"_Face._ Abel, thou art made. _Abel._ Sir, I do thank his worship. _Face._ Six o' thy legs more will not do it, Nab. He has brought you a pipe of tobacco, doctor. _Abel._ Yes, sir; I have another thing I would impart---- _Face._ Out with it, Nab. _Abel._ Sir, there is lodged hard by me A rich young widow." To some readers there will be little point in this. They will say "Abel," as an Old Testament name, should neither have been given to an un-puritanic character, nor ought it to have been turned into a nickname. This would never have occurred to the audience. Abel, or Nab, had been one of the most popular of English names for at least three centuries before the Reformation. Hence it was _never_ used by the Puritans, and was, as a matter of course, the undisturbed property of their enemies. Three centuries of bad company had ruined Nab's morals. The zealot would none of it.[21] But from all this it will be seen that a much better fight was made in behalf of the old nick forms than of the diminutives. By a timely rally, Tom, Jack, Dick, and Harry were carried, against all hindrances, into the Restoration period, and from that time they were safe. Wat, Phip, Hodge, Bat or Bate, and Cole lost their position, but so had the fuller Philip, Roger, Bartholomew, and Nicholas, But the opponents of Puritanism carried the war into the enemy's camp in revenge for this, and Priscilla, Deborah, Jeremiah, and Nathaniel, although they were rather of the Reformation than Puritanic introductions, were turned by the time of Charles I. into the familiar nick forms of Pris, Deb, Jerry, and Nat. The licentious Richard Brome, in "The New Academy," even attempts a curtailment of Nehemiah: "_Lady Nestlecock._ Negh, Negh! _Nehemiah._ Hark! my mother comes. _Lady N._ Where are you, childe? Negh! _Nehemiah._ I hear her _neighing_ after me." Act iv. sc. 1. (1658). It was never tried out of doors, however, and the experiment was not repeated. Brome was still more scant in reverence to Damaris. In "Covent Garden Weeded" Madge begins "the dismal story:" "This gentlewoman whose name is Damaris---- _Nich._ Damyris, stay: her nickname then is Dammy: so we may call her when we grow familiar; and to begin that familiarity--Dammy, here's to you. (_Drinks._)" After this she is Dammy in the mouth of Nicholas throughout the play. This, too, was a failure. Indeed, it demonstrates a remarkable reverence for their Bible on the part of the English race, that every attempt to turn one of its names into a nick form (saving in some three or four instances) has ignominiously failed. We mean, of course, since the Reformation.