_Hotspur._ My liege, I did deny no prisoners; But I remember, when the fight was done, When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword; Came there a certain Lord, neat, trimly dress’d, Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new-reap’d, Shew’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home. He was perfumed like a milliner; And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose;--and still he smil’d, and talk’d; And as the soldiers bare dead bodies by, He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly, unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility. With many holiday and lady terms He question’d me: amongst the rest, demanded My pris’ners, in your Majesty’s behalf. I then all smarting with my wounds; being gal’d To be so pester’d with a popinjay, Out of my grief, and my impatience, Answer’d, neglectingly, I know not what: He should, or should not; for he made me mad, To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman, Of guns, and drums, and wounds; (God save the mark!) And telling me, the sovereign’st thing on earth Was parmacity, for an inward bruise; And that it was great pity, so it was, This villanous saltpetre should be digg’d Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, Which many a good, tall fellow had destroy’d So cowardly: and but for these vile guns, He would himself have been a soldier.-- _First part, Henry IV. act 1. sc. 4._ Passions and emotions are also inflamed by comparison. A man of high rank humbles the bystanders so far as almost to annihilate them in their own opinion. Cæsar, beholding the statue of Alexander, felt a great depression of spirits, when he reflected, that now at the age of thirty-two, when Alexander died, he had not performed one memorable action. Our opinions also are much influenced by comparison. A man whose opulence exceeds the ordinary standard, is reputed richer than he is in reality; and the character of wisdom or weakness, if at all remarkable is generally carried beyond the truth. The opinion a man forms of his present condition as to happiness or misery, depends in a great measure on the comparison he makes betwixt it and his former condition: Could I forget What I have been, I might the better bear What I am destin’d to. I’m not the first That have been wretched: but to think how much I have been happier. _Southern’s Innocent adultery, act 2._ The distress of a long journey makes even an indifferent inn pass current. And in travelling, when the road is good and the horseman well covered, a bad day may be agreeable, by making him sensible how snug he is.