Channel Fleet, whose commander, Lord Bridport, soon after retired. The
Mediterranean was naturally attributed to a vice-admiral, and one of
some seniority; but Nelson was now a rear-admiral of the Red, the
highest color, not far, therefore, from promotion, and it would not be
an unreasonable conclusion that the same ministry which had been
fortunate enough to choose him for the campaign of the Nile, might now
prefer to entrust to such able and enterprising hands the great
interests of the Mediterranean at large.

It was not, however, to be so. Whether moved only by routine
considerations of rank, as afterwards at Copenhagen, or whether his
relations with the Sicilian Court, his conduct of affairs at Naples,
and his collisions with Keith, had excited doubt of the normal balance
of his mind, the Admiralty decided to send Keith back, and Nelson,
greatly to his mortification, was kept in charge only till the end of
the year. As St. Vincent had always left him practically independent,
he had known no superior since he entered the Straits, except during
Keith's brief period of succession, when leagues of sheltering
distance left him free, as has been seen, to defy orders when not in
accordance with his views; and he found it impossible now to bow his
will to the second place on the very field of his glory. To this
feeling, natural in any man, and doubly so to one of Nelson's quick
susceptibilities, at once stimulated and soothed by the lavish
adulation of the past year, was added personal dislike to his new
superior, aggravated, if not originated, by the clash of judgment over
the relative importance of Naples and Minorca. "I have serious
thoughts of giving up active service," he wrote to Minto; "Greenwich
Hospital seems a fit retreat for me after being _evidently_ thought
unfit to command in the Mediterranean." Complaints of Keith's lack of
consideration then abound, nor does he seem to be conscious that there