all
heroic feeling. Prosperous humanitarians tell me, in my club
smoking-room, that they are a prey to prodigious heroic feelings, and
that it costs them more nobility of soul to do nothing in particular,
than would carry on all the wars, by sea or land, of bellicose humanity.
It may very well be so, and yet not touch the point in question. For
what I desire is to see some of this nobility brought face to face with
me in an inspiriting achievement. A man may talk smoothly over a cigar
in my club smoking-room from now to the Day of Judgment, without adding
anything to mankind's treasury of illustrious and encouraging examples.
It is not over the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party novel that people
are abashed into high resolutions. It may be because their hearts are
crass, but to stir them properly they must have men entering into glory
with some pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our
sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing
moral influence, are more valuable to England than any material benefit
in all the books of political economy between Westminster and
Birmingham. Greenville chewing wine-glasses at table makes no very
pleasant figure, any more than a thousand other artists when they are
viewed in the body, or met in private life; but his work of art, his
finished tragedy, is an eloquent performance; and I contend it ought not
only to enliven men of the sword as they go into battle, but send back
merchant-clerks with more heart and spirit to their book-keeping by
double entry.

There is another question which seems bound up in this; and that is
Temple's problem: whether it was wise of Douglas to burn with the _Royal
Oak_? and by implication, what it was that made him do so. Many will
tell you it was the desire of fame.

"To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their
renown, but to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the
beginning of their progress, of whom we have no knowledge; who brought
as much courage to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut
them off in the first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great
dangers, I do not remember to have anywhere read that Caesar was ever
wounded; a thousand have fallen in less dangers than the least of those
he went through. A great many brave actions must be expected to be
performed without witness, for one that comes to some notice. A man is
not always at the top of a breach,