`Gore' is quite as taurine as `Buller,'
and yet does it not seem to us the right name for the author of Lux
Mundi? In connection with him, who is struck by its taurinity? What
hint of ovinity would there have been for us if Sir Redvers' surname
had happened to be that of him who wrote the Essays of Elia?
Conversely, `Charles Buller' seems to us now an impossible nom de vie
for Elia; yet it would have done just as well, really. Even `Redvers
Buller' would have done just as well. `Walter Pater' means for us--how
perfectly!--the author of Marius the Epicurean, whilst the author of
All Sorts and Conditions of Men was summed up for us, not less
absolutely, in `Walter Besant.' And yet, if the surnames of these two
opposite Walters had been changed at birth, what difference would have
been made? `Walter Besant' would have signified a prose style sensuous
in its severity, an exquisitely patient scholarship, an exquisitely
sympathetic way of criticism. `Walter Pater' would have signified no
style, but an unslakable thirst for information, and a bustling human
sympathy, and power of carrying things through. Or take two names
often found in conjunction--Johnson and Boswell. Had the dear great
oracle been named Boswell, and had the sitter-at-his-feet been named
Johnson, would the two names seem to us less appropriate than they do?
Should we suffer any greater loss than if Salmon were Gluckstein, and
Gluckstein Salmon? Finally, take a case in which the same name was
borne by two very different characters.
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