We lately had the honour of reckoning among our nearest and dearest friends Dr. Simon Colley, a gentleman who was as estimable for the excellent qualities of his mind as he was ridiculous from the whimsical proportions of his body. Must we give a description of our much lamented friend? If the reader will collect together the various personal defects of all his acquaintance--if he will add the lameness of one to the diminutive stature of another--if he will unite the cast of the eye which designates a third to the departure from the rectilineal line which beautifies the back of a fourth, he will then have some faint idea of the bodily perfections of Dr. Simon Colley. The Doctor was perfectly conscious of his peculiarities, and was frequently in the habit of choosing his corporal appearance as the theme of a hearty laugh or the subject of jocular lamentation; yet the sound sense and cultivated philosophy of our respected friend was not proof against the unexpected vociferation of a well-applied nickname; and, although his favourite topic of conversation was the personal resemblance he bore to the renowned Æsop, he flew into the most violent paroxysms of rage when he was pointed at by some little impertinents as the Apollo Belvidere. But this sort of nickname is not used merely as the instrument of wit or the weapon of ill-nature: it assumes occasionally a more serious garb, and becomes the language of flattery or the adulation of hypocrisy. In this form it is of great service in dedicatory epistles and professions of love. When Vapid entreats Lord---- to prefix his name to a list of subscribers, he whines out the praises of his “Mæcenas” with all the mournful earnestness with which a criminal exalts the clemency of his judge; but the manner in which he chuckles at the munificence of his patron over a beefsteak at the Crown and Cushion proves very evidently that Vapid is a hypocrite, and that “Mæcenas” is a nickname. And when Miss Pimpkinson, a maiden lady with £40,000, smiles upon the adoration of Sir Horace Conway, a fashionable without a farthing, she little dreams that “Venus,” which is her title in the boudoir, is only her nickname at the club. Having now presented our friends with a cursory sketch of these four principal classes, we shall sum up the whole by offering to the reader a specimen in which we lately heard the four kinds admirably blended together. “Toup,” cried “All the Talents,” “tell ‘Swab’ that I have a thrashing in store for ‘The Poet.’” “Toup” is the nickname oblique, borne by its possessor in consequence of some supposed relation between the longitude of his physiognomy and the Longinus of the erudite Toupius; “Swab” is the nickname direct, applied to a rotund gentleman; “_The_ Poet” is κατ’ ἐξοχὴν--“_the_ poet,” because he is super-eminently poetical; and “All the Talents” is κατ’ ἀντιφράσιν--“All the Talents,” because he is the veriest blockhead upon the face of our Etonian hemisphere.