celebrated man have been printed, they have, upon examination with the originals, appeared to have been incorrectly given. A particular omission, if relating solely to any private matter, or individual, may be justified; but to attempt to alter the style of the writer, to dress up his phraseology, and to give to the rude thought of the moment a polish which never belonged to it, and ill-agreeing with the character or views of the writer, is unpardonable. That license has not been taken in the present work; the reader will find that many instances of ungrammatical propriety have been permitted to remain rather than to incur the charge of a liberty or fault such as has just been noticed. The only liberty I have taken has been to omit numerous expressions of endearment which might be offensive to the general reader, and are unquestionably unnecessary as regards the intelligence or information the letters are intended to convey. The value of the letters now printed, is, I conceive, that they give the expression of the precise feelings of the man at the moment when the occurrences to which they allude took place, and I have deemed it more in character with their nature to submit them as a sort of running commentary upon the events of his life during the period embraced by them. The part relating to Lady Hamilton's personal history, and the investigation of her claims upon the gratitude of her country, I have thought it advisable to separate from the more general biography, and to arrange in the form of two Supplementary Chapters.

When Lord Nelson's Private Correspondence first came. into my hands, it was my intention simply to have made a selection from the mass, and to have printed it as a Supplement to the Dispatches and Letters; but upon a particular examination, I found it to extend over so lengthened a period, that also being one in which the principal events of his life occurred, that it would have required so many references for elucidation, and so many corrections of previous statements, or notice of trifling peculiarities, as to have occasioned equal

embarrassment to the editor and the reader. I resolved, therefore, in order, as I conceived, to do justice to the subject, to embody the whole in the form of a narrative, as now submitted to the public, and to effect this, it became necessary to sketch out or frame a general biography. In this work I have not been guided by any preceding Biography that has appeared of Lord Nelson; but have constructed it principally by a diligent perusal of his Public Dispatches, Orders, and Letters, as deposited in the Admiralty, and in the Collection derived from that and other sources published by Sir Harris Nicolas already alluded to. Many of the documents now preserved in the Record Office of the Admiralty have been printed in this Collection; I have, therefore, felt it unnecessary again to publish them entire, which would have extended this work beyond the limits desirable in such an undertaking; but merely to give extracts from such as were necessary to display the course of Nelson's career, and illustrate the various operations in which he was engaged. I have preferred giving references to these documents as already published, and therefore accessible to the general reader; although I have had the advantage of consulting the originals, and of being permitted to take copies of any papers I required relating to Nelson now in the Admiralty. I should be wanting in gratitude to every officer of this Department of the Public Service, from the First Lord down to the Clerks, if I were not in an especial manner to offer my most sincere thanks for the facilities which have been so generously afforded me on this occasion. My thanks are more immediately and especially due to Captain William A. B. Hamilton, Second Secretary of the Admiralty; to my much esteemed friends, Thomas Crofton Croker, Esq., of the Commission Department; and John Barrow, Esq., Head of the Record Department;' all of

I cannot make mention of Mr. Barrow's name without noticing the great care he has bestowed in classifying, arranging, and binding into volumes, some of the most interesting and valuable documents connected with the Naval History of

whom have vied with each other in rendering me assistance, whilst the liberal loan of Works and MS. Indexes from the Library of the Admiralty to ensure accuracy in all the details, have enabled me, I trust, to verify and to correct statements which have appeared, not only as regards Lord Nelson himself, but also the services of his contemporaries and those who so gloriously served under his command. The number of Biographical Sketches, which, with the assistance of the works of Mr. James, Captain Brenton, Lieutenant Marshall, the Naval Chronicle, &c., I have been enabled to append to these pages, will, I flatter myself, not be less acceptable to the public, than they must of necessity be to the Naval profession. Having thus made my acknowledgments to those individuals and sources whence I have been able to accomplish this part of my undertaking, it remains to say a few words with regard to some portion of the contents for the first time appearing before the public, as those relate to some of the most important concerns in the hero's career. They especially refer to the transactions at Naples, and the correspondence of the Queen of Naples with Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton.

