Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

170 ^s Triplex
to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out
of the man who means execution, which out-
lives the most untimely ending. All who
have meant good work with their whole
hearts, have done good work, although they
may die before they have the time to sign it.
Every heart that has beat strong and cheer-
fully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in
the world, and bettered the tradition of man-
kind. And even if death catch people, like
an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out
vast projects, and planning monstrous found-
ations, flushed with hope, and their mouths
full of boastful language, they should be at
once tripped up and silenced : is there not
something brave and spirited in such a ter-
mination ? and does not life go down with a
better grace, foaming in full body over a
precipice, than miserably straggling to an
end in sandy deltas ? When the Greeks
made their fine saying that those whom the
gods love die young, I cannot help believing
they had this sort of death also in their eye.
For surely, at whatever age it overtake the