Because the pangs his bones endure,
Contribute nothing to the cure;
Yet honour hurt, is wont to rage 215
With pain no med'cine can assuage.
Quoth he, That honour's very squeamish
That takes a basting for a blemish:
For what's more honourable than scars,
Or skin to tatters rent in wars? 220
Some have been beaten till they know
What wood a cudgel's of by th' blow;
Some kick'd, until they can feel whether
A shoe be Spanish or neat's leather:
And yet have met, after long running, 225
With some whom they have taught that cunning.
The furthest way about, t' o'ercome,
I' th' end does prove the nearest home.
By laws of learned duellists.
They that are bruis'd with wood or fists, 230
And think one beating may for once
Suffice, are cowards and poltroons:
But if they dare engage t' a second,
They're stout and gallant fellows reckon'd.
Th' old Romans freedom did bestow, 235
Our princes worship, with a blow:[1]
King Pyrrhus cur'd his splenetic
And testy courtiers with a kick.[2]
The Negus,[3] when some mighty lord
Or potentate's to be restor'd, 240
- ↑ One form of declaring a slave free, at Rome, was for the prætor, in the presence of certain persons, to give the slave a light stroke with a small stick, from its use called vindicta. See Horat. Sat. ii. 7, 75, and Persius, v. 88. Sometimes freedom was given by an alapa, or blow with the open hand upon the face or head. Pers. v. 75, 78.
- ↑ Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, had this occult quality in his toe. It was believed he could cure the spleen by sacrificing a white cock, and with his right foot gently pressing the spleen of the person affected. Nor was any man so poor and inconsiderable as not to receive the benefit of his royal touch, if he desired it. The toe of that foot was said to have so divine a virtue, that after his death, the rest of his body being consumed, it was found untouched by the fire. See Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus, and Pliny's Nat. Hist. vol. ii. p. 128 (Bohn).
- ↑ Negus was the title of the king of Abyssinia.
