Hawke died October 16, 1781. On his tomb appear these words, "Wherever he sailed, victory attended him." It is much to say, but it is not all. Victory does not always follow desert. "It is not in mortals to command success,"—a favorite quotation with the successful admirals St. Vincent and Nelson. Hawke's great and distinctive glory is this,—that he, more than any one man, was the source and origin of the new life, the new spirit, of his service. There were many brave men before him, as there were after; but it fell to him in a time of great professional prostration not only to lift up and hand on a fallen torch, but in himself to embody an ideal and an inspiration from which others drew, thus rekindling a light which it is scarcely an exaggeration to say had been momentarily extinguished.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] For the account of Mathews's action, including Hawke's personal share in it, see ante, pp. 21-47.
[4] By express orders from the Ministry Councils of War had to be held.
[5] An application for four days' leave for private business had been refused.
George Brydges, Lord Rodney