Volume I Part 1 (1/2)

The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson.

Vol. I.

by James Harrison.

PREFACE.

There are few works, the authors of which can possibly be permitted to recommend them as worthy of universal regard, without the imputation of intolerable vanity; an imputation little likely to be diminished by the consideration, that other writers, over whom a decided preference is claimed, may have previously occupied the same subject.

A Life of Lord Nelson, however, replete with original anecdotes, many of them from the mouths of his lords.h.i.+p's nearest and dearest relatives and friends, with whom the author has, for many months, been honoured with an almost constant communication; and abounding in a profusion of interesting letters, and extracts of letters, written by the hero himself, which have generously flowed in, from all quarters, to aid the biographer; he may surely, without the charge of presumption, these facts being self-evident on the slightest inspection, be allowed to a.s.sert, must necessarily be ent.i.tled to very general notice and esteem.

So numerous, indeed, have been the invaluable doc.u.ments kindly tendered to the author's acceptance, that he has not only been under the necessity of greatly enlarging his original design; but may, probably, at a future and no very distant period, feel encouraged to present those who have so indulgently expressed their approbation of his present labours, with a sort of supplementary work, not necessarily attached, but still more minutely ill.u.s.trative of many circ.u.mstances which relate to the life and character of this greatest and best of heroes and of men.

It is not without painful sensations, that the author feels compelled to notice the many dishonourable insinuations which have been promulged by bold speculators on public credulity: some of whom, by prematurely publis.h.i.+ng, have already sufficiently evinced their want of genuine information; and others, after the most illiberal reflections on all contemporaries, have found it expedient entirely to abandon their own boasted performances, or to wait the completion of the very work which they have thus meanly and insidiously laboured to depreciate, before they could possibly advance.

This biographical memoir, like the character of the immortal man whom it proudly aspires to commemorate, rests on no false claim. It offers not any meretricious attraction to the eye; it submits itself, wholly, to the understanding, and to the heart. Should it fail considerably to gratify the one, and powerfully to interest the other, it will be in vain for the author to urge, however true, that he has exerted himself, with a due sense of the dignity of his subject, and of the difficulty of the task, to produce a work which, though it can never sufficiently honour the incomparable hero, should as little as possible disgrace the kind contributory aids, and the generous patronage, which he has had the distinguished favour to receive from so many estimable and ill.u.s.trious personages. To add a list of names, might seem ostentatious; but, certainly, such a list would contain almost every great and virtuous character allied to his late lords.h.i.+p, in the bonds of affinity as well as of friends.h.i.+p. With most of these, it will ever const.i.tute the chief pride and happiness of the author's life, that he is also permitted to boast a considerable degree of intimate friends.h.i.+p; and, in the delightful retreat of Merton Place, surrounded by all who were most dear to the heart of the hero, in consanguinity as well as amity, have many of those valuable anecdotes been obtained, with which the work is so abundantly enriched.

Prompted to this undertaking, by a strong sense of conviction, that our chief hero, when his character was clearly understood, would be found as eminently good as great, the biographer has fearlessly endeavoured freely to investigate transactions of the utmost delicacy in private life; and he is fully prepared to a.s.sert, and as far as possible to prove, that there seldom has existed any human being adorned by the practice of so many positive virtues, so little sullied by any actual vice, as that immortal man, the chief particulars of whose history will be found, the author may, at least, be permitted to maintain, most faithfully recorded in the work now confided, with all it's imperfections, to the just judgment of the world; a tribunal which seldom fails doing compleat justice, either sooner or later, to all the merits both of heroes and of authors, of men as well as of books.

THE LIFE OF _LORD NELSON_, DUKE OF BRONTE, &c.

