There is yet another point of view from which his command of the "Agamemnon" is seen to hold a peculiar relation to Nelson's story. This was the period in which expectation passed into fulfilment, when development, long arrested by unpropitious circumstances, resumed its outward progress under the benign influence of a favoring environment, and the bud, whose rare promise had long been noted by a few discerning eyes, unfolded into the brilliant flower, destined in the magnificence of its maturity to draw the attention of a world. To the fulness of his glorious course these three years were what the days of early manhood are to ripened age; and they are marked by the same elasticity, hopefulness, and sanguine looking to the future that characterize youth, before illusions vanish and even success is found to disappoint. Happiness was his then, as at no other time before or after; for the surrounding conditions of enterprise, of difficulties to be overcome, and dangers to be met, were in complete correspondence with those native powers that had so long struggled painfully for room to exert themselves. His health revived, and his very being seemed to expand in this congenial atmosphere, which to him was as life from the dead. As with untiring steps he sped onward and upward,—counting naught done while aught remained to do, forgetting what was behind as he pressed on to what was before,—the ardor of pursuit, the delight of achievement, the joy of the giant running his course, sustained in him that glow of animation, that gladness in the mere fact of existence, physical or moral, in which, if anywhere, this earth's content is found. Lack of recognition, even, wrung from him only the undaunted words: "Never mind! some day I will have a gazette of my own." Not till his dreams were realized, till aspiration had issued in the completest and most brilliant triumph ever wrought upon the seas, and he had for his gazette the loud homage of every mouth in Europe,—not till six months after the battle of the Nile,—did Nelson write: "There is no true happiness in this life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile. My only wish is to sink with honour into the grave."
The preparation of the Mediterranean fleet, to which the "Agamemnon" was assigned, was singularly protracted, and in the face of a well-ordered enemy the delay must have led to disastrous results. Nelson himself joined his ship at Chatham on the 7th of February, a week after his orders were issued; but not until the 16th of March did she leave the dockyard, and then only for Sheerness, where she remained four weeks longer. By that time it seems probable, from remarks in his letters, that the material equipment of the vessel was complete; but until the 14th of April she remained over a hundred men short of her complement. "Yet, I think," wrote Nelson, "that we shall be far from ill-manned, even if the rest be not so good as they ought to be." Mobilization in those days had not been perfected into a science, even in theory, and the difficulty of raising crews on the outbreak of war was experienced by all nations, but by none more than by Great Britain. Her wants were greatest, and for supply depended upon a merchant service scattered in all quarters of the globe. "Men are very hard to be got," Nelson said to his brother, "and without a press I have no idea that our fleet can be manned." It does not appear that this crude and violent, yet unavoidable, method was employed for the "Agamemnon," except so far as her crew was completed from the guard-ship. Dependence was placed upon the ordinary wiles of the recruiting-sergeant, and upon Nelson's own popularity in the adjacent counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, from which the bulk of his ship's company was actually drawn. "I have sent out a lieutenant and four midshipmen," he writes to Locker, "to get men at every seaport in Norfolk, and to forward them to Lynn and Yarmouth; my friends in Yorkshire and the North tell me they will send what men they can lay hands on;" but at the same time he hopes that Locker, then Commander-in-chief at the Nore, will not turn away any who from other districts may present themselves for the "Agamemnon." Coming mainly from the same neighborhood gave to the crew a certain homogeneousness of character, affording ground for appeal to local pride, a most powerful incentive in moments of difficulty and emulation; and this feeling was enhanced by the thought that their captain too was a Norfolk man. To one possessing the sympathetic qualities of Nelson, who so readily shared the emotions and gained the affections of his associates, it was easy to bind into a living whole the units animated by this common sentiment.
His stepson, Josiah Nisbet, at this time about thirteen years old, now entered the service as a midshipman, and accompanied him on board the "Agamemnon." The oncoming of a great war naturally roused to a yet higher pitch the impulse towards the sea, which in all generations has stirred the blood of English boys. Of these, Nelson, using his captain's privilege, received a number as midshipmen upon his quarter-deck, among them several from the sons of neighbors and friends, and therefore, like the crew, Norfolk lads. It is told that to one, whose father he knew to be a strong Whig, of the party which in the past few years had sympathized with the general current of the French Revolution, he gave the following pithy counsels for his guidance in professional life: "First, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety; secondly, you must consider every man as your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman as you do the devil." On the last two items Nelson's practice was in full accord with his precept; but to the first, his statement of which, sound enough in the general, is open to criticism as being too absolute, he was certainly not obedient. Not to form an opinion is pushing the principle of subordination to an indefensible extreme, even for a junior officer, though the caution not to express it is wise, as well as becoming to the modesty of youth. Lord Howe's advice to Codrington, to watch carefully all that passed and to form his own conclusions, but to keep them to himself, was in every respect more reasonable and profitable. But in fact this dictum of Nelson's was simply another instance of hating the French as he did the devil. The French were pushing independence and private judgment to one extreme, and he instinctively adopted the other.
It was not till near the end of April that the "Agamemnon" finally left the Thames, anchoring at Spithead on the 28th of that month. Still the fleet which Lord Hood was to command was not ready. While awaiting her consorts, the ship made a short cruise in the Channel, and a few days later sailed as one of a division of five ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hotham, to occupy a station fifty to a hundred miles west of the Channel Islands. Nelson's disposition not to form any opinion of his own respecting the propriety of orders was thus evidenced: "What we have been sent out for is best known to the great folks in London: to us, it appears, only to hum the nation and make tools of us, for where we have been stationed no enemy was likely to be met with, or where we could protect our own trade." There can be no doubt that not only was the practical management of the Navy at this time exceedingly bad, but that no sound ideas even prevailed upon the subject. Hotham's squadron gained from neutral vessels two important pieces of information,—that Nantes, Bordeaux, and L'Orient were filled with English vessels, prizes to French cruisers; and that the enemy kept eight sail-of-the-line, with frigates in proportion, constantly moving in detachments about the Bay of Biscay. Under