what they will, there is not one valour for the pavement and another for the field; he would bear a sickness in his bed as bravely as a wound in the field, and no more fear death in his own house than at an assault.  We should not then see the same man charge into a breach with a brave assurance, and afterwards torment himself like a woman for the loss of a trial at law or the death of a child; when, being an infamous coward, he is firm in the necessities of poverty; when he shrinks at the sight of a barber’s razor, and rushes fearless upon the swords of the enemy, the action is commendable, not the man.

Many of the Greeks, says Cicero,—­[Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., ii. 27.]—­ cannot endure the sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness; the Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;

              “Nihil enim potest esse aequabile,
               quod non a certa ratione proficiscatur.”

["Nothing can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed ground
of reason.”—­Idem, ibid., c. 26.]

No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander:  but it is of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal.  Incomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being so often at his wits’ end upon every light suspicion of his captains conspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition with so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear that subverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance.  The superstition, also, with which he was so much tainted, carries along with it some image of pusillanimity; and the excess of his penitence for the murder of Clytus is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage.  All we perform is no other than a cento, as a man may say, of several pieces, and we would acquire honour by a false title.  Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.  ’Tis a vivid and strong tincture which, when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it, will not out but with the piece.  And, therefore, to make a right judgment of a man, we are long and very observingly to follow his trace:  if constancy does not there stand firm upon her own proper base,

“Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est,”

     ["If the way of his life is thoroughly considered and traced out.” 
     —­Cicero, Paradox, v. 1.]

if the variety of occurrences makes him alter his pace (his path, I mean, for the pace may be faster or slower) let him go; such an one runs before the wind, “Avau le dent,” as the motto of our Talebot has it.