wind. However that may have been, he got it, and proceeded to make excellent use of it. His line was formed with scrupulous precision, even to the extent of making the ELIZABETH and TIGER change places, so that they might find themselves matched equally with their opposites in the French line. When once the preliminaries were arranged to Pocock's academical satisfaction the real fighting power of the man had a chance. The action commenced about one in the afternoon. At the end of fifteen minutes, the ZODIAQUE and COMTE DE PROVENCE were both on fire and fell out of the line. The French complained that combustibles had been thrown on board their ships, and it was not fair fighting. difficult for us in these days to appreciate such nice ethical distinctions; but a similar accusation was brought against us after the battle of the Nile. In that case it was proved that the immoral missiles had come from the magazine of the French SPARTIATE, and that they were usually supplied to all French ships.

It is

Seeing the flag-ship leave the line of battle, the rest of the French fleet made the best of their way out of action, and a running fight ensued. The French ships cut away their boats and crowding all sail escaped to Pondicherry, Pocock all the time in hot chase of them. D'Aché's ships had been so roughly handled that he sailed early in September for the Isle of Bourbon (Réunion), to refit, leaving Pocock, whose fleet had always been inferior to the French in number of ships and men, as well as in weight of metal, supreme in East Indian waters.

At the end of the year the British fleet was despatched to Bombay to bring reinforcements to Madras, which Lally was besieging with every man and every gun he could collect. No. 495.-VOL. LXXXIII.

Had D'Aché's fleet been at sea, Pocock's task might easily have been made impossible, Madras might have fallen, and with it our Indian empire; but D'Aché was refitting his ships two thousand miles away. When Pocock arrived with reinforcements on February 16th, 1759, Lally hastily raised the siege and made the best of his way to Arcot, leaving fifty-two guns and most of his ammunition behind him.

The French strained every nerve to enable D'Aché to bring an overwhelming force against his hardhitting enemy. With eleven sail of the line (the strongest fleet that had ever sailed the Indian seas) he appeared on September 2nd off Negapatam, where Pocock, reinforced by the GRAFTON (70) and the SUNDERLAND (60), was lying at anchor. Pocock immediately weighed with his nine ships, and signalled for a general chase, but the wind fell and he could not get within range. Next morning

the French fleet was seen in line on the starboard tack, four leagues away to leeward, eleven sail of the line beside frigates and store-ships, carrying beside their own crews a number of troops for Pondicherry. According to the statement in Campbell's LIVES OF THE ADMIRALS, they had a superiority of one hundred and ninetytwo guns and twenty-three hundred

men.

Pocock, as usual, bore down to engage, but the enemy kept away till nightfall, when they wore ship and formed line on the opposite tack. Fearing to lose sight of them in the night, he steered to cut them off from Pondicherry, their port. It was not till a week later that he got in touch with them, in line on the starboard tack, eight miles to leeward. At ten o'clock they wore on to the larboard tack and steered a lasking course, that is to say, they kept the wind on

P

the larboard quarter. ran down into action.

Then Pocock Had he held right on, broken through their line, and engaged to leeward, he might have gained a great victory; but, true to the vicious system in which he had been trained, he hauled to the wind so soon as he got within pointblank range, and matched his nine ships against D'Aché's eleven, broadside to broadside. D'Aché was a better tactician. When he saw the English line extended to cover the longer line of the French, he concentrated his fire on the seven leading ships, cutting off the SUNDERLAND and WEYMOUTH which were last in the line.

All

It is difficult to follow the very vague descriptions of the naval historians, but according to a contemporary account in THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, he appears to have actually cut the British line in two. accounts agree that the two rear-ships were shut out of the action for a considerable time; but though he could and did out-manœuvre Pocock, he could not out-fight him. The English were better gunners than the French, and whatever their fleet-tactics may have been, the individual ships were certainly fought well. In compliance with the code of naval etiquette, Pocock in the YARMOUTH engaged D'Aché in the ZODIAQUE, flag-ship to flag-ship, while Rear-Admiral Stevens in the GRAFTON, assisted by the TIGER and NEWCASTLE, hammered the ST. LOUIS, DUC D'ORLEANS, and MINOTAUR. The little fifty-gun ship, SALISBURY, had the ILLUSTRE of sixty-four guns, all to herself, and kept her busy till the two rear-ships, the SUNDERLAND and WEYMOUTH, broke into the mêlée, and drove the ILLUSTRE out of action. The burden which had lain so heavily on Pocock's spirit was lifted when his cherished line of battle was shivered in the first shock of the engagement. Free to fight as he would, he showed

