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

THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS
grand air in our heroes ; and such a knowledge
of the human stage as shall make them put the
dots on their own i's, and leave us in no suspense
as to when they mean to be heroic. And hence,
we should congratulate ourselves upon the fact
that our Admirals were not only great-hearted but
big-spoken.
The heroes themselves say, as often as not, that
fame is their object ; but I do not think that is
much to the purpose. People generally say what
they have been taught to say ; that was the catch-
word they were given in youth to express the aims
of their way of life ; and men who are gaining great
battles are not likely to take much trouble in review-
ing their sentiments and the words in which they
were told to express them. Almost every person,
if you will believe himself, holds a quite different
theory of life from the one on which he is patently
acting. And the fact is, fame may be a forethought
and an afterthought, but it is too abstract an idea
to move people greatly in moments of swift and
momentous decision. It is from something more
immediate, some determination of blood to the head,
some trick of the fancy, that the breach is stormed
or the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shoot-
ing an ugly weir in a canoe has exactly as much
thought about fame as most commanders going into
battle ; and yet the action, fall out how it will, is
not one of those the muse delights to celebrate.
Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow does a
thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at,
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