"The method by which these courteous knights acquired this extreme civility of theirs, was by mixing love with their courage. Love is a very generous passion, and well fitted both to that humanity and courage they would reconcile. The only one that can contest with it is friendship, which, besides that it is too refined a passion for common use, is not by many degrees so natural as love, to which almost every one has a great propensity, and which it is impossible to see a beautiful woman, without feeling some touches of. Besides, as love is a capricious passion, it is the more susceptible of these fantastic forms, which it must take when it mixes with chivalry. Friendship is a solid and serious thing, and, like the love of their country in the Roman heroes, would dispel and put to flight all the chimeras, inseparable from this spirit of adventure. So that a mistress is as necessary to a cavalier or knight-errant, as a god or saint to a devotee. Nor would he stop here, or be contented with a submiss reverence and adoration to one of the sex, but would extend in some degree the same civility to the whole, and by a curious reversement of the order of nature, make them the superior. This is no more than what is suitable to that infinite generosity of which he makes profession. Every thing below him he treats with submission, and every thing above him, with contumacy. Thus he carries these double symptoms of generosity which Virgil makes mention of into extravagance. Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. Hence arises the knight-errant's strong and irreconcileable aversion to all giants, with his most humble and respectful submission to all damsels. These two affections of his, he unites in all his adventures, which are always designed to relieve distressed damsels from the captivity and violence of giants. "As a cavalier is composed of the greatest warmth of love, tempered with the most humble submission and respect, his mistress's behaviour is in every point the reverse of this; and what is conspicuous in her temper is the utmost coldness along with the greatest haughtiness and disdain; until at last, gratitude for the many deliverances she has met with, and the giants and monsters without number that he has destroyed for her sake, reduces her, though unwilling, to the necessity of commencing a bride. Here the chastity of women, which, from the necessity of human affairs, has been in all ages and countries an extravagant point of honour with them, is run into still greater extravagance, that none of the sexes may be exempt from this fantastic ornament.