To know the heads of danger; where 'tis fit
To bend, to break, provoke, or fuffer it:
All this is valour !
2. It is the greateft virtue, and the fafety
Of all mankind; the object of it's danger.
A certain mean 'twixt fear and confidence ;
No inconfid'rate rafhnefs, or vain appetite
Of falfe encounting formidable things,
But a true fcience of distinguishing
What's good or evil. It fprings out of reason,
And tends to perfect honefly, the scope
Is always honour, and the publick good :
It is no valour for a private cause.
1. No, not for reputation?
2. That's man's idol,
Set up 'gainst God, the maker of all laws,
Who hath commanded us we should not kill:
And yet we fay, we muft for reputation.
What honeft man can either fear his own,
Or else will hurt another's reputation ?
Fear, to do bafe unworthy things, is valouri
If they be done to us, to fuffer them,
Is valour too. The office of a man
That's truly valiant, is confiderable
Three ways; the first is in respect of matter,
Which ftill is danger; in refpect of form,
Wherein he must preferve his dignity;
And in the end, which must be ever lawful.
1. But men, when they are heated, and in paffior,
Cannot confider. 2. Then it is not valour.
I never thought an angry person valiant :
Virtue is never aided by a vice.
What need is there of anger, and of tumult, When reafon can do the fame things, or more? 1. O yes, 'tis profitable, and of use,
It makes us fierce, and fit to undertake.
2. Why, fo will drink make us both bold and rash,
Or phrenfy if you will; do thefe make men valiant?
They are poor helps, and virtue needs them not.
No man is valianter by being angry,
But he that could not valiant be without:
So that it comes not in the aid of virtue,
But in the ftead of it.
2. And 'tis an odious kind of remedy, To owe our health to a disease.
1. Be not angry valiant ?
2. How does that differ from true valour ?
It is the efficient, or that which makes it :
For it proceeds from paffion, not from judgment:
Then true beafts have it, wicked perfons: there
It differs in the fubject; in the form,
'Tis carry'd rafhly, and with violence;
Then in the end, where it refpects not truth,
Or publick honefly, but meer revenge.
Now confident, and undertaking valour,
Sways from the true, two other ways; as being
A truft in our own faculties, skill, or strength,
And not the right, or confcience of the cause,
That works it then in the end, which is the
Victory, and not the honour.
2. But the ignorant valour,
That knows not why it undertakes, but doth it
T'efcape the infamy meerly ?.
That valour lies in th' eyes of the lookers on,
And is call'd valour with a witness. 2. Right.
1. The things true valour's exercis'd about,
Are poverty, restraint, captivity,
Banishment, lofs of children, tong disease:
The leaft is death. Here valour is beheld;
Properly feen; about thefe, it is prefent,
Not trivial things, which but require our confidence :
And, yet to thofe, we muft object ourselves,
Only for honefty: if any other
Refpect be mixt, we quite put out her light.
And as all knowledge, when it is remov'd,
Or feparate from juftice, is call'd craft,
Rather than wifdom: fo a mind affecting,
Or undertaking dangers for ambition,
Or any felf-pretext, not for the publick,
Deferves the name of daring, not of valour;
And over-daring is as great a vice,
As over-fearing. 2. Yes, and often greater.
1. But as it is not the meer punishment,
But caufe, that makes a martyr; fo it is not
Fighting or dying, but the manner of it
Renders a man himself. A valiant man
Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger,
But worthily, and by felected ways,
He undertakes with reason, not by chance.
His valour is the falt t' his other virtues,
They're all unfeafon'd without it: The waiting-maids,
Or the concomitants of it, are his patience,
His magnanimity, his confidence,
His conftancy, fecurity, and quiet :
He can affure himself againft all rumour;
Defpairs of nothing; laughs at contumelies;
As knowing himself advanced in a height
Where injury cannot reach him, nor afperfion
Touch him with foyle !
He is fhot-free, in battle is not hurt,
Not he that is not hit: So he is valiant,
That yields not unto wrongs, not he that feapes them.`,
And thus we fee, where valour moft doth vaunt,
What 'tis to make a coward valiant.
Chapman's Revenge of Buffy D'ambois.
It feems the coldnefs of declining age,
Hath kill'd thy courage with a froft of fears.
E. of Sterline's Darius.
-Then
And admiration from her fix'd sphere draws,
When it comes burnish'd with a righteous caufe.
· Middleton and Rowley's Fair Quarrel.
Virtue to valour hath this gift affign'd,
Great men may dye, yet deeds ftill rest in mind.
Befall what will: in midst of horrors noise,
And crackling flames, when all is loft, we'll dye
With weapons in our hands, and victory fcorn:
There's none that dye fo poor, as they were born.
True Trojans.
Mars would have thought, had Mars his actions seen,
Himself the tranfumpt, this the pattern been.
Remove those lets which did his valour stay ;
Streams have felf-motions, take the dams away.
Aleyn's Poitiers.
And now my fancy fees great Edward rife
Mars his enthufiaft; his actions were
Raptures of valour, and deep extafies
Of man above himself: for drawing here His fpirits from their matter, 'paffed more Himself, than he surpass'd the world before. He on the stage of Aquitain did play
That part, which none befide can perfonate: In ev'ry courfe, or found, or made a way, And proftrates as infallible as fate :
Like to death's harbinger his paffage made,
And there death lodged, where he lodg'd his blade.
-Thus noble caúfes
Put fire into the fpirits of full men :
Though fometimes feeming valour may arise
Through luft, or wine, from hateful cowardice.
Who may do moft, does leaft: the braveft will
Shew mercy there, where they have pow'r to kill.
When fortune, honour, life, and all's in doubt,
Bravely to dare, is bravely to get out.
In envy of thy hopes they hither came,
And envy, men in war, ambition name,
Ambition, valour: but 'tis valour's fhame,
When envy feeds it more than noble fame.
Sir W. Davenant's Madagascar.
Moft to himself, his valour fatal was,
Whofe glories oft to others dreadful are ;
So comets, though suppos'd destruction's cause,
But wafte themselves to make their gazers fear.
Sir W. Davenant's Gondibert.
His courage, like to powder, carelefly
Laid up, is in continual danger
Of ev'ry accidental spark that may
Inkindle it to ruin.
Sir W. Davenant's Diftreffes.
That courage which the vain for valour take,
Who proudly danger feek for glory's fake,
Is impudence; and what they rafhly do,
Has no excufe, but that 'tis madness too :
Yet, when confin'd, it reaches valour's name,
Which feeks fair virtue, and is met by fame :
It weighs the caufe, ere it attempts the fact,
And bravely dares forbear, as well as act:
It would reclaim much rather than fubdue;
And would the chacers, not the chac'd pursue:
Would rather hide fuccefs, than feek applause,
And though of ftrength fecur'd, yet trufts the caufe:
And all the aid of ftrength it measures too,
Not by the acts it did, or ftill can do,
But paffively, by what it well endures :
This noble valour is, and this is yours.
Sir W. Davenant to the E. of Orrery.
And
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