o talk
of an inquiry. It seems, also, unlikely that Nelson, having such a
contingency in view, would have failed to give explicit instructions
that his ships should not withdraw (as Riou's frigates did) unless he
repeated; nor is it easy to reconcile the agitation noted by Stewart
with a previous arrangement of the kind asserted.

What Parker said was, probably, simply one of those by-remarks, with
which an apprehensive man consoles himself that he reserves a chance
to change his mind. Such provision rarely entered Nelson's head when
embarking upon an enterprise in which "do or die" was the only order
for success. The man who went into the Copenhagen fight with an eye
upon withdrawing from action would have been beaten before he began.
It is upon the clear perception of this truth, and his tenacious grip
of it, that the vast merit of Nelson in this incident depends, and not
upon the disobedience; though never was disobedience more justified,
more imperative, more glorious. To retire, with crippled ships and
mangled crews, through difficult channels, under the guns of the
half-beaten foe, who would renew his strength when he saw the
movement, would be to court destruction,--to convert probable victory
into certain, and perhaps overwhelming, disaster. It was not, however,
only in superiority of judgment or of fighting quality that Nelson in
this one act towered like a giant above his superior; it was in that
supreme moral characteristic which enabled him to shut his eyes to the
perils and doubts surrounding the only path by which he could achieve
success, and save his command from a defeat verging on annihilation.
The pantomime of putting the glass to his blind eye was, however
unintentionally, a profound allegory. There is a time to be blind as
well as a time to see. And if in it there was a little bit of
conscious drama, it was one of those touches that not only provoke the
plaudits of the spectators, but stir and raise their hearts, giving
them both an example of heroic steadfastness, and also the assurance
that there is one standing by upon whom their confidence can repose to
the bitter end,--no small thing in the hour of hard and doubtful
battle. It had its counterpart in the rebuke addressed by him on this
very occasion to a lieutenant, who uttered some desponding words on
the same quarter-deck: "At such a moment, the delivery of a
desponding opinion, unasked, was highly reprehensible, and deserved
much more censur