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

THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS
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 pro-
perly 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 West-
minster 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 in-
finite grandeur of their renown, but to fortune?
How many men has she extinguished in the begin-
ning of their progress, of whom we have no know-
ledge ; who brought as much courage to the work
as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in
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