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They began with many compliments upon my valor and generosity, invited me to that kingdom, in the emperor their master's name, and desired me to show some proofs of my prodigious strength, of which they had heard so many wonders; wherein I readily obliged them, but shall not trouble the reader with the particulars.

For the conduct of the war: at the first, men rested extremely upon number: they did put the wars likewise upon main force and valor; pointing days for pitched fields, and so trying it out upon an even match and they were more ignorant in ranging and arraying their battles.

"I am already considered by the French nobility as Thomas de Longueville; you may personate the Red Reaver; Scotland does not yet know that he was slain; and the reputation of his valor and a certain nobleness in his wild warfare having placed him, in the estimation of our shores, rather in the light of one of their own island sea-kings than in that of his real character a gallant, though fierce pirate the aid of his name would bring no evil odor to our joint appearance.

But Friedrich Wilhelm was vigilance itself; and he had his Anhalt-Dessaus with him, his Borcks, Buddenbrocks, Finkensteins, veteran men and captains, who had learned their art under Marlborough and Eugene. The Lion King's fierce sallies, and desperate valor, could not avail. Point after point was lost for him.

It is a shame to own it, but there were persons otherwise respectable not unwilling to say that they believed the old valor of Revolutionary times had died out from among us. They talked about our own Northern people as the English in the last centuries used to talk about the French, Goldsmith's old soldier, it may be remembered, called one Englishman good for five of them.

Disaster had met the body, the flesh; what occurred in the spirit he was unable to grasp; but this, suddenly, breathlessly, he saw: La Clavel's bitter defiance, her mountain-born hatred of oppression, her beaten but undefiled body, had communicated to him something of her own valor. It was as though she had given him a palm, a shielded flame, to add to his own fortitude.

And such we are to put in mind that it is an absurd thing, that those who delight in fables should not let anything slip them of the vain and extravagant stories they find in poets, and that those who affect language should pass over nothing that is elegantly and floridly expressed; and that only the lovers of honor and virtue, who apply themselves to the study of poems not for delight but for instruction's sake, should slightly and negligently observe what is spoken in them relating to valor, temperance, or justice.

All night long I would see my poor fellows hobbling along, prying wagons or artillery out of the mud, and supplementing the work of our broken-down horses. At dawn, though, they would be in line ready for battle, and they would fight with the steadiness and valor of the Old Guard. This lasted until the night of the seventh of April.

There are two poems of his, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," both, of which are arranged according to the number of letters in the alphabet, not by the poet himself, but by Aristarchus, the grammarian. Of these, the "Iliad" records the deeds of the Greeks and Barbarians in Ilium on account of the rape of Helen, and particularly the valor displayed in the war by Achilles.

"Now in the wine cup, quoth he, there lurks a dragon named drunkenness, and it beseemeth German valor and strength not merely to vanquish it, but even to make it do good service: The fiend of the grape, like the serpent killed by the saint, has two wide pinions, and the true German drinker must make use of them to soar up to the seventh heaven."