a revelation of character.  It perverted his understanding of conditions, and paralyzed his proper action as commander-in-chief.  It is needless in this connection to consider whether it was the matter of personal profit, through legitimate prize-money, that thus influenced him,—­an effect to some extent pardonable in a man who had long suffered, and still was suffering, from pecuniary straitness,—­or whether, as he loudly protested, it was the interest to the nation that made his personal superintendence of the proceeds imperative.  In either case the point to be noted is not a palpable trait of covetousness,—­if such it were, —­but the limitation to activity occasioned by preoccupation with a realized, but imperfect, success.  The comparatively crude impression of greediness, produced by apparent absorption in a mere money gain, has prevented the perception of this more important and decisive element in Rodney’s official character, revealed at St. Eustatius and confirmed on the evening of the 12th of April.  What he had won, he had won; what more he might and should do, he would not see, nor would he risk.

His discontent with his junior flag-officers in the West Indies, and the peculiar demoralization of professional tone at the moment, had made it difficult for the Admiralty to provide him a satisfactory second in command.  In order to do this, they had “to make a promotion,” as the phrase went; that is, in order to get the man wanted, the seniors on the captains’ list were promoted down to and including him.  The choice had fallen on Sir Samuel Hood,—­in later days Nelson’s honored Lord Hood,—­than which none could have been happier in respect of capacity.  It has been truly said that he was as able as Rodney, and more energetic; but even this falls short of his merit.  He had an element of professional—­as distinguished from personal—­daring, and an imaginative faculty that penetrated the extreme possibilities of a situation, quickened by the resolve, in which Rodney was deficient, to have all or nothing; and these invaluable traits were balanced by the sound and accurate judgment of a thorough seaman, without which imagination lures to disaster.  The man who as a junior formed the idea of seizing De Grasse’s anchorage in the Chesapeake in 1781, to effect the relief of Cornwallis, and who in 1782, when momentarily in chief command, illustrated the idea by actual performance under similar conditions in the West Indies, rose to heights of conception and of achievement for which we have no equivalent in Rodney’s career.  Unfortunately for him, though thus mighty in act, opportunity for great results never came to him.  The hour never met the man.