IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8475, 29 June 1907, Page 5

IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

(Specially Written for the Wairarapa' Age.) No. VII. THE LIFE OF NELSON. - ' —Captain A. T. Mahan. Part A. To the reader of Captain MahanV "Influence of Sea Power Upon History" it seems a remarkable thing that the author, after tracing the development of British sea power through a period of more than a century, should have stopped short with the conclusion of the Peace with France in 1783. Twenty-two years later the greatest of Admirals was to meet his glorious end at Trafalgar, and it is difficult at first sight to see either the expediency or the propriety of concluding what is, practically, a history of the development of British nava! power at a date immediately prior to a naval war that included such battles as Tne Nile and Trafalgar—a war that broke; the power of Napoleon, and to the happy issue of which the present freedom, not only of England, but of the majority of the European Powers, is immediately due.

The author's explanation is given in the opening pages of the work, which we have now have under review. In his preface, he writes with reference to his earlier \vork as follows:—"In the century and a half embraced in those periods, the tide of influence and power has , swelled higher and higher, floating upwards before the eyes of mankind many a distinguished name, but it is not until their close that one arises in whom all the promises of the past find their finished realisation, their perfect fulfilment. Thenceforth the name of Nelson is enrolled among those few presented to us by History, the simple mention of which suggests, not merely a personality or a career, but a great force or a great era concrete in a single man, who is its standard bearer before the nations." In other words, the author's idea appears to be that for the'purpose of proving and illustrating the underlying principles of sea power, in its relation to nationl welfare, the period ending IYB3 is sufficient and complete in itself —that by 1783 the development of British sea power was effected, and that >the immediately subsequent career of 'kelson was not a stage in the historical development of the sea power, but merely an illustration of the results to be attained from the wielding of an already perfected weapon in the hands of an absolutely competent man. This may be logically correct, but one cannot helpjfeeling that a history of the influence of sea power on contemporary excludes such momentous battles as the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, is rather a case of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark and the rest of his Royal Family.What seems probable as the real reason inducing the conclusion of the earlier work with the peace of 1783, .is that the author felt that he had it in his bones to write the greatest biography of the greatest Admiral that ever has been or ever will be given to the world, and that he was determined not to spoil that biography by references to Nelson, necessarily partial and curtailed so as to bring them within the compass of the concluding chapters of a single volume.

Whatever, however, has been the real reason ihat inductd the author to stop short in his earlier work, the ultimate result has fully justified the course he adptcd. The world is richer to-day in' the fact that it possesses an incomparable biography of Admiral Lord Nelson. Until Mahan's work appeared, the only book upon the subject with which the public were familiar was "The Life of Nelson," from the pen of Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate of England. Southey laboured under many great disadvantages in the production of his work. For one thing, he was not a seaman, and it is impossible for anyone other than a seaman to adequately conceive, much less to present in popular language an adequate conception of the nature and effect of Nelson's strategy and tactics. But the greatest difficulty under which Southey laboured was that of nearness in point of time to his subject. Southey's work was published in 1813—-eight short years after Trafalgar. At that time the men with whom Nelson served were many of. them alive and of powerful influence in Nthe State. Any true appreciation of Nelson's transcendent powers necessarily involves something nearly approaching censure of many of the men who from one cause or on various occasions, failed to support him or to adopt his suggestions. It is a wise saying that a live dog is better than a dead lion, and even had Southey possessed the necessary technical knowledge, it would have been highly unpolitic for the Poet Laureate of England to jeopardise his matei'ial welfare by candid criticism of many of the strongest men in the State. Apart altogether from the military genius of Nelson there was a further and a sadder side of his character, a side the understanding of which is essential if we are to get a complete conception of the man, but a side that a contemporary writer was debarred by motives of delicacy and good taste from commenting upon. The relations of Nelson with.his wife were not happy, and his relations with Lady Hamilton were notorious. Consideration for Nelson's own family, for Lady Hamilton herself, and for the girl "Horatia," alike demanded from a gentleman such as Southey that the unpleasant matter should be omitted or glossed over, and, as a matter of fact, Southey gets over the Lady Hamilton episode by saying, what he must have known was untrue, "that further than the fact that Nelson's infatuation totally weaned his affections from his wife, there is no reason to believe that this most unfortunate attachment was criminal." The result is that Southey's work, while remaining as a standard model oi' construction so far as language itself is concerned, loses intrinsic value as a biography and partakes more of the nature of panygeric. In the one instance in which Southey felt free to let himself go—that of the court-martial and execution of the Neapolitan Commodore Caracciolo —his poetic and unjudicial mind has

led him to a wholesale condemnation of Nelson's action—a condemnation that went beyond what was required or what was just. From al 1 the disadvantages that beset Southey, Mahan is free, and the latter has, in addition, a great advantage which neither Southey nor any other writer of his time could have had. Nelson as a simple-minded and impetuous man —trusting and unreserved with his immediate friends, and a most voluminous correspondent. In his letters to various persons which have gradually come to light, every hope, every fear, and every emotion that he felt at the moment of writing have been unreservedly expressed. Collected in the hands of such an able writer as Mahan these letters form the finest possible material upon which to base a character study. The method »adopted by Mahan, as stated in his preface, has been to read and absorb fully the whole of Nelson's correspondence so as to get a conception of the leading features of temperament, traits of thought and motives of action, and thence to conceive within himself by actual familiarity even more than by formal effort the character therein revealed. In the actual writing of the work he has, while generally following the sequence of events, not, hesitated to pick out incidents widely separated in point of time which afforded illustrations of any one particular trait. The result has been a picture of the man as well of his actions, that could hardly have been excelled had the author lived with his subject in the flesh and followed his career and noted, with the fidelity of a Boswell, the words as they fel 1 from the hero's lips. The subject matter of the book is so intensely interesting that the writer is loth to debar himself from the pleasure of further considering it, but the space allotted to this column has already been filled. This article, however, can be taken as only the first portion of a review of the book, and the subject will be completed at a later date. (To be Continued.)