THE 17TII OF OCTOBER. 339 that he could not mucli speak the Language of the chap. nation which thus put him under compulsion. "" And this was the ' command in the Mediter- ' ranean/ that pleasant marine retirement which a good, faithful Whig had been earning by toil at the Board in Whitehall, by toil in the lobbies of the House of Commons, by long and enduring patience on the cushions of the Treasury Bench ! The times were no more when he could have what men call ' quiet life ; ' and of the only two paths which lay open to him, each was so beset with evil that, upon the whole, as it seemed to him, the least pernicious thing he could do was to consent to range with the Fiench in their planned line of battle, and deliver a vain cannon- ade. True, he w^as so bitterly reluctant to adopt a measure which he saw must be mortifying and hurtful to the self-respect of our navy, that he withheld his assent till Hamelin — in the very act, it seems, of leaving the ship — had declared out- right that, since lie could not have the English lleet with him, he nnist act alone;* but when Dundass tiiat last pang of the torture had been inflicted, accTptame Dundas yielded. He did not deceive himself, pian.^"'* Though his volition was pliant under any hard stress of this sort, his judgment, it would seem, remained always unwarped; and he had not the solace of imagining that perhaps, after all, the measures forced upon him might turn out to be
- I liave some reason for believing that Admiral Bonet de
"Willaiimez, who was present, would corroborate tliis last state- Uient.
