“Methinks, a woman of this valiant spirit
Should, if a coward heard her speak these words,
Infuse his breast with magnanimity,
And make him, naked, foil a man at arms.”
And in a like strain, when Agamemnon would show that the difficulties of the ten years’ siege of Troy were (l. 20),—
“But the protractive trials of great Jove
To find persistive constancy in men;”
the venerable Nestor, in Troilus and Cressida (act i. sc. 3, l. 33, vol. vi. p. 142), enforces the thought by adding,—
“In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,