To any one jealous of the honour and glory of England it cannot but be painful to observe the almost universal condemnation with which Lord Nelson's conduct, in regard to the trial and execution of Francisco Caracciolo, and the repudiation of the Treaty of Capitulation of the Castles of Uovo and Nuovo have been received; but it appears to me the censure has been too freely bestowed, and without a careful and dispassionate examination of the circumstances. Το deny the ferocity of the Queen of Naples, and the malignity

this country. Having had occasion to refer to the Nelson Dispatches, I was much struck with the extent and the arrangement of the Records of the Department, by which I was enabled immediately to obtain that which I required, and I am most happy in this opportunity of expressing my thanks to Mr. Barrow, and high appreciation of his well-directed and judicious labours.

of Lady Hamilton in regard to Caracciolo so freely assumed and positively stated by all writers, would almost appear to be absurd, and to wilfully assert that which was contrary to all belief; yet I flatter myself that the private letters of her Majesty printed in the succeeding pages-letters written in full and entire confidence to Lady Hamilton-never intended for the public eye, and composed as the events of the day occurred, will serve to relieve her Majesty from the charges so repeatedly urged against her, and so injurious to her memory. In all the letters in which Caracciolo is mentioned, who it must never be forgotten was a traitor, and carried arms against his own Sovereign, her Majesty rather deplores his madness than accuses him of crime: "J'ai vus aussi la triste et merité fin du malheureux et forcené Caracciolo. Je sens bien tout ce que votre Excellent Cœur aura souferte et celle augmente ma reconnoissance." No delight is expressed at the shedding of his blood, or the severity of his punishment, and as to the part which Lady Hamilton appears actually to have taken on the occasion, the report so repeatedly stated that she was present to witness his execution is, and must be, entirely without foundation, as she was during the whole of the time in the cabin with Sir William Hamilton, and Lord Nelson was in his own separate cabin apart from them. Sir James Mackintosh is therefore not warranted in describing Lady Hamilton as a ferocious woman, who lowered the illustrious name of an English matron to the level of a Parisian fishwoman," nor as one making "our chosen hero an instrument in deeds of cruelty and dishonour.” He is not justified in stating Nelson to have been "seduced into barbarity, and public as well as private perfidy;" nor when alluding to the execution of Caracciolo is he warranted. in speaking of it as "an act which I forbear to characterize." Yet this same able writer can speak of a man under such

66

Letter of the 2nd of July, 1799, from the Queen to Lady Hamilton. 2 Life of Sir James Mackintosh, Vol. ii. p. 137.

circumstances, and with such impressions, or rather, in his mind, convictions respecting him, as having a soul full of honour and humanity, that he never punished a seaman without having his nerves convulsed at seeing him punished, and that he was the man whom the sailors called, Nel, bold as a lion, and mild as a lamb.' Strangely contradictory this! but in what manner does he attempt to account for this extraordinary contrariety of character?

to sea;

"Nelson (he says) had gone from his parsonage where, in five years, he had become the greatest of Englishmen. Art, politeness, flattery, magnificence, and beauty, acted upon his unworn sensibility. The daughter of Maria Theresa was on her knees to him as a deliverer. Meretricious beauty poured all its blandishments on the uncultivated sailor. The arts, in the degraded state when they cease to deserve the name of liberal, and become the wretched slaves of sense, were still the land of prodigies to him. He had a just indignation against the crimes of his enemies, and, more especially, the dastardly treason of the Neapolitan nobility. He had not been taught to value, nor accustomed to consider the forms, without which the substance of justice cannot be preserved. He believed the prisoners, or their ringleaders, to deserve death; and he thought that the existence of the government required a terrible example; and, perhaps, in themselves, both these opinions were right. From a just detestation of that irresolution which had ruined so many governments, he fell into the prevalent error of supposing that nothing deserves the name of energetic policy but undistinguishing violence; and thus, by errors in judgment, by the excess of justifiable feelings, by the drunkenness of guilty passion, and the maddening power of political fanaticism, he was driven into these deplorable acts. I shall not even extenuate them. I hope there is no creature who has a greater abhorrence of perfidy and cruelty than I have. I verily believe that there is no character in history, but that