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

200 The English Admwals
you may suppose they thought nothing on
the subject, which is much more likely.
What can be the signification of the word
" fame " to a private of marines, who cannot
read and knows nothing of past history
beyond the reminiscences of his grandmother?
But whichever supposition you make, the
fact is unchanged. They died while the ques-
tion still hung in the balance ; and I suppose
their bones were already white, before the
winds and the waves and the humour of
Indian chiefs and Spanish governors had
decided whether they were to be unknown
and useless martyrs or honoured heroes.
Indeed, I believe this is the lesson : if it is
for fame that men do brave actions, they
are only silly fellows after all.
It is at best but a pettifogging, pickthank
business to decompose actions into little
personal motives, and explain heroism away.
The Abstract Bagman will grow like an
Admiral at heart, not by ungrateful carping,
but in a heat of admiration. But there is
another theory of the personal motive in