His loss was the greatest grief to me. There is nothing like him for gallantry and conduct in battle. It was not a foolish passion for fighting, for he was the most gentle of human creatures, and often lamented the cruel necessity of it; but it was a principle of duty, which all men owed their country in defence of their laws and liberty. He valued his life only as it enabled him to do good, and would not preserve it by any act he thought unworthy. He wore four stars upon his breast and could not be prevailed to put on a plain coat, scorning what he thought a shabby precaution: but that perhaps cost him his life, for his dress made him the general mark. He is gone, and I shall lament him as long as I live. To Walter Stanhope he wrote:-- _Queen, March 6th., 1806._ I thank you and Mrs Stanhope most sincerely for your kind congratulations on the success of the Fleet, and the high honour his Majesty has been graciously pleased to confer on me in testimony of his approbation, which I am sure will be very gratifying to all my friends, and that you will enjoy it as much as any of them. I have indeed had a severe loss in the death of my excellent friend Lord Nelson. Since the year 73 we have been on terms of the greatest intimacy--chance has thrown us very much together in service and on many occasions we have acted in concert--there is scarce a Naval subject that has not been the subject of our discussion, so that all his opinions were familiar to me; and so firmly founded in principles of honour, of justice, of attachment to his country, at the same time so entirely divested of everything interesting to himself, that it was impossible to consider him but with admiration. He liked fame and was open to flattery so that people sometimes got about him who were unworthy of him. He is a loss to his country that cannot easily be replaced. Thus in a few words, the very reticence of which enhances their significance, did Collingwood sum up the greatness and the weakness of Nelson. Gifted, brilliant, faulty by reason of his emotional temperament, strong by reason of his enthusiasm--his all-enthralling sense of duty, Nelson flashed like a meteor across the ken of his generation to vanish in a haze of glory. He died at the psychological moment--his life, according to this account, the sacrifice to a dazzling folly. And the man whom he loved--the man whose sterling worth is swamped by Nelson's more vivid personality, was left to battle on alone through the weary years. The intoxication of victory did not blind Collingwood to the colossal task which yet lay before him. To Stanhope he wrote with undiminished anxiety:--