24 FINE NAMES 



social comfort or happiness. Nevertheless, confident, or 

 vain, perhaps, of the superiority I had gained, I treated 

 their jeers and their contumely with all the contempt I 

 could assume, though I was frequently provoked to words 

 of recrimination and abuse. 



One of these, whose sponsors had thought proper to 

 bestow on him the lofty baptismal name of Theophilus 

 Caractacus, was a tall, gawky youth of about eighteen, 

 who, whatever his pretensions Avere to emulate the deeds 

 of his illustrious namesake in arms, certainly bid fair to 

 be on a level with him in his intellectual capacity — for 

 the knowledge of letters seemed as foreign to him as they 

 were to the ancient Briton, from whom, like other 

 Welshmen, he boasted his descent. If, by the other 

 appellation, it was intended that he should in his manhood 

 bear any resemblance to a name known in the early 

 history of our creed, his friends must have been 

 disappointed, for meekness and charity were not to be 

 reckoned among his virtues. This man or youth was my 

 j^articular bane, and fortunate was it for me, perhaps, 

 that I did not belong to the same mess, for, although the 

 disproportion of our physical powers precluded, for 

 shame's sake and the fear of others more his equals, 

 the probability of any personal encounter, still, when 

 assembled on the poop or quarter-deck to take an altitude 

 at noon, his venom would display itself in some aiTogant 

 expressions on the inequality of our births ; and my angry, 

 and sometimes pithy, allusions to his gross ignorance would 

 excite general sympathy, while some happy travesty on 

 his high-sounding name would create the laughter of our 

 su|)erior officers. 



