o Keith the command of the twenty
ships-of-the-line then with him, and went to Port Mahon. For the
moment he retained in his own hands the charge of the
station,--continued Commander-in-chief,--with headquarters at Minorca,
and two divisions cruising: one of twenty ships, with Keith, between
Toulon and Minorca, and one of sixteen, including three Portuguese,
under Nelson in the waters of Sicily. Friction between these two began
at once. Lord Keith was an accomplished and gallant officer,
methodical, attentive, and correct; but otherwise he rose little above
the commonplace, and, while he could not ignore Nelson's great
achievements, he does not seem to have had the insight which could
appreciate the rare merit underlying them, nor the sympathetic
temperament which could allow for his foibles. Nelson, exasperated at
the mere fact of the other's succession to the command, speedily
conceived for him an antipathy which Keith would have been more than
mortal not to return; but it is to the honor of the latter's
self-command that, while insisting upon obedience from his brilliant
junior, he bore his refractoriness with dignified patience.

After St. Vincent left him, Keith continued to stand to the northward
and eastward. On the 5th of June he received certain information that
the French fleet, now twenty-two ships-of-the-line, was in Vado Bay.
This word he at once sent on to Nelson. Next day his division was so
close in with the Riviera, off Antibes, that it was fired upon by the
shore batteries; but the wind coming to the eastward, when off Monaco,
did not permit it to pass east of Corsica, and, fearing that the
French would take that route and fall upon Nelson, Keith detached to
him two seventy-fours, which joined him on the 13th of June.

At the moment of their arrival Nelson had just quitted Palermo for
Naples, taking with him the whole squadron. The King of Naples had
formally requested him to afford to the royal cause at the capital the
assistance of the fleet, because the successes of the royalists
elsewhere in the kingdom rendered imminent an insurrection in the
city against the republican party and the French, which held the
castles; and such insurrection, unless adequately supported, might
either fail or lead to deplorable excesses. Lady Hamilton, whose
irregular interference in State concerns receives here singular
illustration, strongly urged this measure in a letter, written to the
admiral after an interview w