In
our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to hired bravoes to avenge
his personal quarrel against any one, more especially a person holding
the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out
of society. But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous
sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces
of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people. Rencounters,
where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as
frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these
approached closely to assassination; as in the famous case of Sir John
Coventry, who was waylaid, and had his nose slit by some young men of
high rank, for a reflection upon the king's theatrical amours. This
occasioned the famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the
Coventry Act; an Act highly necessary, since so far did our ancestors'
ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killigrew introduces
the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of
the piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan,
who had cheated him.[21] It will certainly be admitted, that a man,
surprised in the dark and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a
misfortune. But, if Dryden had received the same discipline from
Rochester's own hand without resenting it, his drubbing could not have
been more frequently made a matter of reproach to him;--a sign surely of
the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character, since an
accident, which might have happened to the greatest hero who ever lived,
was resorted to as an imputation on his honour.
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