NoT many men have more deserved that their biographies should be written than the gallant and accomplished author of the 'History of the Peninsular War.' Few who have passed beyond the reach of praise or censure need be better satisfied, if permitted to look up, with the manner in which their biographers have dealt with them. This is not only an agreeable but a valuable book. It is not, perhaps, a great book, nor does it profess to be so. It enunciates no leading principles, nor tries to establish a theory by making the incidents of the hero's life work, so to speak, to a particular end; but it tells a plain tale in the very best way in which a tale of the sort can be told, by letting the hero as much as possible describe himself. Of course, the lights in the picture are everywhere conspicuous, just as the shadows are not very deeply shaded. For example, the overflowings of a tender nature, the outpourings of a cultivated mind, meet us in every page, whereas our attention is rarely directed towards the counterpoises of these admirable qualities—the small jealousies, the aptitude to misunderstand, the readiness to take offence where no offence was meant, from which scarcely any man, certainly no Napier, could ever claim to be free. But, even in this respect, the biographer cannot be said to run into extremes. He may sometimes withhold the truth, or a part of the truth; he never perverts, or seems desirous of perverting it. Napier's defects of temper break out from time to time through the tender handling of this affectionate guardian of his fame; and if the consequences be attributed to a chivalrous sense of honour, or to natural affection, or to any other commendable cause, there are the

facts very plainly stated, and we may think about them just what we will. We repeat, then, that this is a very creditable performance, both to the editor, for so he modestly calls himself, and to the brave and highly-gifted man whom he has undertaken to describe. Of the latter, however, we propose to speak, not only as he is spoken of in the volumes now upon our table, but as we remember him in the flesh, a living, moving, earnest, generous, excitable, often a wrong-headed, always a self-opinionated, member of the great military profession.

William Napier was born at Celbridge House, near Castletown, Ireland, on the 17th of December 1785. He was the third son of Colonel the Hon. George Napier and Lady Sarah Lennox, the former the sixth in descent from the fifth Lord Napier, the latter the seventh daughter of the second Duke of Richmond. His father appears to have been what we should now call a Liberal in politics. He had served his country as a soldier faithfully, and did not refuse a good appointment in the line of his profession under the King's Government in Ireland; but he disapproved the system under which the Government was carried on, and refused to be elected to the Irish House of Commons, knowing it to be a very hotbed of corruption. When, however, the rebellion of 1798 broke out, Colonel Napier joined the party of law and order.

He fortified his house, armed his sons and his servantsWilliam being then little more than twelve years of age-and held the place till it was evident that he could render more effective service elsewhere. He then removed into Castletown, and showed himself as humane in restraining the violence of the yeomanry as he was vigorous

in resisting the approaches of the rebels.

The early education of the young Napiers seems to have been terribly neglected. William attended a day-school in the village of Celbridge, from which he played truant as often as he pleased, and where he learned nothing: the others scrambled through a course somewhat more regular, though we are not told where or under what circumstances. The three elder boys, George, Charles, and William, all entered the army-William at the age of little more than fourteen, the others probably younger. The consequence was, that, being backed by family influence on both sides of the House, they mounted the first rounds of the ladder rapidly, and failed to ascend the higher with equal rapidity merely because none of them had money wherewith to purchase. William obtained his first commission in the Irish Artillery in 1801. The Peace of Amiens reduced him to half-pay: in that condition he remained till towards the end of 1803. He was then posted to the Blues as a lieutenant; exchanged shortly afterwards into the 52d; did duty for a while in Kent under the eye of Sir John Moore; and finally, through the patronage of that distinguished officer, obtained a company in the 43d. Whatever active service he saw, he saw as a member of that magnificent regiment; of which, to his dying day, he was justly proud, and which will long continue to be traditionally proud of having had the honour of numbering William Napier among its officers.

be drummed out. But instead of submitting quietly to the punishment, he attacked the drummer, kicked in the head of the drum, and fought so fierce a battle against desperate odds, that the commandant rewarded his bravery by restoring him to his place in the ranks. His most familiar friend at the grammar-school of Celbridge was a vagabond called "Scully the tailor," whom he used to accompany on many an exploit, involving much fatigue and some danger. He read a great deal, though it was very long before he learned how to spell, delighting especially in the romances of chivalry. and-by he took to Plutarch's Lives, which continued to be a favourite with him ever after. In a word, he exhibited from his tenderest years the seeds of all those tastes and impulses which made him, when he arrived at the full vigour of his intellect, the brave, gifted, and self-contradicting man, whose aim was always excellent, though he not unfrequently missed it.

