Bury, Lancashire.
_Christian Names_ (Vol. vii. _passim_).--May I be permitted to correct one
or two errors in MR. BATES'S Note on this subject, Vol. vii. p. 627.?
The person described as a "certain M. L-P. Saint-Florentin" was no less a
person than the Duke de la Vrilliere, who filled several important offices
during the reign of Louis XV. The allusion in the epigram to his "trois
noms" has no reference to his _names_, whether Christian or patronymic, in
the sense in which the question has been discussed in "N. & Q.," but to the
three _titles_ which he successively bore as a public man. He commenced his
career as M. de Phelippeaux; was afterwards created Comte de
Saint-Florentin, and sometime before his death was raised to the dignity of
Duke de la Vrilliere.
My authority for this statement is the cotemporary work, _Les Memoires
secrets de Bachaumont_, where, under date of December, 1770, the epigram is
thus introduced, with a variation in the first line:
"Un autre plaisant a fait d'avance l'epitaphe de M. le duc de la
Vrilliere. Elle roule sur ses trois noms differents de Phelippeaux,
Saint-Florentin, et la Vrilliere:
'Ci-git, malgre son rang, un homme fort commun,
Ayant porte trois noms, et n'en laissant aucun.'"
The sense being, that his titles had been his only distinction, and that
even they had not been sufficient to rescue his character from obscurity
and contempt.
However "applicable" this epigram may be to the bearers or borrowers of
three names, it will be some comfort to them to know that its point was not
directed against them, but against a class of men of much higher
pretensions, of one of whom it has been said:
"_He left the name_, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale."