GREAT MEN'S NICKNAMES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2253, 6 May 1897, Page 50

GREAT MEN'S NICKNAMES.

Alexander the Great, in bis own time, was Macedonia's Madman ; Thomas Aquinas was the Dumb Ox ; Plotro Aretino was the Scourge of Princes ; Atilla delighted in the nickname

given by hiß soldiers, the Scourge of God j Beauregard was the Little Napoleon; Bobwell was the Bear Leader, in allusion to bis familiarity with Johnson; Lord Brougham was the Foaming Fudge; Brummel, the Dandy Killer ; Wordsworth, Old Ponder and the Great God Pan.

. Cardinal Wolsey's enemies did not scruple to denominate him the Buteher'B Dog ; the Duke of Wellington was the Iron Dnke and William Warburton the Literary Bulldog. Voltaire bad a host of nicknames, among the least complimentary being the Literary Ape ; and Swift was .proud of being called the English Rabelais ; Jamaa II is better known as the Old, and his son Charles is always mentioned as, the Young, Pretender. Edmund Spenser, the poet, was called Mother Hubbard, and Southey'a name, was horribly punned into Mouthy.

The nicknames given to Shakespeare are too numerous to be mentioned, while Scott had nearly a hundred, the best being the Great; Unknown. Richelieu was called innumerable names by his enemies, who went so far as bo style him the Pope o£ the Hogaenots and Alexander Pope was the Wasp of Twickenham. Pericles was called Onion Head by bis political enemies, and Napoleon 111 Rantipole.

Moore was the Bard of Erin, Mirabeau the - Hurricane, and Milton the British -Homer. MaTtin Luther could not escape the title Hotheaded Monk, nor Louis XIV that of Louis Baboon.

Even in hifl own country John Knox was the Religious Maohiavelli, and Ben Jonson was affectionately denominated Rare Old Ben. Hogarth, the painter, was Painter Pay, and Henry VIII was Bluff King Hal. Among his enemies Gastavus Adolphus was the Antichrist, among his friends the Lion of the North. Oliver Goldsmith was the Inspired Idiot, Goethe the Princß of Poets, and George IV the Beau of Princes. *

- To his friends, Garrick was Little Davy, to bis foes, the Coxcomb ; and Frederick thß Great was Der Alte Fritz, Alaric Cottin, or the Philosopher of the Sans Souci, according to the view taken of his character. Franklin was the American Socrates, Charles Fox the Man of the People ; Qaeen Anne of England wss Brandy Nan ; Elizabeth was Good Qaeen Bess, the Glory of her Sex, or the Untamed Heifer, according to the opinion of the speaker. Disraeli was Dizzy. Gladstone is still the Grand Old Man. The vocabulary of hatred was exhausted, however, in the case of Oliver Cromwell. He was the Almighty Nose, the Blasphemer, the Brewer, the Goppar-nosed Siint, Glorions Villain, Great Lsviathan, bia Horseship, the Immortal Eebel, the Impious, the Imposter, KiDg Oliver, Man of Sin, Old Noll, Old Saul, the English Town Ball, the Wise Uusurper, and many others, some unfit for repetition. If a man's greatness is to ba judged by the number and variety of nicknames given him, Oliver rdust have been ons of the greatest men who ever ruled a nation.