By

Though born and brought up among Whigs, Napier was thrown a good deal into the society of Tories, and found them, to his great surprise, by no means the arrogant and narrow-minded persons which he had been taught to consider them. Among others he became acquainted with Pitt, then in the zenith of his power; and a memorandum found among his papers gives a curious account of that great man in the retirement of private life :

"In 1804, being then over nineteen, and having been a brother officer of Charles Stanhope, Mr Pitt's nephew, I was through him invited to pass some time at Putney, in Mr Pitt's house. Arriving rather late, the great man was at dinner when I entered the room. He

immediately rose, and, giving me both hands, welcomed me with such a gentle good-nature that I instantly felt not at ease, for I was not at that time much troubled with what is called mauvaise with whom I might instantly become honte, but that I had a friend before me familiar to any extent within the bounds of good breeding. Lady Hester Stanhope also treated me with the most winning

kindness. All this produced a strange sensation, for I came determined to hold fast by my patriotism, though in presence of a wicked Minister, however polite or condescending he might be found. Brought up amidst Whigs, and used to hear Mr Pitt abused with all the virulence of Whigs, I looked upon him as an enemy of all good government; and my father, though not a Whig, had always condemned his war with France as an iniquitous and pernicious measure. Thus

primed with fierce recollections and patriotic resolves, I endeavoured to sustain my mind's hatred against the Minister, but in vain. All feelings sank except those of surprise and gratification at finding such a gentle, good-natured, agree able, and entertaining companion.'

He then goes on to tell how Mr Pitt delighted in rough play, and how Lady Hester Stanhope, Mr Stanhope, and himself attacked the Prime Minister, and succeeded, after a stout resistance, in blacking his face with corks. While the fight was going on, a servant announced that Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh were waiting for an audience. They were desired to wait-and actually did wait-in an anteroom, till the great Minister had ended his game, and removed the stains of defeat from his face.

"I had often been in Mr Fox's com

pany, not only when he was on a visit at my father's house in Clifton, but afterwards at his own house, or rather the Duke of York's house, then standing on the present site of Stafford House. His manners were totally different from Mr Pitt's, always agreeable, gentle, kind, and good-natured, but not attractive to young people, insomuch as he did not appear to take much interest in them, and rather to bear with than to like them; at least such was the impression he made on me. Whereas Mr Pitt's manner was that of joyous hilarity and delight at being able to unbend his mind, as it were, when he could do it safely. He was very attractive."

Napier received his baptism of fire in the expedition against Copenhagen. His regiment formed part of the division of which Sir Arthur Wellesley assumed the command; and the account which he gives, both of the enemy and of the troops employed against them, is

not quite in accord with the opinions heretofore entertained on these subjects. We account for this, at least in part, by observing that it was one of Napier's idiosyncrasies at that time to be more lavish of censure than of praise in his letters to friends at a distance. For example, he writes of the commanding officers of his own regiment that, in conducting the embarkation at Ramsgate, "they seemed to vie with the transport masters and ministers who can make the most confusion;" and concludes with the prayer,

66 Heaven bless their bodies, their heads cannot be hurt!" Equally decided is the view which he takes of the incompetency of the Staff who directed the landing of the troops in Zealand. "Some of our generals," he observes, "have dreadful thick skulls, for I never saw any fair in Ireland so confused as the landing. Had they (the Danes) opposed us, the remains of the army would have been on the way to England." Even of the private soldiers he had as yet learned to think and speak only as "the greatest scoundrels possible," while the operations in which they were engaged could be no otherwise described than as "a compound of stupidity, vanity, and villany." We cannot help feeling that the biographers who have shown such excellent judgment in dealing with Napier's correspondence at a later period of his life, would have done well to omit some at least of these not very well-considered expressions. They evidently dropped from his pen without due thought, and scarcely deserved to be reproduced after an interval of sixty years.

Returned from Copenhagen, we find Napier quartered successively at Maldon and Colchester in Essex. He has been advised to become a student in the Military College or Staff School, then at High Wickham, and expresses himself well disposed to do so, "for the sake of the French, drawing, and German masters." masters." But, like a true soldier

as he is, he guards against three possible contingencies-first, that he shall not be prevented thereby from going with his regiment, should it be sent to the seat of war; second, that he should be at liberty to leave the school at any moment, should he find it less useful to him than he expected; and, lastly, that he should not be put to expense, which he cannot afford, in providing himself with new and costly uniforms. Meanwhile he gets into a row at Maldon; knocks people down in a public lecture-room; is prosecuted, and prosecutes in his turn, with what results we are not informed. But worse evils than this befall him. He had attained the rank of captain when barely nineteen years of age; he is now only twenty three, yet he bitterly complains that "the worst regiment he could possibly have got into is the 43d, and that he never can have any chance of promotion or real service in it." The chance of real service was, however, nearer than his impatience allowed him to anticipate. Sir John Moore had begun his march from Portugal, and the 43d, being placed with other regiments under the command of Sir David Baird, was sent to the north of Spain, where in due time it joined the main army.

Napier was not present at the battle of Corunna. He served with what was called the Reserve-a strange misnomer when applied to troops which covered the operations of all the rest, and were daily engaged with the enemy. After defending the passage of the Esla, and helping to destroy the bridge, Napier fell back with his company to Benevento, marching through sleet and snow upwards of thirty miles a day, yet leaving only a few stragglers behind. He met with a characteristic adventure during that march :

"Having stopped half a mile from my company to aid an exhausted soldier, I was attacked by some marauders of the 3d German Hussars, and forced to defend myself with the musket and bayonet of

the soldier; nor should I have escaped with life, had not a rifleman started up from behind a wall and aided me. The ped a spring-cart with two strong horses, cause of this attack was my having stopwhich these fellows had filled with plunder, and my insisting on their taking up my exhausted soldier. This they resisted with violence, and endeavoured to ride over me; but I finally made one of them a prisoner, and brought him up to the column, where Colonel William

Campbell, A.D.C., took charge of him, and delivered him to the general provost guard."

