think of it?" Such a question I felt required consideration. I
paused. Seeing it he said, "But I will tell you what _I_ think
of it. I think it will surprise and confound the enemy. They won't
know what I am about. It will bring forward a pell-mell battle, and
that is what I want."[13]

Here we have something roughly on all-fours with the methods of the
First Dutch War. There are the three squadrons, the headlong 'charge'
and the _melee_. The reserve squadron to windward goes even
further back, to the treatise of De Chaves and the Instructions of
Lord Lisle in 1545. It was no wonder it took away Keats's breath. The
return to primitive methods was probably unconscious, but what was
obviously uppermost in Nelson's mind was the breaking up of the
established order in single line, leading by surprise and concealment
to a decisive _melee_. He seems to insist not so much upon
defeating the enemy by concentration as by throwing him into
confusion, upsetting his mental equilibrium in accordance with the
primitive idea. The notion of concentration is at any rate secondary,
while the subtle scheme for 'containing' as perfected in the
memorandum is not yet developed. As he explained his plan to Keats, he
meant to attack at once with both his main divisions, using the
reserve squadron as a general support. There is no clear statement
that he meant it as a 'containing' force, though possibly it was in
his mind.[14]

There is one more piece of evidence relating to this time when he was
still in England. According to this story Lord Hill, about 1840, when
still Commander-in-Chief, was paying a visit to Lord Sidmouth. His
host, who, better known as Addington, had been prime minister till
1804, and was in Pitt's new cabinet till July 1805, showed him a table
bearing a Nelson inscription. He told him that shortly before leaving
England to join the fleet Nelson had drawn upon it after dinner a plan
of his intended attack, and had explained it as follows: 'I shall
attack in two lines, led by myself and Collingwood, and I am confident
I shall capture their van and centre or their centre and rear.'
'Those,' concluded Sidmouth, 'were his very words,' and remarked how
wonderfully they had been fulfilled.[15] Hill and Sidmouth at the
time were both old men and the authority is not high, but so far as it
goes it would tend to show that an attack in two lines instead of one
was still Nelson's dominant idea. It cannot however safely be taken as