himself for what he was, a hard hitter of the old fashion, and this, his last action with D'Aché, was by far the best of the three. For nearly six hours the hard pounding went on, till D'Aché bore up and ran down to leeward with more than a thousand dead or wounded men on board his battered ships, leaving Pocock's ships half unrigged, and unable to follow up their advantage. The British loss amounted to one hundred and eighty-four killed and three hundred and eighty-five wounded; the TIGER, commanded by Captain Brereton (who had been dismissed the CUMBERLAND after the action of April 29th), greatly distinguished herself, losing more men than any other British ship. Both admirals claimed a victory; but on October 3rd, so soon as he had refitted his damaged ships, Pocock led them into the roadstead of Pondicherry, where the French fleet was lying under the guns of the fort, formed his line in front of them, and offered battle. D'Aché weighed and stood out as if to engage, but without firing a shot he slipped away south, and, outsailing Pocock, disappeared in the night and made his way back to Réunion. The monsoon was coming on, and there were heavy repairs needed in Pocock's fleet; he sailed, therefore, for Bombay, and on October 19th he fell in with Admiral Cornish and four sail of the line. Thus reinforced, he held absolute command of the sea, and Lally shut himself up in Pondicherry. It was well for him, as it is for all men, that he had no foreknowledge of the few and bitter years that lay before him; but his evil destiny marched apace. Three months later he was utterly defeated by Eyre Coote at Wandewash; another year, and he had surrendered Pondicherry. Five years after that, he learned that the Bastille and the scaffold were all the reward that

France had to bestow upon a brave man who had failed.

Throughout the whole of these operations Pocock never once gained a decisive success. Tactically D'Aché always secured an advantage, though he never availed himself of it. The French historians admit that nearly all the actions in which he commanded had an unfortunate termination; and though he was never actually defeated, though he never lost a ship in action, yet in a few months he lost every station that France possessed on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, and allowed the trade of the Compagnie des Indes, which rivalled that of our own East India Company, to be almost destroyed. George Pocock had little skill in naval tactics, but he could fight, and his gunners were well-trained; it was his steady determination, and the straight shooting of his crews that made the conquest of India possible.

There is a passage in Campbell's LIVES OF THE ADMIRALS which is curiously indicative of the utter misconception of the principles of naval warfare which prevailed before 1782. He sums up his account of Pocock's operations in the East Indies thus:

Admiral Pocock more than once com. pelled Mr. D'Aché, the greatest admiral that France could boast of, who alone supported the declining reputation of her marine, to take shelter under the walls of Pondicherry. Pocock had reduced the French ships to a very shattered condition, and killed a great many of their men; but, what shews the singular talents of both admirals, they had fought three pitched battles in eighteen months without the loss of a ship on either side.

Compare this with the picture of Blake in Clarendon's HISTORY OF THE REBELLION:

He was the first man that declined the old tract and despised those

rules which had been long in practice, to keep his ship and men out of danger, which had been held in former times a proof of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal art requisite in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to come home safe again.

Nelson declared that he was always ready to lose half his own fleet to ensure the destruction of the French; but Blake and Nelson were giants who made the times in which they lived heroic. Pocock, born in a meaner age, was but a pigmy beside them; yet he played no small or unworthy part in the great drama of Indian conquest.

There have been many periods in the history of the navy which are pleasanter to remember, and more grateful to write of, than this; but it has one deep and abiding interest. Feeble and indecisive as these actions of Pocock's were, they made the work of Clive possible. Though he never won a battle, yet he retained sufficient command of the sea, against a superior force, to hamper Lally's operations by cutting off his supplies and bringing up our reinforcements. Had Pocock been defeated, Madras must have fallen, and it is unlikely that the East India Company would have recovered from the blow. And one thing more,

though Pocock was invariably outmanoeuvred and over-matched, yet his indomitable fighting spirit pulled him through. Though governments were spiritless and admirals ill-taught, officers and men alike seem to have done their duty throughout these, the last days of our ill-success, as faithfully and cheerfully as they have ever done it when they had learned to look on victory as a foregone conclusion. These are the reasons which make the three battles of Pocock and D'Aché worth remembering.

W. J. FLETCHER.

IN reading the letters of Thomas Edward Brown,-differing from all others as the man was different from all other men-one is curiously reminded, as much by contrast as by resemblance, of Edward FitzGerald.

