To all this we have, as we conceive, a sufficient answer from the Roman historian, _Fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae_: That every man is the smith of his own fortune. The politic Florentine, Nicholas Machiavel, goeth still further, and affirmeth that a man needeth but to believe himself a hero to be one of the worthiest. 'Let him (saith he) but fancy himself capable of the highest things, and he will of course be able to achieve them.' From this principle it follows, that nothing can exceed our hero's prowess; as nothing ever equalled the greatness of his conceptions. Hear how he constantly paragons himself; at one time to Alexander the Great and Charles XII of Sweden, for the excess and delicacy of his ambition;[216] to Henry IV of France for honest policy;[217] to the first Brutus, for love of liberty;[218] and to Sir Robert Walpole, for good government while in power.[219] At another time, to the godlike Socrates, for his diversions and amusements;[220] to Horace, Montaigne, and Sir William Temple for an elegant vanity that maketh them for ever read and admired;[221] to two Lord Chancellors, for law, from whom, when confederate against him at the bar, he carried away the prize of eloquence;[222] and, to say all in a word, to the right reverend the Lord Bishop of London himself, in the art of writing pastoral letters.[223] Nor did his actions fall short of the sublimity of his conceit. In his early youth he met the Revolution[224] face to face in Nottingham, at a time when his betters contented themselves with following her. It was here he got acquainted with old Battle-array, of whom he hath made so honourable mention in one of his immortal odes. But he shone in courts as well as camps. He was called up when the nation fell in labour of this Revolution;[225] and was a gossip at her christening, with the bishop and the ladies.[226] As to his birth, it is true he pretended no relation either to heathen god or goddess; but, what is as good, he was descended from a maker of both.[227] And that he did not pass himself on the world for a hero as well by birth as education was his own fault: for his lineage he bringeth into his life as an anecdote, and is sensible he had it in his power to be thought he was nobody's son at all:[228] And what is that but coming into the world a hero? But be it (the punctilious laws of epic poesy so requiring) that a hero of more than mortal birth must needs be had, even for this we have a remedy. We can easily derive our hero's pedigree from a goddess of no small power and authority amongst men, and legitimate and install him after the right classical and authentic fashion: for like as the ancient sages found a son of Mars in a mighty warrior, a son of Neptune in a skilful seaman, a son of Phoebus in a harmonious poet, so have we here, if need be, a son of Fortune in an artful gamester. And who fitter than the offspring of Chance to assist in restoring the empire of Night and Chaos?