When we survey, with rapture, the state of an exalted hero, arrived at all the honours which it is possible for a human being to receive from the grat.i.tude, the veneration, and the love, of his fellow-mortals; seen, as he then is, like a luminary of the first magnitude in the full blaze of meridian glory, we are generally too dazzled by the l.u.s.tre we behold, to penetrate, or even to reflect on, the circuitous, the tedious, or the perplexed path, through which he may have been constrained to pa.s.s, in pursuit of the splendid destiny at length happily attained.

In this sublime situation, we have lately beheld a British naval hero, who has scarcely ever been equalled, and certainly never surpa.s.sed. As a nation, we have been charmed with his brilliant refulgence; we have been cheared by his vivifying influence; and we lament the short duration of his splendor with a grief so general, that it appears to be without parallel in the history of any age or country.

To trace the progress of this heroic and inestimable character, through the various vicissitudes of his eventful life, from it's commencement to it's close, with all the accuracy and minuteness which circ.u.mstances will admit; contemplating and comparing the several causes and effects which may have r.e.t.a.r.ded or accelerated the progress of his public career, which may have blessed or embittered his private comforts; is the arduous task of the present biographer: who holds, with a trembling; hand, the pen that would presumptuously aspire to record, with suitable dignity, the history of one of the very greatest and most successful naval heroes that has ever yet astonished and adorned the world.

Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte--for he always, very properly, signed with both these t.i.tles, from the moment of obtaining them--was the offspring of parents on each side highly respectable.

The family of the Nelsons had been long resident in the county of Norfolk: they possessed, for many years, and their posterity still possess, a small patrimony at Hilborough, with the patronage of that rectory.

The Sucklings, likewise a Norfolk family, of lofty alliances, have been resident at Wooton nearly three centuries.

On the 11th of May, in the year 1749, the Reverend Edmund Nelson, son of the then venerable Rector of Hilborough, and himself Rector of Burnham-Thorpe, was married to Catharine daughter of Dr. Maurice Suckling, Rector of Basham in Suffolk, as well as of Wooton in Norfolk, and a Prebendary of Westminster.

By this union the Nelson family gained the honour of being related to the n.o.ble families of Walpole, Cholmondeley, and Townshend: Miss Suckling being the grand-daughter of Sir Charles Turner, Bart. of Warham, in the county of Norfolk, by Mary, daughter of Robert Walpole, Esq. of Houghton, and sister to Sir Robert Walpole, of Wolterton, whose next sister, Dorothy, was married to Charles, second Viscount Townshend.

The honour, however, so conferred, has since been abundantly recompenced to all these ill.u.s.trious families, by a single Nelson, the offspring of this very union; to whom, in their turn, they may now proudly boast their alliance, without any degradation of dignity.

Of these virtuous and most respectable parents, was Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson born, at the parsonage house of the rectory of Burnham-Thorpe, on Michaelmas-day 1758: a place which will be ever renowned for having given him birth; and a day of annual festivity, which every Briton has now an additional motive to commemorate.

He was their fifth son, and their sixth child: his eldest sister, Mrs.

Bolton, the amiable lady of Thomas Bolton, Esq. by whom she has a son and four daughters, being about three years older than her renowned brother.

There had been a former son christened Horatio, who only survived about twelve months; and another, named Edmund, after the father, who also died in early infancy: both of whom are entombed in Hilborough church.

The name of Horatio, or Horace, which is thus once more destined to live for ever honoured, was doubtless adopted, and persisted in by Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, as a compliment to the memory of their n.o.ble relative, the first Lord Walpole; brother of the highly celebrated Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards first Earl of Orford. It was then little imagined, even by the boundless partiality of parental affection, looking forward to sanguine hopes of a powerful family patronage, that this infant could ever possibly live to eclipse all the glory of his most brilliant ancestors!

The name of Maurice, after Dr. Maurice Suckling the grandfather, and his son Captain Maurice Suckling, had been previously given to another son, born May 24, 1753: who held a situation in the Navy Office, and died so recently as the year 1801, three days after receiving news of the battle of Copenhagen; leaving a widow, but no issue.