_Book of Martyrs_, writing to Philpot, exclaims, 'Oh good master
Philpot, which art a principal pot indeed, filled with much precious
liquor,--oh pot most happy! of the High Potter ordained to honour.'

Herein, in this faith that men's names were true and would come true,
in this, and not in any altogether unreasoning superstition, lay the
root of the carefulness of the Romans that in the enlisting of soldiers
names of good omen, such as Valerius, Salvius, Secundus, should be the
first called. Scipio Africanus, reproaching his soldiers after a mutiny,
finds an aggravation of their crime in the fact that one with so ill-
omened a name as Atrius Umber should have seduced them, and persuaded
them to take him for their leader. So strong is the conviction of men
that names are powers. Nay, it must have been sometimes thought that
the good name might so react on the evil nature that it should not
remain evil altogether, but might be induced, in part at least, to
conform itself to the designation which it bore. Here we have an
explanation of the title Eumenides, or the Well-minded, given to the
Furies; of Euxine, or the kind to strangers, to the inhospitable Black
Sea, 'stepmother of ships,' as the Greek poet called it; the
explanation too of other similar transformations, of the Greek Egesta
transformed by the Romans into 'Segesta,' that it might not suggest
'egestas' or penury; [Footnote: [But the form _Segesta_ is probably
older than _Egesta_, the Romans here, as in other cases, retaining the
original initial _s_, which in Greek is represented generally by the
rough, sometimes by the smooth breathing.]] of Epidamnus, which, in
like manner seeming too suggestive of 'damnum,' or loss, was changed
into 'Dyrrachium'; of Maleventum, which became 'Beneventum'; of Cape
Tormentoso, or Stormy Cape, changed into 'Cape of Good Hope'; of the
fairies being always respectfully spoken of as 'the good people' in
Ireland, even while they are accredited with any amount of mischief; of