It was to be regretted that while evincing to the utmost his own contempt for what was "trifling and unworthy," it was impracticable for Collingwood to follow the example of his small midshipman and contentedly "leave a blockhead to his own nonsense." The realisation was torment to him that the very conditions of his service were dictated by those who had only a partial conception of his requirements, that his representations--his advice--were alike incessantly ignored, yet, none the less, that his tactics would subsequently be criticised pitilessly by men incapable of appreciating the difficulties with which he had been beset at the time of action. "I have lately had a most anxious and vexatious life," he wrote on May 16th, 1808, "since the Rochefort ships came into the Mediteranean and joined the Toulon, I have been in constant pursuit of them, but with bad intelligence and never knowing whether I was going right or not." Yet though compelled to act thus blindly, in that torturing uncertainty, the eyes of the world were upon him, and men, wise in the cognisance of after- events, would unhesitatingly judge him in the light of that knowledge. More than once in his letters to Mrs Stanhope did the pent up bitterness of this recognition find vent. On May 16th, 1807, he wrote:-- I am sorry to see Mr Pole's speech about the Rochefort Squadron and Sir R. Strachan, insinuating that he was well provided with everything--and that had he been in the station that it was expected he should have held, they could not have escaped. The fact is they came here destitute of everything, one of his ships had not 20 tons of water, and none of them were in a condition to follow the enemy to a distant point. Those insinuations, though they advance nothing positive, are disgusting--the season of the year and the situation of the fleet on such an errand were sufficient reasons. Let your Politicians beware how they sour the minds of such men--men whose lives are devoted to their country. If ever they accomplish that, your State would not be worth half-a-crown. And again, in December of that same year, on discovering that he, personally, had been the subject of brutal slander, his indignation burst forth:-- _December 29th, 1808._