name as well as the one he had adopted. His brother had offered him two
ways to win fortune in the world, leaving him perfectly free in his
choice. Both required an expenditure of one thousand sequins, but the
abbe had put the amount aside for that purpose. My friend had to choose
between the sword of Mars and the bird of Minerva. The abbe knew that he
could purchase for his brother a company in the army of his Imperial and
Apostolic Majesty, or obtain for him a professorship at the University of
Padua; for money can do everything. But my friend, who was gifted with
noble feelings and good sense, knew that in either profession talents and
knowledge were essentials, and before making a choice he was applying
himself with great success to the study of mathematics. He ultimately
decided upon the military profession, thus imitating Achilles, who
preferred the sword to the distaff, and he paid for it with his life like
the son of Peleus; though not so young, and not through a wound inflicted
by an arrow, but from the plague, which he caught in the unhappy country
in which the indolence of Europe allows the Turks to perpetuate that
fearful disease.

The distinguished appearance, the noble sentiments, the great knowledge,
and the talents of Fabris would have been turned into ridicule in a man
called Tognolo, for such is the force of prejudices, particularly of
those which have no ground to rest upon, that an ill-sounding name is
degrading in this our stupid society. My opinion is that men who have an
ill-sounding name, or one which presents an indecent or ridiculous idea,
are right in changing it if they intend to win honour, fame, and fortune
either in arts or sciences. No one can reasonably deny them that right,
provided the name they assume belongs to nobody. The alphabet is general
property, and everyone has the right to use it for the creation of a word
forming an appellative sound. But he must truly create it. Voltaire, in
spite of his genius, would not perhaps have reached posterity under his
name of Arouet, especially amongst the French, who always give way so
easily to their keen sense of ridicule and equivocation. How could they
have imagined that a writer 'a rouet' could be a man of genius? And
D'Alembert, would he have attained his high fame, his universal
reputation, if he had been satisfied with his name of M. Le Rond, or Mr.
Allround? What would have become of Metastasio under his true name of
Trapasso? What impr