The defensive genius of Wellington
will be represented as that of a general particularly great in the
offensive. Talavera will be a victory. The Spanish Auxiliaries in the
Peninsula will be contemptible. No guns will be abandoned before Coruna,
but what are left at Coruna will be mentioned and re-embarked. The
character of Nelson will receive a curious sort of glutinous praise; Emma
Hamilton, not Naples, will be the stain upon his name; the Battle of
Trafalgar will prevent the invasion of England.
This is a lengthy but not unjust description of what this gentleman
would write; it is rubbish from beginning to end. It would sell, because
every word of it would foster in the reader the illusion that the
community of which he is a member is invincible under all circumstances,
that effort and self-denial and suffering are spared him alone out of
all mankind, and that a little pleasurable excitement, preferably that
to be obtained from his favourite game, is the chief factor in military
success.
I have omitted Alfred. Alfred in such a book will be the "teller of
truth"--but he will not go to Mass.
Given that the name is sufficiently well known, there is hardly any
limit to the sale of a book modelled upon these lines. Contrast with its
fate the fate of a book, written no matter how powerfully, that should
insist upon truths, no matter how valuable to the English people at the
present moment.
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