In thus ascribing to these great men complementary parts in leading and shaping the general movement, it is not meant that either is deficient on the side attributed to the other.  Hawke showed by his actions that he was by no means indifferent to tactical combinations, which is another way of saying that he appreciated the advantage of form in warfare; while Rodney, though a careful organizer and driller of fleets, and patient in effort to obtain advantage before attacking, exhibited on occasion headlong, though not inconsiderate, audacity, and also tenacious endurance in fight.  Still, it will probably be admitted by the student of naval biography that to him Hawke suggests primarily the unhesitating sudden rush—­the swoop—­upon the prey, while Rodney resembles rather the patient astute watcher, carefully keeping his own powers in hand, and waiting for the unguarded moment when the adversary may be taken suddenly at unawares.  Certain it is that, with opportunities much more numerous than were permitted to Hawke, his successes would have been far greater but for an excess of methodical caution.  There was a third, who combined in due proportion, and possessed to an extraordinary degree, the special qualities here assigned to each.  It is one of the ironies of history that the first Sir Samuel Hood should have had just opportunity enough to show how great were his powers, and yet have been denied the chance to exhibit them under conditions to arrest the attention of the world; nay, have been more than once compelled to stand by hopelessly, and see occasions lost which he would unquestionably have converted into signal triumphs.  In him, as far as the record goes, was consummated the advance of the eighteenth century.  He was the greatest of the sowers.  It fell to Nelson, his pupil,—­in part at least,—­to reap the harvest.

Before closing this part of our subject, the necessary preliminary to understanding the progress of naval warfare in the eighteenth century, it is pertinent to note the respect in which advance there differs from that of the nineteenth, and in some degree, though less, from that of the seventeenth centuries.  The period was not one of marked material development.  Improvements there were, but they were slow, small in ultimate extent, and in no sense revolutionary.  Ships and guns, masts and sails, grew better, as did also administrative processes; it may indeed be asserted, as an axiom of professional experience, that as the military tone of the sea-officers rises, the effect will be transmitted to those civil functions upon which efficiency for war antecedently depends.  Still, substantially, the weapons of war were in principle, and consequently in general methods of handling, the same at the end of the period as at the beginning.  They were intrinsically more efficient; but the great gain was not in them, but in the spirit and intellectual grasp of the men who wielded them.  There was no change in the least analogous to that from oars to sails, or from sails to steam.