At Vigo the reserve embarked, and Napier, on his return home, accepted the appointment of aidede-camp to his uncle the Duke of Richmond, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. No sooner, however, was the 43d ordered abroad again, than he resumed his duties as regimental officer, and took part in that extraordinary movement which brought the Light Division just too late for the battle upon the field of Talavera, after it had compassed sixty miles, wellnigh without a halt. It was a strain upon his powers which Napier could not bear, coming as he did straight from the luxurious living of the home staff. He was seized with pleurisy, dropped down upon the march, and was carried into Placencia, where his medical attendants bled him almost to death. He was lying in the extremity of weakness when a rumour came in of the defeat of Sir Arthur Wellesley, and the advance of Soult upon Placencia. He sprang out of bed, walked forty miles to Oropesa, got horses there, and rode on to Talavera. At the city gate he fainted, and some Spaniards, mistaking him for a Frenchman in consequence of the dress which he wore, would have put him to death, had not an officer of the 45th regiment happened to come up. Byand-by his brother George heard of the state in which he was, and, arriving with a mule, carried him to the Light Division, then at the outposts of the army.

In the various operations which followed the retreat from Talavera,

William Napier shared. He had a touch of the Guadiana fever in Campo Major, but shook it off. He crossed the Tagus to oppose Massena; took part in Craufurd's fight on the Coa, where he was shot through the left hip; and was present at Busaco, with the wound still open. In this latter action, his brothers Charles and George were both wounded, the former desperately in the face: and there also their cousin Charles, the late admiral and member of Parliament, was shot in the knee. They were indeed a race of heroes these Napiers, and came in for their own share of hard knocks as well as of glory. Take in proof of this statement the following account of the combat of Cazal Noval, as the historian of the Peninsular War has given it :

"When I arrived at a certain round hill under fire, which I judged a good point of support, I halted four companies to watch our flanks, and with the two others hastily descended a deep ravine on my right, to join the left of the 52d, whose charging shout I had just heard on that side, though an intervening ridge prevented my seeing them. Unfortunately for me, this charge was partial-a momentary effort to extricate the regiment from a dangerous crisis. Thus, with two companies, I suddenly found myself in the midst of the enemy; but I arrived just in time to save Cap

tain Dobbs, 52d, and two men who were cut off from the regiment. The French were gathering fast about us; we could scarcely retreat, and Dobbs agreed with me that boldness would be our best chance; so we called upon the men to follow, and, jumping over a wall which had given us cover, charged the enemy with a shout, which sent the nearest back. But then occurred the most painful event that ever happened to me. Only the two men of the 52d followed us, and we four arrived, unsupported, at a second wall, close to a considerable body of French, who rallied, and began to close upon us. Their fire was very violent, but the wall gave cover. I was, however, stung by the backwardness of my men, and told Dobbs I would save him, or lose my life, by bringing up the two companies; he entreated me not, and said I could not move two paces from the wall and

live. Yet I did go back to the first wall, escaped the fire, and, reproaching the men, gave them the word again, and returned to Dobbs, who was now upon alone! The soldiers had indeed crossed the point of being taken; but I returned the wall in their front, but kept edging away to the right, to avoid the heavy fire. Being now maddened by this se cond failure, I made another attempt, but I had not made ten paces when a shot struck my spine, and the enemy very ungenerously continued to fire at me when I was down. I escaped death by dragging myself by my hands, for my lower extremities were paralysed, towards a small heap of stones which was in the midst of the field, and thus covering my head and shoulders. Not less Now, however, Captain Lloyd, and my than twenty shots struck this heap. own company, and some of the 52d came up at that moment, and the French were driven away."

In this same fight his brother George had his arm broken by a bullet, while carrying his mortallywounded subaltern off the field under a heavy fire. And it was after this fight that his brother Charles, in hastening up with his dreadful Busaco wound unhealed to the front of the army, met the two litters carrying his brothers, of whom he was informed that William was mortally wounded. The circumstance is related in the 'Life of Sir Charles Napier' by that brother whom he supposed he was then beholding for the last time.

It would be unfair towards a fine

old soldier, the present Major or Military Commandant of Chelsea Hospital, one of the few survivors of that memorable day, were we to omit his version of that story.

I was

"My first interview with my dear departed friend, Sir William Napier," says Sir John Morryllion Wilson, was on the battle-field of Cazal Noval. then captain of the grenadier company of the Royal Scots. We were advancing towards the enemy, when I saw an officer at the distance of about eighty yards stretched on the ground under an olive tree to the right of my company. Believing him to be either dead or badly wounded, I ran towards him and said, I hope you are not dangerously wounded,' at which he shook his head. 'Have you been attended to by a surgeon?' He