"Madam,—It is not only that nature has made us two the most accomplished of each sex, and pointed to us to obey her dictates in becoming one; but that there is also an ambition in following the mighty persons you have favoured. Where kings and heroes, as great as Alexander, or such as could personate Alexander,[9] have bowed, permit your general to lay his laurels."
According to Milton:
The fair with conscious majesty approved
His pleaded reason;[10]
and fortune had now supplied Orlando with necessaries for his high taste of gallantry and pleasure: his equipage and economy had something in them more sumptuous and gallant than could be received in our degenerate age; therefore his figure (though highly graceful) appeared so exotic, that it assembled all the Britons under the age of sixteen, who saw his grandeur, to follow his chariot with shouts and acclamations, which he regarded with the contempt which great minds affect in the midst of applauses. I remember I had the honour to see him one day stop, and call the youths about him, to whom he spake as follows:
"Good bastard,—Go to school, and don't lose your time in following my wheels: I am loth to hurt you, because I know not but you are all my own offspring: hark'ee, you sirrah with the white hair, I am sure you are mine: there is half-a-crown. Tell your mother, this, with the half-crown I gave her when I got you, comes to five shillings. Thou hast cost me all that, and yet thou art good for nothing. Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?" "Never such a one as you, noble general," replied a truant from Westminster. "Sirrah, I believe thee: there is a crown for thee. Drive on, coachman."
This vehicle, though sacred to love, was not adorned with doves: such an hieroglyphic denoted too languishing a passion. Orlando therefore gave the eagle,[11] as being of a constitution which inclined him rather to seize his prey with talons, than pine for it with murmurs.
From my own Apartment, August 2.
I have received the following letter from Mr. Powell of the Bath,[12] who, I think, runs from the point between us, which I leave the whole world to judge.
To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.