manes, not from the tomb, not from the ashes
will violets grow."--Persius, Sat., i. 37.]

but of this I have spoken elsewhere. As to what remains, in a great
battle where ten thousand men are maimed or killed, there are not fifteen
who are taken notice of; it must be some very eminent greatness, or some
consequence of great importance that fortune has added to it, that
signalises a private action, not of a harquebuser only, but of a great
captain; for to kill a man, or two, or ten: to expose a man's self
bravely to the utmost peril of death, is indeed something in every one of
us, because we there hazard all; but for the world's concern, they are
things so ordinary, and so many of them are every day seen, and there
must of necessity be so many of the same kind to produce any notable
effect, that we cannot expect any particular renown from it:

"Casus multis hic cognitus, ac jam
Tritus, et a medio fortunae ductus acervo."

["The accident is known to many, and now trite; and drawn from the
midst of Fortune's heap."--Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 9.]

Of so many thousands of valiant men who have died within these fifteen
hundred years in France with their swords in their hands, not a hundred
have come to our knowledge. The memory, not of the commanders only, but
of battles and victories, is buried and gone; the fortunes of above half
of the world, for want of a record, stir not from their place, and vanish
without duration. If I had unknown events in my possession, I should
think with great ease to out-do those that are recorded, in all sorts of
examples. Is it not strange that even of the Greeks and Romans, with so
many writers and witnesses, and so many rare and noble exploits, so few
are arrived at our knowledge:

"Ad nos vix tenuis famx perlabitur aura."

["An obscure rumour scarce is hither come."--AEneid, vii. 646.]

It will be much if, a hundred years hence, it be remembered in general
that in our times there were civil wars in France. The Lacedaemonians,
entering into battle, sacrificed to the Muses, to the end that their
actions might be well and worthily written, looking upon it as a divine
and no common favour, that brave acts should find witnesses that could
give them life and memory. Do we expect that at every musket-shot we
receive, and at every hazard we run, there must be a register ready to
record it? and, besides, a hundred registers may