he opened beyond 200 in a season. He was at once to lay out 1,000l. on decoration, and not less than 6,000l. before the commencement of the 1820 season. The lessee to pay all rates and taxes, and not to engage in any other London theatre. At this very time, "the great lessee," Elliston, started his sons-who would insist on being gentlemen-in a circulating-library at Leamington. It was at that pill-box of a Warwickshire theatre that Elliston, in a grand or tipsy mood, told his audience solemnly, in taking leave, that he had reason to believe it was the gracious intention of his royal highness, the Prince Regent, to confer on him. the honour of knighthood, and when next he should have the pleasure of playing before them, it would be the part of Sir John Falstaff by Sir Robert Elliston. Kean at first would not act under Elliston. He wrote to Elliston : "I will forfeit my 1,000l. I go to America; my arrangements are made. Cras ingens iterabimus æquor. I quit the kingdom. Richards and Hamlets grow on every hedge. Grant you may have a good crop.Yours, E. KEAN. "P.S. If I should go by water to the nether world, I shall certainly relate to our great master that you actually thought it no degradation to act his Cassio." Elliston was full of regal energy. He tried, but in vain, to induce Scott to write a five-act play, and Mrs. Siddons to return to the stage. He besought Maturin for a blood-and-bones melodrama, and engaged Miss Kelly at 201. a-week. Before the opening, he invited 200 friends to a grand ball and supper at the theatre. The receipts on the first night amounted to 6387.; on the second, when Braham appeared, to 5007.: the season of 199 nights bringing in a golden harvest of 44,0537., or an average of 2207. per night. Madame Vestris made her début this year at Drury as Lilla in the Siege of Belgrade, and for a few nights produced no great impression on the audience; but she soon set light to the straw, and her popularity never abated afterwards. Kean appeared about the same time as Coriolanus; but failed to reach the statuesque |