'
Bulwer himself, I doubt not, believed that there was something in this
theory. It is natural that a novelist should. He is always at great
pains to select for his every puppet a name that suggests to himself
the character which he has ordained for that puppet. In real life a
baby gets its surname by blind heredity, its other names by the blind
whim of its parents, who know not at all what sort of a person it will
eventually become. And yet, when these babies grow up, their names
seem every whit as appropriate as do the names of the romantic
puppets. `Obviously,' thinks the novelist, `these human beings must
"grow to" their names; or else, we must be viewing them in the light
of their names.' And the quiet ordinary people, who do not write
novels, incline to his conjectures. How else can they explain the fact
that every name seems to fit its bearer so exactly, to sum him or her
up in a flash? The true explanation, missed by them, is that a name
derives its whole quality from its bearer, even as does a word from
its meaning. The late Sir Redvers Buller, taure^don hupoblepsas
[spelled in Greek, from Plato's Phaedo 117b], was thought to be
peculiarly well fitted with his name. Yet had it belonged not to him,
but to (say) some gentle and thoughtful ecclesiastic, it would have
seemed quite as inevitable.
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