Of him it might be said with truth, what Fulke Greville said of Sidney: "He was a true model of worth--a man fit for conquest, reformation, plantation, or what action soever is the greatest and hardest among men; his chief ends withal being above all things the good of his fellows, and the service of his sovereign and country." When Edward the Black Prince won the Battle of Poictiers, in which he took prisoner the French king and his son, he entertained them in the evening at a banquet, when he insisted on waiting upon and serving them at table.

The gallant prince's knightly courtesy and demeanour won the hearts of his captives as completely as his valour had won their persons; for, notwithstanding his youth, Edward was a true knight, the first and bravest of his time--a noble pattern and example of chivalry; his two mottoes, 'Hochmuth' and 'Ich dien' [14high spirit and reverent service] not inaptly expressing his prominent and pervading qualities.
It is the courageous man who can best afford to be generous; or rather, it is his nature to be so.

When Fairfax, at the Battle of Naseby, seized the colours from an ensign whom he had struck down in the fight, he handed them to a common soldier to take care of.

The soldier, unable to resist the temptation, boasted to his comrades that he had himself seized the colours, and the boast was repeated to Fairfax.

"Let him retain the honour," said the commander; "I have enough beside." So when Douglas, at the Battle of Bannockburn, saw Randolph, his rival, outnumbered and apparently overpowered by the enemy, he prepared to hasten to his assistance; but, seeing that Randolph was already driving them back, he cried out, "Hold and halt! We are come too late to aid them; let us not lessen the victory they have won by affecting to claim a share in it." Quite as chivalrous, though in a very different field of action, was the conduct of Laplace to the young philosopher Biot, when the latter had read to the French Academy his paper, "SUR LES EQUATIONS AUX DIFFERENCE MELEES." The assembled SAVANS, at its close, felicitated the reader of the paper on his originality.