e front in the abortive fleet actions of
the previous year,--an impulse born, partly, of native eagerness for
fame, partly of zeal for the interests of his country and his
profession. "Mine is all honour; so much for the Navy!" as he wrote,
somewhat incoherently, to his brother, alluding to a disappointment
about prize money.

Nelson himself had an abundant, but not an exaggerated, consciousness
of this increase of reputation; and he knew, too, that he was but
reaping as he had diligently sowed. "If credit and honour in the
service are desirable," he tells his brother, "I have my full share. I
have never lost an opportunity of distinguishing myself, not only as a
gallant man, but as having a head; for, of the numerous plans I have
laid, not one has failed." "You will be informed from my late
letters," he writes to his wife, "that Sir John Jervis has such an
opinion of my conduct, that he is using every influence, both public
and private, with Lord Spencer, for my continuance on this station;
and I am certain you must feel the superior pleasure of knowing, that
my integrity and plainness of conduct are the cause of my being kept
from you, to the receiving me as a person whom no commander-in-chief
would wish to keep under his flag. Sir John was a perfect stranger to
me, therefore I feel the more flattered; and when I reflect that I
have had the unbounded confidence of three commanders-in-chief, I
cannot but feel a conscious pride, and that I possess abilities." "If
my character is known," he writes to the Genoese Government, which
knew it well, "it will be credited that this blockade [of Leghorn]
will be attended to with a degree of rigour unexampled in the present
war." "It has pleased God this war," he tells the Duke of Clarence,
"not only to give me frequent opportunities of showing myself an
officer worthy of trust, but also to prosper all my undertakings in
the highest degree. I have had the extreme good fortune, not only to
be noticed in my immediate line of duty, but also to obtain the
repeated approbation of His Majesty's Ministers at Turin, Genoa, and
Naples, as well as of the Viceroy of Corsica, for my conduct in the
various opinions I have been called upon to give; and my judgment
being formed from common sense, I have never yet been mistaken."

Already at times his consciousness of distinction among men betrays
something of that childlike, delighted vanity, half unwitting, which
was afterward forced into exu