ke de Montmorenci, received this answer: "Friend, it
is not yet time to marry; if you will be a brave man, you must first
kill, in single combat, two or three men; then marry, and get two or
three children; otherwise the world will neither have gained or lost by
you." HERBERT'S _Life_, p. 64.]

We learn, from every authority, that duels became nearly as common in
England, after the accession of James VI., as they had ever been in
France. The point of honour, so fatal to the gallants of the age, was no
where carried more highly than at the court of the pacific _Solomon_
of Britain. Instead of the feudal combats, upon the _Hie-gate of
Edinburgh_, which had often disturbed his repose at Holy-rood, his
levees, at Theobald's, were occupied with listening to the detail of
more polished, but not less sanguinary, contests. I rather suppose, that
James never was himself disposed to pay particular attention to the laws
of the _duello;_ but they were defined with a quaintness and pedantry,
which, bating his dislike to the subject, must have deeply interested
him. The point of honour was a science, which a grown gentleman might
study under suitable professors, as well as dancing, or any other
modish accomplishment. Nay, it would appear, that the ingenuity of
the _sword-men_ (so these military casuists were termed) might often
accommodate a bashful combatant with an honourable excuse for declining
the combat:

--Understand'st them well nice points of duel?
Art born of gentle blood and pure descent?
Were none of all thy lineage hang'd, or cuckold?
Bastard or bastinadoed? Is thy pedigree
As long, as wide as mine? For otherwise
Thou wert most unworthy; and 'twere loss of honour
In me to fight. More: I have drawn five teeth--
If thine stand sound, the terms are much unequal;
And, by strict laws of duel, I am excused
To fight on disadvantage.--
_Albumazar,_ Act IV. Sc. 7.

In Beaumont and Fletcher's admirable play of _A King and no King_, there
is some excellent mirth at the expence of the professors of the point of
honour.

But, though such shifts might occasionally be resorted to by the
faint-hearted, yet the fiery cavaliers of the English court were but
little apt to profit by them; though their vengeance for insulted honour
sometimes vented itself through fouler channels than that of fair combat
It happened, for example, that Lord Sanquhar, a Scottish nobleman, in
fencing with a master of the noble