There are many who, out of an ambition to appear considerable, affect to
show themselves men of fire, spirit, and courage: but these being
qualities, of which they are not the right owners, they generally expose
themselves, and show the little title they have to them, by endeavouring
to exert and produce them at unseasonable times, or with improper
persons. A bully, for fear you should find him out to be a coward,
overacts his part, and calls you to account for affronts which a man of
true bravery would never have thought of: and a cowardly silly fellow,
observing that he may take some liberties with impunity, where perhaps
the place or the company protect him, falsely concludes from thence,
that the person with whom he made free is a greater coward than himself;
so that he not only continues his offensive raillery and impertinence
for the present, but probably renews them in some place not so
privileged as the former, where his insolence meets with a due
chastisement; than which nothing is more equitable in itself, or
agreeable to the discreet part of mankind.