N° 7. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1779.

SIR,

Indocilis privata loqui,

LUC.

To the AUTHOR of the MIRROR.

I AM a sort of retainer to the muses; and though I cannot boast of much familiarity with themselves, hold a subordinate intimacy with several branches of their family. I never made verses, but I can repeat several thousands. Though I am not a writer, I am reckoned a very ready expounder of enigmas; and I have given many good hints towards the composition of some favourite rebuses and charades. I have also a very competent share of classical learning; I can construe Latin when there is an English version on the opposite column, and read the Greek character with tolerable facility; I speak a little French, and can make shift to understand the subject of an Italian opera.

With these qualifications, Sir, I am held in considerable estimation by the wits of both sexes. I am sometimes allowed to clap first at a play, and pronounce a firm encore after a fashionable I am song. consulted by several ladies before they stick their pin into the catalogue of the circulating library; and have translated to some polite companies all the mottos of your paper, except the last, which, being somewhat crabbed, I did not chuse to risk my credit by attempting. I have at last ventured to put

myself into print in the MIRROR; and send you information of a scheme I have formed for making my talents serviceable to the republic of letters.

Every one must have observed the utility of a proper selection of names to a play or a novel. The bare sounds of Monimia or Imoinda set a tender-hearted young lady a crying; and a letter from Edward to Maria contains a sentiment in the very title..

Were I to illustrate this by an opposite example, as schoolmasters give exercises of bad Latin, the truth of my assertion would appear in a still stronger light.

Suppose, Sir, one had a mind to write a very pathetic story of the disastrous loves of a young lady and a young gentleman, the first of whom was called Gubbins, and the latter Gubblestones, two very re spectable names in some parts of our neighbourcountry. The Gubbinses, from an ancient familyfeud, had a mortal antipathy at the Gubblestones; this, however, did not prevent the attachment of the heir of the last to the heiress of the former: an attachment begun by accident, increased by acquaintance, and nourished by mutual excellence. But the hatred of the fathers was unconquerable; and old Gubbins having intercepted a letter from young Gubblestones, breathed the most horrid denunciations of vengeance against his daughter, if ever he should discover the smallest intercourse between her and the son of his enemy; and further, effectually to seclude any chance of an union with so hated a name, he instantly proposed a marriage between her and a young gentleman lately returned from his travels, a Mr. Clutterbuck, who had seen her at a ball, and was deeply smitten with her beauty. On being made acquainted with this intended match, Gubblestones grew almost frantic with grief and despair. Wander. ing round the house where his loved Gubbins was

confined, he chanced to meet Mr. Clutterbuck hastening to an interview with his destined bride. Stung with jealousy and rage, reckless of life, and regardless of the remonstrances of his rival, he drew, and attacked him with desperate fury. Both swords were sheathed at once in the breasts of the combatants. Clutterbuck died on the spot his antagonist lived but to be carried to the house of his implacable enemy, and breathed his last at the feet of his mistress. The dying words of Gubblestones, the succeeding phrenzy and death of Gubbins, the relenting sorrow of their parents, with a description of the tomb in which Gubbins, Gubblestones, and Clutterbuck, were laid, finish the piece, and would leave on the mind of the reader the highest degree of melancholy and distress, were it not for the unfortunate sounds which compose the names of the actors in this eventful story; yet these names, Mr. MIRROR, are really and truly right English surnames, and have as good a title to be unfortunate as those of Mordaunt, Montague, or Howard.

Nor is it only in the sublime or the pathetic that a happy choice of names is essential to good writing. Comedy is so much beholden to this article, that I have known some with scarcely any wit or character but what was contained in the Dramatis Persona. Every other species of writing, in which humour or character is to be personified, is in the same predicament, and depends for great part of its applause on the knack of hitting off a lucky allusion from the name to the person. Your brother essayists have been particularly indebted to this invention, for supplying them with a very necessary material in the construction of their papers. In the Spectator, I find, from an examination of my notes on this subject, there are 532 names of characters and corres

pondents, 394 of which are descriptive and charac

teristic.

Having thus shewn the importance of the art of name making, I proceed to inform you of my plan for assisting authors in this particular, and saving them that expence of time and study which the invention of names proper for different purposes must occasion.

I have, from a long course of useful and extensive reading, joined to an uncommon strength of memory, been enabled to form a kind of dictionary of names for all sorts of subjects, pathetic, sentimental, seri, ous, satirical, or merry. For novelists, I have made a collection of the best sounding English, or English-like, French, or French-like names; I say, the best sounding, sound being the only thing necessary in that department. For comic writers, and essayists of your tribe, Sir, I have made up from the works of former authors, as well as from my own invention, a list of names, with the characters or subjects to which they allude prefixed. A learned friend has furnished me with a parcel of signatures for political, philosophical, and religious essayists in the newspapers, among which are no fewer than eighty-six compounds beginning with philo, which are all from four or seven syllables long, and cannot fail to have a powerful tendency towards the edification and conviction of country readers.

For the use of serious poetry, I have a set of names, tragic, elegiac, pastoral, and legendary; for songs, satires, and epigrams, I have a parcel properly corresponding to those departments. A column is subjoined, shewing the number of feet whereof they consist, that being a requisite chiefly to be attended to, in names destined for the purposes of poetry, Some of them, indeed, are so happily contrived.

that, by means of an easy and natural contraction, they can be shortened or lengthened, (like a pocket telescope,) according to the structure of the line in which they are to be introduced; others, by the assistance of proper interjections, are ready made into smooth flowing hexameters, and will be found extremely useful, particularly to our writers of tragedy.

All these, Sir, the fruits of several years' labour and industry, I am ready to communicate for an adequate consideration, to authors, or other persons whom they may suit. Be pleased, therefore, to inform your correspondents, that, by applying to your publisher, they may be informed, in the language of Falstaffe, where a commodity of good names is to be bought.' As for your own particular, Sir, I am ready to attend you gratis, at any time you may stand in need of my assistance; or you may write out your papers blank, and send them to me to fill up the names of the parties.

V

I am yours, &c.

NOMENCLATOR.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The Editor has to return thanks to numberless Correspondents for their favours lately received; he begs leave, at the same time, to acquaint them, that, as many inconveniencies would arise from a particular acknow ledgment of every letter, he must henceforward be excused from making it; they may, however, rest assured of the strictest attention and impartiality in regard to their com munications.As to the insertion of papers sent him, he will be allowed to suggest, that from the nature of his