, although
expressly cleared of cowardice and disaffection, was still fresh in
the naval mind. "Sir Robert has an ordeal to pass through," he wrote
Collingwood, "which he little expects." His own opinion upon the case
seems to have undergone some modification, since the generous outburst
with which he at first deprecated the prejudgment of a disappointed
and frightened people; nor could it well fail, as details became known
to him, that he should pass a silent censure upon proceedings, which
contravened alike his inward professional convictions, and his
expressed purposes of action for a similar contingency. "I have had,
as you will believe, a very distressing scene with poor Sir Robert
Calder," he told Lady Hamilton. "He has wrote home to beg an inquiry,
feeling confident that he can fully justify himself. I sincerely hope
he may, but--I have given him the advice as to my dearest friend. He
is in adversity, and if he ever has been my enemy, he now feels the
pang of it, and finds me one of his best friends." "Sir Robert
Calder," he wrote to another correspondent, "has just left us to stand
his trial, which I think of a very serious nature." Nelson was obliged
to detain him until reinforcements arrived from England, because
Calder was unwilling to undergo the apparent humiliation of leaving
his flagship under charges, and she could not yet be spared. It was
not the least of this unlucky man's misfortunes that he left the fleet
just a week before the battle, where his conduct would undoubtedly
have redeemed whatever of errors he may have committed. One of the
last remarks Nelson made before the action began, was, "Hardy, what
would poor Sir Robert Calder give to be with us now!"

Calder's reluctance to quit his flagship, and the keen sensitiveness
with which he expressed his feelings, drew from Nelson a concession he
knew to be wrong, but which is too characteristic, both in the act
itself and in his own account of it, to be omitted. "Sir Robert felt
so much," he wrote to the First Lord, "even at the idea of being
removed from his own ship which he commanded, in the face of the
fleet, that I much fear I shall incur the censure of the Board of
Admiralty, without your Lordship's influence with the members of it. I
may be thought wrong, as an officer, to disobey the orders of the
Admiralty, by not insisting on Sir Robert Calder's quitting the Prince
of Wales for the Dreadnought, and for parting with a 90-gun ship,
before th