one step, it will lead him to all the rest; ’tis a harmony of very according sounds, that cannot jar.  But with us ’t is quite contrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment.  The surest way to steer, in my opinion, would be to take our measures from the nearest allied circumstances, without engaging in a longer inquisition, or without concluding any other consequence.  I was told, during the civil disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by the place where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid being forced by a common soldier who was quartered in the house; she was not killed by the fall, and therefore, repeating her attempt would have cut her own throat, had she not been prevented; but having, nevertheless, wounded herself to some show of danger, she voluntarily confessed that the soldier had not as yet importuned her otherwise; than by courtship, earnest solicitation, and presents; but that she was afraid that in the end he would have proceeded to violence, all which she delivered with such a countenance and accent, and withal embrued in her own blood, the highest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared another Lucretia; and yet I have since been very well assured that both before and after she was not so difficult a piece.  And, according to my host’s tale in Ariosto, be as handsome a man and as worthy a gentleman as you will, do not conclude too much upon your mistress’s inviolable chastity for having been repulsed; you do not know but she may have a better stomach to your muleteer.

Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favour and esteem for his valour, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him:  “Yourself, sir,” replied the other, “by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of my life.”  Lucullus’s soldier having been rifled by the enemy, performed upon them in revenge a brave exploit, by which having made himself a gainer, Lucullus, who had conceived a good opinion of him from that action, went about to engage him in some enterprise of very great danger, with all the plausible persuasions and promises he could think of;

          “Verbis, quae timido quoque possent addere mentem”

          ["Words which might add courage to any timid man.” 
          —­Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 1, 2.]

“Pray employ,” answered he, “some miserable plundered soldier in that affair”: 

                         “Quantumvis rusticus, ibit,
               Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit, inquit;”

     ["Some poor fellow, who has lost his purse, will go whither you
     wish, said he.”—­Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 39.]