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