what torment, what outcries, what madness and despair! Did you ever see
anything so subdued, so changed, and so confounded? A man must,
therefore, make more early provision for it; and this brutish negligence,
could it possibly lodge in the brain of any man of sense (which I think
utterly impossible), sells us its merchandise too dear. Were it an enemy
that could be avoided, I would then advise to borrow arms even of
cowardice itself; but seeing it is not, and that it will catch you as
well flying and playing the poltroon, as standing to't like an honest
man:--

"Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum,
Nec parcit imbellis juventae
Poplitibus timidoque tergo."

["He pursues the flying poltroon, nor spares the hamstrings of the
unwarlike youth who turns his back"--Hor., Ep., iii. 2, 14.]

And seeing that no temper of arms is of proof to secure us:--

"Ille licet ferro cautus, se condat et aere,
Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput"

["Let him hide beneath iron or brass in his fear, death will pull
his head out of his armour."--Propertious iii. 18]

--let us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin
to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a
way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his
novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and
have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions