M.

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CHRISTIAN NAMES.

(Vol. vii., pp. 406. 488, 489.)

The opinion of your correspondents, that instances of persons having more than one Christian name before the last century are, at least, very rare, is borne out by the learned Camden, who, however, enables me to adduce two earlier instances of polyonomy than those cited by J. J. H.:

"Two Christian names," says he (_Remaines concerning Britaine_, p. 44.), "are rare in England, and I onely remember now his majesty, who was named Charles James, and the prince his sonne Henry Frederic; and among private men, Thomas Maria Wingfield, and Sir Thomas Posthumous Hobby."

The custom must have been still rare at the end of the eighteenth century, for, as we are informed by Moore in a note to his _Fudge Family in Paris_ (Letter IV.):

"The late Lord C. (Castlereagh?) of Ireland had a curious theory about names; he held that _every_ man with _three_ names was a Jacobin. His instances in Ireland were numerous; Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Theobald Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, John Philpot Curran, &c.: and in England he produced as examples, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley {627} Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, Francis Burdett Jones," &c.

Perhaps the noble lord thought with Sterne in _Tristram Shandy_, though the _nexus_ is not easy to discover, that "there is a strange kind of magic bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impose upon our character and conduct," or perhaps he had misread that controverted passage in Plautus (_Aulular._ Act II. Sc. 4.):

"Tun' _trium literarum_ homo Me vituperas? _Fur._"

The custom is now almost universal; and as, according to Camden (_Remaines, &c._, p. 96.),

"Shortly after the Conquest it seemed a disgrace for a gentleman to have but one single name, as the meaner sort and bastards had,"

so now, the _tria nomina nobiliorum_ have become so common, as to render the epigram upon a certain M. L-P. Saint-Florentin, of almost universal applicability as a neat and befitting epitaph.

"On ne lui avait pas epargne," says the biographer of this gentleman (_Biographie Universelle_, tom. xxxix. p. 573.), "les epigrammes de son vivant; il en parut encore contre lui au moment de sa mort; en voici une:--

'Ci git un petit homme a l'air assez commun, Ayant porte _trois noms_, et n'en laissant _aucun_.'"

WILLIAM BATES.

Birmingham.

Leopold William Finch, fifth son of Heneage, second Earl of Nottingham, born about the year 1662, and afterwards Warden of All Souls, is an earlier instance of an English person with two Christian names than your correspondent J. J. H. has noticed.

J. B.

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WEATHER RULES.

(Vol. vii., p. 522.)

Your correspondent J. A., JUN., makes a Note and asks a question regarding a popular opinion prevalent in Worcestershire, on the subject of a "Sunday's moon," as being one very much addicted to rain. In Sussex that bad repute attaches to the moon that changes on Saturday:

"A Saturday's moon, If it comes once in seven years, it comes too soon."

It may be hoped that the time is not far distant when a scientific meteorology will dissipate the errors of the traditional code now in existence. Of these errors none have greater or more extensive prevalence than the superstitions regarding the influence of the moon on the atmospheric phenomena of wet and dry weather. Howard, the author of _The Climate of London_, after twenty years of close observation, could not determine that the moon had any perceptible influence on the weather. And the best authorities now follow, still more decidedly, in the same train.

"The change of the moon," the expression in general use in predictions of the weather, is idly and inconsiderately used by educated people, without considering that in every phase that planet is the same to us, as a material agent, except as regards the power of reflected light; and no one supposes that moonlight produces wet or dry. Why then should that point in the moon's course, which we agree to call "the new" when it begins to emerge from the sun's rays, have any influence on our weather. Twice in each revolution, when in conjunction with the sun at new, and in opposition at the full, an atmospheric spring-tide may be supposed to exist, and to exert some sort of influence. But the existence of any atmospheric tide at all is denied by some naturalists, and is at most very problematical; and the absence of regular diurnal fluctuations of the barometric pressure favours the negative of this proposition. But, granting that it were so, and that the moon, in what is conventionally called the beginning of its course, and again in the middle, at the full, did produce changes in the weather, surely the most sanguine of _rational lunarians_ would discard the idea of one moon differing from another, except in relation to the season of the year; or that a new moon on the Sabbath day, whether Jewish or Christian, had any special quality not shared by the new moons of any other days of the week.

Such a publication as "N. & Q." is not the place to discuss fully the question of lunar influence. Your correspondent J. A., JUN., and all persons who have inconsiderately taken up the popular belief in moon-weather, will do well to consult an interesting article on this subject (I believe attributed to Sir D. Brewster) in _The Monthly Chronicle_ for 1838; and this will also refer such inquirers to Arago's _Annuaire_ for 1833. There may be later and completer disquisitions on the lunar influences, but they are not known to me.