BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SAMUEL, LORD VISCOUNT HOOD

Summary

His nature is too noble for the world

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for his power to thunder His heart's his mouth

What his breast forges that his tongue must vent,

And being angry, doth forget that ever

He heard the name of Death

Coriolanus

WHEN the future Historian shall impartially consider the brilliant Naval Achievements of the present war, The Subduer of Corsica, who first shook the ensanguined power of The Mad Destroyer, will attain that elevation which is due to superior merit.

There are few, if any professions, whose biography has been so little considered as that of the Naval Officers of Great Britain. Where such a complication of important duty rests on the ability of a single individual, as must ever be the case in naval expeditions, and especially where so modest a deportment attends on the most successful undertakings, the public should be in possession of documents, beyond those afforded by the papers of the day, before they attempt to form a final opinion. With an impetuosity peculiar to their nature, our countrymen too frequently are led to decide from the impulse of the moment; forgetting, as Dr. Johnson so justly observes in his Life of Sir Francis Drake, “that a man by nature superior to mean artifices, and bred from his earliest years to the labour and hardships of a sea life, is very little acquainted with policy and intrigue; very little versed in the methods of application to the powerful and great, and unable to obviate the practices of those whom his merit has made his enemies.”