serious nature.”  Nelson was obliged to detain him until reinforcements arrived from England, because Calder was unwilling to undergo the apparent humiliation of leaving his flagship under charges, and she could not yet be spared.  It was not the least of this unlucky man’s misfortunes that he left the fleet just a week before the battle, where his conduct would undoubtedly have redeemed whatever of errors he may have committed.  One of the last remarks Nelson made before the action began, was, “Hardy, what would poor Sir Robert Calder give to be with us now!”

Calder’s reluctance to quit his flagship, and the keen sensitiveness with which he expressed his feelings, drew from Nelson a concession he knew to be wrong, but which is too characteristic, both in the act itself and in his own account of it, to be omitted.  “Sir Robert felt so much,” he wrote to the First Lord, “even at the idea of being removed from his own ship which he commanded, in the face of the fleet, that I much fear I shall incur the censure of the Board of Admiralty, without your Lordship’s influence with the members of it.  I may be thought wrong, as an officer, to disobey the orders of the Admiralty, by not insisting on Sir Robert Calder’s quitting the Prince of Wales for the Dreadnought, and for parting with a 90-gun ship, before the force arrives which their Lordships have judged necessary; but I trust that I shall be considered to have done right as a man, and to a brother officer in affliction—­my heart could not stand it, and so the thing must rest.  I shall submit to the wisdom of the Board to censure me or not, as to them may seem best for the Service; I shall bow with all due respect to their decision.”

From the military point of view this step was indefensible, but it is in singular keeping with Nelson’s kindness of heart, his generosity of temper, and with a certain recklessness of consequences,—­when supported by inward conviction of right, or swayed by natural impulses,—­which formed no small part of his greatness as a warrior.  “Numbers only can annihilate;” yet to spare the feelings of an unhappy man, whom he believed to have been his enemy, he parted with one of the best units from his numbers, although, even with her present, he was inferior to the allies.  He felt keenly, however, the responsibility he assumed, not only towards the Admiralty, but towards his own success and reputation.  At one time he seems, with unusual vacillation, even to have returned upon his decision, and to have notified Calder that the ship could not be spared; for on the 12th of October the latter wrote him:  “The contents of your Lordship’s letter have cut me to the soul.  If I am to be turned out of my ship, after all that has passed, I have only to request I may be allowed to take my Captain, and such officers as I find necessary for the justification of my conduct as an officer, and that I may be permitted to go without a moment’s further loss of time.  My heart is broken.”