Bab Bab 4 · 第4章

Concerning ‘The greatest sailor since the world began.’--

TENNYSON.

In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road,

some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. Beckoned

by the genius of Nelson I am going to err into such a by-path. If the

reader will keep me company I shall be glad. At the least we can promise

ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a

literary sin the divergence will be.

Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at

last brought about a change in sea warfare in degree corresponding to

the revolution in all warfare effected by the original introduction from

China into Europe of gunpowder. The first European firearm, a clumsy

contrivance, was, as is well known, scouted by no few of the knights as

a base implement, good enough peradventure for weavers too craven to

stand up crossing steel with steel in frank fight. But as ashore

knightly valour, though shorn of its blazonry, did not cease with the

knights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there a

certain kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly

applicable under changed circumstances, did the nobler qualities of such

naval magnates as Don John of Austria, Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, the

long line of British admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become

obsolete with their wooden walls.

Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without

being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one

the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson’s _Victory_, seems to float

there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but

also as a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the

_Monitors_ and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. And this

not altogether because such craft are unsightly, unavoidably lacking the

symmetry and grand lines of the old battle-ships, but equally for other

reasons.

There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible to that

poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on behalf of the new order be

disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, if need be.

For example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the

_Victory’s_ deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell, these

martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson’s

ornate publication of his person in battle was not only unnecessary, but

not military, nay, savoured of foolhardiness and vanity. They may add,

too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than a challenge to

death; and death came; and that but for his bravado the victorious

admiral might possibly have survived the battle, and so, instead of

having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate

successor in command, he himself when the contest was decided might have

brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceeding which might have

averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in the elemental

tempest that followed the martial one.

Well, should we set aside the more than disputable point whether for

various reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet, then plausibly

enough the Bethamites of war may urge the above.

But he _might have been_ is but boggy ground to build on. And certainly

in foresight as to the larger issue of an encounter, and anxious

preparations for it--buoying the deadly way and mapping it out, as at

Copenhagen--few commanders have been so painstakingly circumspect as

this reckless declarer of his person in fight.

Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish

considerations, is surely no special virtue in a military man; while an

excessive love of glory, exercising to the uttermost the honest

heart-felt sense of duty, is the first. If the name _Wellington_ is not

so much of a trumpet to the blood as the simpler name _Nelson_, the

reason for this may perhaps be inferred from the above. Alfred in his

funeral ode on the victor of Waterloo ventures not to call him the

greatest soldier of all time, though in the same ode he invokes Nelson

as ‘the greatest sailor since the world began.’

At Trafalgar Nelson on the brink of opening the fight sat down and wrote

his last brief will and testament. If under the presentiment of the most

magnificent of all victories, to be crowned by his own glorious death, a

sort of priestly motive led him to dress his person in the jewelled

vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus to have adorned himself for

the altar and the sacrifice were indeed vainglory, then affectation and

fustian is each truly heroic line in the great epics and dramas, since

in such lines the poet but embodies in verse those exaltations of

sentiment that a nature like Nelson, the opportunity being given,

vitalises into acts.

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