Stephen Maturin on Grumbling

I chose this quote from Patrick O’Brian’s Desolation Island because it seems to me to particularly capture a lot of what I read on-line. HMS Leopard is in the Great Southern Ocean, trying to avoid a whacking great Dutch warship, and Stephen Maturin is pondering two of her officers:

He had the impression that both Grant and Fisher were in a state of powerful fear. There were no evident, direct signs of it, but both complained very often: a stream of blame and disapproval of the modern state of mind, the present generation, their useless, idle servants, the ill conduct of the government, of the political parties, and of those about the King: a general denigration, a frequent imputation of motives, always discreditable. They reminded him of his maternal grandmother in her last years, when, from being a strong, sensible, courageous woman, she grew weak and querulous, her expression of general discontent increasing with her vulnerability. He did not know how either of them would behave in a really bloody fight: whether their manliness would reassert itself in an obvious crisis.

“…a general denigration, a frequent imputation of motives, always discreditable.” Yeah, that’s about the size of it.