tinued to the 4th and
perhaps to the 5th, it could not be positively said on which side the
victory had been declared. The certain intelligence cannot now be long
delayed."[762]

Castlereagh also, writing to Pitt on 19th December, assured him that he
had heard similar news through various channels, and therefore cherished
high hopes that something good had happened.[763] Mulgrave, who was then
also at Bath along with Bathurst, Hawkesbury, and Canning, shared these
hopes. Despite the first reports of Austerlitz, which were promptly
contradicted, the Ministerial circle at Bath had no want of diversion.
On 12th December Mulgrave sent to Pitt a short poem on Trafalgar for his
correction, and Pitt touched up a few lines. On 21st December Mulgrave
wrote to him: "I send you Woronzow [Vorontzoff] and Ward, _faute de
mieux_. I was rejoiced to find you were gone out in your carriage when I
called at your home after church. As Bathurst, Canning, and the gout
have left you, I hope you will be able to return to the mess to-morrow."
This does not imply that Pitt was living the life of an invalid, or was
kept to so strict a diet as during his sojourn at Bath three years
before.

Equally hopeful was the estimate of Canning. He spent a week with Pitt
at Bath, and, after leaving him shortly before Christmas, informed a
friend that Pitt was "recovering from a fit of the gout, which has done
him abundance of good, and puts off the time of his driving after old
Frere--I trust to an incalculable distance.... There wants only an
official confirmation of all the good news (that has reached us through
every possible channel except those of Office) to complete it."[764]

Canning, we may note here, had discussed with Pitt his projected
poem--"Ulm and Trafalgar" (which bore the motto "Look here, upon this
picture, and on that"). It began:

While Austria's yielded armies, vainly brave,
Moved, in sad pomp, by Danube's blood-stained wave

and ended with a noble acclaim to Nelson:

Thou, bravest, gentlest Spirit, fare thee well.

On the first line Canning plumed himself until he remembered the warning
of an old tutor at Magdalen, that when anything in your verses pleased
you very much, it was best to strike it out. Canning referred the phrase
"yielded armies" to Pitt, who probably found relief from his cares in
touching up the poem.[765] That Christmastide, then, was a time of
anxiety, but not of settled gloom. There is no sign tha