dies," he writes to Locker and to his brother; "I must take care of
my heart, I assure you." "My heart is quite secured against the French
beauties; I almost wish I could say as much for an English young lady,
the daughter of a clergyman, with whom I am just going to dine, and
spend the day. She has such accomplishments that, had I a million of
money, I am sure I should at this moment make her an offer of them."
"The most accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld," he repeats, a month
later. The sentimental raptures of a young man about a handsome girl
have in themselves too much of the commonplace to justify mention.
What is remarkable, and suggests an explanation of the deplorable
vagary of his later years, is that his attachment to his wife, even in
the days of courtship, elicited no such extravagance of admiration as
that into which he freely lapses in his earlier fancies, and yet more
in his last absorbing passion. Respect and tenderness for her he
certainly felt and expressed; but there is no indication that she ever
enkindled his ardent imagination, or filled for him the place of an
ideal, which his mental constitution imperatively demanded as an
object of worship. The present attachment went so far with him that he
wrote to his uncle William Suckling, asking for an allowance to enable
him to marry. "If nothing can be done for me," said he, gloomily, "I
know what I have to trust to. Life is not worth preserving without
happiness; and I care not where I may linger out a miserable
existence. I am prepared to hear your refusal, and have fixed my
resolution if that should happen.... I pray you may never know the
pangs which at this instant tear my heart." If, as is said by the
gentlemen into whose hands this letter passed, Suckling consented to
help him, as he certainly did at the time of his actual marriage, it
seems probable that the lady refused him.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The precise date of Nelson's entering the Navy, which would be that of
his being rated upon the books of the "Raisonnable," is not stated.
Accepting the times during which he was borne upon the books of different
ships, as given by Sir Harris Nicolas (Letters and Despatches of Lord
Nelson, vol. i. p. 4, note), and with them calculating back from October
15, 1773, the day mentioned by Nelson himself as that on which he was paid
off from the "Carcass" (Nicolas, p. 5), the date of entry upon the books of
the "Raisonnable" would be November 27, 1770; unless