Now, imagine if _Pepys_ had tried to clamber somehow into the enclosure of poetry, what a blot would that word have made upon the list! The thing was impossible.

In the first place a certain natural consciousness that men would have held him down to the level of his name, would have prevented him from rising above the Pepsine standard, and so haply withheld him altogether from attempting verse.
Next, the booksellers would refuse to publish, and the world to read them, on the mere evidence of the fatal appellation.

And now, before I close this section, I must say one word as to _punnable_ names, names that stand alone, that have a significance and life apart from him that bears them.

These are the bitterest of all.

One friend of mine goes bowed and humbled through life under the weight of this misfortune; for it is an awful thing when a man's name is a joke, when he cannot be mentioned without exciting merriment, and when even the intimation of his death bids fair to carry laughter into many a home.
So much for people who are badly named.