18 COLLATERAL EVIDENCE

which, chiefly for his own education in his profession, records freely his current impressions, and leaves them to be judged by the future result. Thus his view of actions, in which he as a matter of duty warmly supports his superiors, is often, as it here appears, not at all the same as theirs. This may be seen in the case of General Dundas, with whom he was on the most cordial terms.

That his resolutions, whether always infallible or not, were formed on the principles which Napier attributed to him, will, I think, be sufficiently apparent. Nevertheless, in the "rough and tumble" of the world it is not given to man to avoid sometimes appearing, to those whose judgment he would value, in a light which does justice neither to them nor to him. Not without "dust and heat" is the "immortal garland to be run for." As there was much dust and much heat during the Corsican period, it will be right to give the views of others on some of the questions involved in these transactions.

The two works which should be read side by side with Moore's Journal on the Corsican period are Captain Mahan's "Life of Nelson," and the Countess of Minto's "Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, first Earl of Minto." Captain Mahan's great book deals very fully with that all-important incident in the course of our war against the French Revolution, the gaining and losing of Corsica. He has shown that the retention or the loss of the island, at a time when we had no other foothold in the Mediterranean, meant the maintenance of our power in that sea or its abandonment, and that therefore our pressure upon France, for which the command of the Mediterranean was essential, depended on this question. The cir-