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 as 'a cat does in a china-pantry.' He, of course, had not read Captain Mahan. The motives of Nelson's strategy are left in judicious obscurity, and we have to take it on faith that he was right on any given occasion in hauling his wind or brailing up his mainsail. Apocryphal stories are accepted without an attempt at criticism. But the book, in spite of an excessive 'jingoism' and very unworthy abuse of the French, is a classic, because no biographer was ever more in sympathy with his hero, or wrote more simply and directly. Nelson's three great commandments—obey orders, honour the King, and hate the French as you hate the devil—apply to warfare the principles which Southey applied to literature. Absolute simple-minded devotion to the immediate purpose in hand is characteristic of both. Nelson in sight of a French fleet and Southey opposed to a Radical orator strike home with the same inexorable and uncompromising zeal. Even Nelson's vanity and thirst for 'glory' recall Southey's literary aspirations, and, if Southey could not be a real naval critic, he could give to perfection the essential charm of the historic character.

Southey's patriotic enthusiasm imperceptibly carried him into the Tory camp. The author of