never execute another warrant in his company; that
he had always looked upon him as a man of honour,
and doubted not but he would prove himself so; and
that, if it was his own case, nothing should persuade
him to put up such an affront without proper satisfaction.
The count likewise spoke on the same side, and the
parties themselves muttered several short sentences
purporting their intentions. At last Mr. Wild,
our hero, rising slowly from his seat, and having fixed
the attention of all present, began as follows:
“I have heard with infinite pleasure everything
which the two gentlemen who spoke last have said with
relation to honour, nor can any man possibly entertain
a higher and nobler sense of that word, nor a greater
esteem of its inestimable value, than myself.
If we have no name to express it by in our Cant Dictionary,
it were well to be wished we had. It is indeed
the essential quality of a gentleman, and which no
man who ever was great in the field or on the road
(as others express it) can possibly be without.
But alas! gentlemen, what pity is it that a word of
such sovereign use and virtue should have so uncertain
and various an application that scarce two people
mean the same thing by it? Do not some by honour
mean good-nature and humanity, which weak minds call
virtues? How then! Must we deny it to the
great, the brave, the noble; to the sackers of towns,
the plunderers of provinces, and the conquerors of
kingdoms! Were not these men of honour? and yet
they scorn those pitiful qualities I have mentioned.
Again, some few (or I am mistaken) include the idea
of honesty in their honour. And shall we then
say that no man who withholds from another what law,
or justice perhaps, calls his own, or who greatly
and boldly deprives him of such property, is a man
of honour? Heaven forbid I should say so in this,
or, indeed, in any other good company! Is honour
truth? No; it is not in the lie’s going
from us, but in its coming to us, our honour is injured.
Doth it then consist in what the vulgar call cardinal
virtues? It would be an affront to your understandings
to suppose it, since we see every day so many men
of honour without any. In what then doth the word
honour consist? Why, in itself alone. A
man of honour is he that is called a man of honour;
and while he is so called he so remains, and no longer.
Think not anything a man commits can forfeit his honour.
Look abroad into the world; the prig, while he
flourishes, is a man of honour; when in gaol, at the
bar, or the tree, he is so no longer. And why
is this distinction? Not from his actions; for
those are often as well known in his flourishing estate
as they are afterwards; but because men, I mean those
of his own party or gang, call him a man of honour
in the former, and cease to call him so in the latter
condition. Let us see then; how hath Mr. Bagshot
injured the gentleman’s honour? Why, he
hath called him a pick-pocket; and that, probably,
by a severe construction and a long roundabout way