of such fair opening so soon cut short.  But daring and original in the highest degree as was the march from Salamanca to Sahagun, it did not exceed, either in originality or in daring, the purposes nourished by Lord Hood, which he had no opportunity so to execute as to attract attention.  Condemned to subordinate positions until he had reached the age of seventy, his genius is known to us only by his letters, and by the frustrated plans at St. Kitts in 1782, and at Golfe Jouan in 1794, in the former of which, less fortunate than Moore, he failed to realize his well-grounded hope of reversing, by a single blow, the issues of a campaign.

It is to be regretted that two such men could not understand each other cordially.  Hood, we know from his letters, was “of that frame and texture that I cannot be indifferent,”—­“full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension,”—­when service seemed to him slothfully done.  Moore, we are told by Napier, “maintained the right with vehemence bordering upon fierceness.”  Had he had the chief command on shore, it is possible that the two, impetuous and self-asserting though they were, might have reached an understanding.  But in the most unfortunate disagreement about Bastia,—­wherein it is to a naval officer of to-day scarcely possible to do otherwise than blame the sullen lack of enterprise shown by the army,—­and afterwards at Calvi, Moore appeared to Hood, and to Nelson also, as the subordinate, the power behind the throne, who was prompting a line of action they both condemned.  No position in military life is more provocative of trouble than to feel you are not dealing with the principal, but with an irresponsible inferior; and the situation is worse, because one in which it is almost impossible to come to an issue.  Moore’s professional talent and force of character naturally made itself felt, even with a man of Stuart’s ability.  Hood and Nelson recognized this, and they resented, as inspired by a junior, what they might have combated dispassionately, if attributed to the chief.  There was friction also between Moore and Elliot, the viceroy of the island.  Doubtless, as in all cases where suspicion, not to say jealousy, has been begot, much more and worse was imagined by both parties than actually occurred.  The apportionment of blame, or prolonged discussion of the matter, is out of place in a biography of Nelson.  To that it is of moment, only because it is proper to state that Nelson, on the spot and in daily contact,—­Nelson, upon whose zeal and entire self-devotion at this period no doubt is cast,—­agreed in the main with Hood’s opinion as to what the latter called the San Fiorenzo leaven, of which Moore was to them the exponent.  It is true that Nelson naturally sympathized with his profession and his admiral, whom he heartily admired; but some corrective, at least, to such partiality, was supplied by his soreness about the latter’s omission duly to report his services at Bastia, of which he just now became aware.  The estrangement between the two commanders-in-chief was doubtless increased by the apparent reluctance, certainly the lack of effort, to see one another frequently.