The one was a Celt, feeling intensely, passionate in his love of beauty, and brimming over with delicate fancy; the other was a Saxon, equable, reticent, and almost phlegmatic. The one was optimistic and buoyant with large hope; he had found "the key to all the mysteries." The other moved in the twilight of doubt, groping around the door to which he found no key. One laughed his mirthful laughter; the other smiled serenely, tenderly. Brown loved mankind with a love that came near to genius; he poured sunshine upon his friends, making one apprehend sadly what the silence must now mean to them. FitzGerald too loved his friends; but it was as impossible for him to live with them, as it was for Brown to live without them, and many a time did he return from town without having mustered up courage enough to knock at their doors. Brown might be likened to a St. Francis of the nineteenth century, loving with joyfulness the beauty around him, and seeing God in it all, while FitzGerald seemed to be always wrapped round in an Omarian mantle of gentle fatalism.

And yet, in spite of fundamentally different temperaments and with an entirely individual way of approaching things, these two men had a

strange similarity of tastes and pursuits. One is tempted to feel that beneath the superficial differences one golden thread linked them. What was it?

Both were endowed with a farreaching sympathy, which made them, each in his own way, the centre of a group of adoring friends. Both had the power of retaining life-long friendships, and both were loved by their friends with a love "passing the love of women." Thackeray was once asked which of his friends he loved best; "Why old Fitz, of course," was the ready answer; and who has not been touched and thrilled by the tributes of love and gratitude paid to the large-hearted Manxman? In both men there was a vein of delicate whimsical humour,-the humour which has been so happily described as wit hand in hand with love, and which leaves behind it a fragrant essence of a man's personality.

Brown felt all the charm of FitzGerald's letters. “There is an ἦθος in FitzGerald's letters," he wrote, "which is so exquisitely idyllic as to be almost heavenly. He takes you with him, exactly accommodating his pace to yours, walks through meadows so tranquil and yet abounding in the most delicate surprises, and these surprises seem so familiar, just as if they had originated with yourself. What delicious blending! What a perfect interweft of thought and diction! What a sweet companion!" And again: "Blessings on FitzGerald ! How delightful he was! How he comforted me! I have now finished him. That is the worst of it." Is

not that what we all echo about his own charming letters, which we have laid down so regretfully? The wellloved voice is silent; that is the worst of it.

save

some

It is not, however, a resemblance in the style of their letters that strikes one. In his introduction Mr. Irwin rightly points out that the letters of Brown cannot be compared to those of FitzGerald, that each has his own qualities, and that the former has nothing of the carelessness which so charms us in the latter. But let us look into the intellectual pleasures and affirmations of these two differently tuned tuned natures. Both were scholars in the widest sense, and both scorned scholarship for its own sake. "By becoming scholars (Heaven the mark!)" says Brown, we have gained thing; but we have lost, I had almost said, everything." The other sighs: "I find the disadvantage of being so ill-grounded and so bad a scholar. But what does all this signify? Time goes on and we get older, and whether my idleness comprehends the distinction of the first and second aorist will not be noted much in the Book of Life, either on this or on the other side of the leaf." Yet both had that large assimilative passion for the Classics, "the old men who are full-orbed, serene, fixed in their everlasting seats." Both steeped themselves in the rich-sounding Greek language, and both, with spontaneous pleasure and without a touch of pedantry, often made use of its expressive words. For both Greek put forth "a branch-work" extending to the "vista opening far and wide." Both absorbed the essence of Greek thought and life. Speaking on some point about the teaching of Greek, Brown says: "To me the learning of any blessed thing is a matter of little moment. Greek is not learned by

nineteen-twentieths of our Public School boys. But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational than other faiths or cults; the baptism of a regeneration which releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he gravely asked me to explain what I mean by original sin in such a connexion." Here again, is a characteristic sentence from FitzGerald. "It is wonderful how the sea brought up this appetite for Greek. It likes to be called áλacoa and TÓVTOS better than that wretched word 'sea' I am sure, and the Greeks (especially Eschylus, after Homer,) are full of sea-faring sounds and allusions. I think the murmurs of the Egean (if that is their sea) wrought itself into their language. How is it that the Islandic (which I read is our mother tongue) was not more Poluphloisboi-ic?"

Both returned over and over again to the ancient authors. FitzGerald sobbed over Sophocles. Brown de

clared that the tremendous parabasis, "Αγε δὴ φύσιν ἄνδρες ἀμαυρόβιοι, from THE BIRDS of Aristophanes made him tremble. To both Homer was a source of delight, "Sophocles has almost shaken my allegiance to Eschylus," cries FitzGerald. "Oh, these two Edipuses! but then that Agamemnon! Well, one shall be the Handel, t'other the Haydn, one the Michel Angelo and t'other the Raffaelle of Tragedy." And again: