A brilliant biography of Nelson

A PORTRAIT OF LORD NELSON. by Oliver Warner (Chatto & Windt's. 30s.).
,THE first difficulty in writing a -1 biography of Nelson is the wealth of the material. Nearly all his letters and papers were preserved; his own taste for publicity and his contacts with artists and writers, the notoriety of Lady Hamilton, all swelled the account because writers took sides either with Fanny or Emma. Bet, more than all, there is the immensity and the perpetuity of his fame, for his active career between 1797 and 1805 belongs to world history, and, as with Napoleon and Byron, everyone who ever met Nelson remembered.
Mr. Oliver Warner, who is specially qualified, knows it alt and has succeeded brilliantls. Nelson's genius and achievement. his intricate character. his incredible bravery and his enormous vanity, his queer streak of piety and his frantic determination to win celebrity are all skilfully delineated. Nor is it merely a chronicle of war. The family and domestic side ieceives equal treatment and we even meet Torn Allen, the confidential mess steward who knew to a drop how much wine his master could safely take.
Naples incident
RELATING the Naples episode,
Mr. Warner admits that Nelson's conduct was " shockingly unfortunate." Making himself the instrument of Ferdinand IV's vertsteance. he repudiated the capitulation granted to the republican rebels by Cardinal Ruffo and brought death to people who had believed themselses safe. It startled the English society of that day, and George III did not allow him to forget it.
The difficult chapter " Home Corning." in which the loud, possessive mistress meets the refined, composed and affectionate wife, is written with a quiet dignity not always used on such subjects. An appendix gives the first detailed list of the portraits from life, and the illustrations are excellent. Here we have a dozen. beginning with J. F. Rigaud's charmin.g picture of the young lieutenant and ending with the crypt of St. Paul's and the black marble sarcophagus originally designed by Benedetto da Rovezzano for Cardinal Wolsey.
J. J. DWYER.