years gone by: "Had ten ships
been taken and the eleventh escaped, we being able to get at her, I
should never consider it well done." His idea, Captain Berry tells us,
was first to secure the victory, and then to make the most of it, as
circumstances might permit. The expression is so luminous that it can
scarcely be doubted that the words are substantially those of the
admiral himself.[65] First, the great combination, which necessarily
for the moment neglects a part of the enemy in order to disconcert and
overwhelm the rest; afterwards, the unremitting pursuit, which
completes the triumph.

It was therefore perfectly characteristic of Nelson's habit of
thought, and not merely an egotistic expression of baseless discontent
with others, that he avowed his dissatisfaction with the results of
the night's work, stupendous and wholly unparalleled as theydifferent from the Lady Hamilton of his imagination. That
she ever loved him is doubtful; but there were in her spirit impulses
capable of sympathetic response to his own in his bravest acts, though
not in his noblest motives. It is inconceivable that duty ever
appealed, to her as it did to him, nor could a woman of innate
nobility of character have dragged a man of Nelson's masculine renown
about England and the Continent, till he was the mock of all
beholders; but on the other hand it never could have occurred to the
energetic, courageous, brilliant Lady Hamilton, after the lofty deeds
and stirring dramatic scenes of St. Vincent, to beg him, as Lady
Nelson did, "to leave boarding to captains." Sympathy, not good taste,
would have withheld her. In Lady Nelson's letters there is evidence
enough of