undermining his health might also impair his mental faculties, and this at
a time when he was aware that one false step, one error in strategy, and
ignominy might be his portion or the liberties of England herself be the
sacrifice.

In a diary [9] in which, during the last years of his life, he entered
memoranda, ostensibly from which to compile his dispatches, there is
conveyed more eloquently than by any laboured insistence the ceaseless
fret of his guardianship and the impracticability which he experienced of
sifting the truth or falsehood of the information on which his line of
conduct was dependent. Incessantly do its pages recall, with elaborate
care, the details of reported engagements and of reported manoeuvres of
the enemy, supplied from some apparently unimpeachable source, and
incessantly are such memoranda revoked emphatically by a later entry.
Once, after retailing minutely the details of an assault undertaken by the
Portuguese and Spaniards against the French--which he was informed had
continued for six days and during which about 8000 of the former and 6000
of the latter had been killed--and subsequent to which all the inhabitants
of Elvas had been put to the sword by the French--he appends with
pardonable irritation--"_Not a word of this true--the whole a fabrication
for the amusement of country gentlemen and ladies._" Meanwhile he was
confronted by the knowledge that those who were most ready to criticise
his decisions, had least comprehension of the difficulties with which he
had to contend.

On May 15th, 1807, Mrs Stanhope writes:--


I have had letters from Lord Collingwood and William of so late a date
as the 29th of April. Lord C. writes out of Spirits, the recent great