Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS
in a quaver of sensibility or a flush of righteous
common-sense. The man who wished to make the
ballads of his country coveted a small matter com-
pared to what Richard Greenville accomplished. I
wonder how many people have been inspired by this
mad story, and how many battles have been actually
won for England in the spirit thus engendered. It
is only with a measure of habitual foolhardiness that
you can be sure, in the common run of men, of
courage on a reasonable occasion. An army or a
fleet, if it is not led by quixotic fancies, will not be
led far by terror of the Provost- Marshal. Even
German warfare, in addition to maps and telegraphs,
is not above employing the Wacht am Rhein. Nor
is it only in the profession of arms that such stories
may do good to a man. In this desperate and
gleeful fighting, whether it is Greenville or Benbow,
Hawke or Nelson, who flies his colours in the ship,
we see men brought to the test and giving proof of
what we call heroic feehng. Prosperous humani-
tarians 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
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