superior to contention, and leaves a blockhead to enjoy his own nonsense."
In December of the same year he reiterates, "Your son always gives me
satisfaction. He behaves well and always like a gentleman and I endeavour
to instil in him a contempt for what is trifling and unworthy. When I come
home I will leave him in a frigate and I hope I may soon, for I grow very
weak and languid."

It was to be regretted that while evincing to the utmost his own contempt
for what was "trifling and unworthy," it was impracticable for Collingwood
to follow the example of his small midshipman and contentedly "leave a
blockhead to his own nonsense." The realisation was torment to him that
the very conditions of his service were dictated by those who had only a
partial conception of his requirements, that his representations--his
advice--were alike incessantly ignored, yet, none the less, that his
tactics would subsequently be criticised pitilessly by men incapable of
appreciating the difficulties with which he had been beset at the time of
action. "I have lately had a most anxious and vexatious life," he wrote on
May 16th, 1808, "since the Rochefort ships came into the Mediteranean and
joined the Toulon, I have been in constant pursuit of them, but with bad
intelligence and never knowing whether I was going right or not." Yet
though compelled to act thus blindly, in that torturing uncertainty, the
eyes of the world were upon him, and men, wise in the cognisance of after-
events, would unhesitatingly judge him in the light of that knowledge.

More than once in his letters to Mrs Stanhope did the pent up bitterness
of this recognition find vent. On May 16th, 1807, he wrote:--


I am sorry to see Mr Pole's speech about the Rochefort Squadron and
Sir R. Strachan, insinuating that he was well provided with