Inured to danger’s direst form,
Tornade and earthquake, flood and storm,
Death had he seen by sudden blow,
By wasting plague, by torture slow,
By mine or breach, by steel or ball,
Knew all his shapes and scorned them all.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in a letter to his wife on the eve, as he supposed, of his execution, speaks of himself as “one who, in his own respect, despiseth death in all his misshapen and ugly forms.”
Speaking of Burke, Goldsmith says in his Retaliation:—
Who, born for universe, narrowed his mind,