1832.] The Shortest Road to Distinction. 2t>l 



character, the bad singer must in fact be far superior to the rest, who 

 only seem to sing better. If I were to be introduced, as (such odd 

 things happen) I may be, to my Lord Barclay and my Lord Perkins, or 

 my Lord Day and my Lord Martin, I should instantly recognize nobi- 

 lity in the very aspects of those noble persons I should see that they 

 were predestined to the peerage, and that there was something inex- 

 pressibly dignified in their tastes, dispositions, and demeanour. It is a 

 standing law with me, that a colonel must be much taller than a corpo- 

 ral, that an editor must be wiser than his contributors, that a king must 

 be more majestic than his lord in waiting, and, by consequence, that a 

 lord-mayor must be more stupid than the aldermen. When I observe a 

 man et getting on" in the world, I make up my mind instantly that he 

 deserves all he gets, or Heaven would not permit him to prosper ; and, 

 on the other hand, when I see his neighbour sinking step by step into 

 penury and perdition, I regard him as a dangerous person, destitute of 

 all principle, and, of course, I cannot think of offering assistance where 

 Providence disdains to interfere. If the waggon were worth lifting out 

 of the slough, Jupiter would lift it out that is my view of the fable. 



The all-sufficiency of " a name" is too susceptible of proof, and is too 

 constantly proved in all we say and do, to require me to refer to instances. 

 Examples might be multiplied to an extent, that would make the figures 

 of the national debt seem few. Look at one or two only. The word 

 Caesar (if my memory serves me) means elephant. Now if the " great 

 Julius," who bled for justice' sake, had been simply called an elephant, 

 instead of Caesar, would Cassius ever have had occasion to exclaim 

 " And this man is now become a god !" No, the name would have 

 acted as an index to his fortunes ; the wise Romans would never have 

 worshipped him ; he would have been looked upon as the most ungrace- 

 ful but gigantic of animals, an unwieldy but illustrious brute, as tame 

 and tractable as Cassius or any of his keepers could have wished a 

 sort of Chuny in a toga, and Brutus would have been his Mr. Cross 

 as indeed he was, in the circumstance of presiding at his immolation. 

 Take another instance : in the Hindostanee, or some other unpronounce- 

 able tongue, that sweetest of essences, honey, is dishonoured, of all 

 words in the world, by the name of mud. Now, had Dr. Johnson 

 adopted the phrase of these barbarians, and introduced it in that sense 

 into our English vocabulary, who would ever after have polluted their 

 lips with the produce of the hive ! Who would have luxuriated in the 

 sweet treasures stored in the " laden thigh" of the bee ! Think of the 

 alteration that would be required in one of the sweetest of our native 

 nursery ballads, and of the associations called up by such a line as 

 this 



" The queen was in the parlour eating bread and mud/' 



Words are things, says Lord Byron; and I defy the ghost of the 

 aforesaid Doctor himself to produce a more convincing proof of the truth 

 of the assertion. 



But without these palpable proofs, we might be justified in taking 

 the importance of words, and the insignificance of things, for granted. 

 Titles, both in legislature and literature, are of infinitely more conse- 

 quence than the peers and books that bear them. The profession of the 

 law supplies us with abundance of examples of wigs without heads, and 

 we might possibly find here and there a mitre or two, nay even a few 



