But the past is apt to look brighter than nature, above all to
those enamoured of their genealogy; and the ravages of Stephen and
Thomas must have always given matter of alarm.
What with the flattery of bishops and admirals, the fine company in
which he found himself at Portsmouth, his visits home, with their
gaiety and greatness of life, his visits to Mrs. Buckner (soon a
widow) at Windsor, where he had a pony kept for him, and visited at
Lord Melville's and Lord Harcourt's and the Leveson-Gowers, he
began to have 'bumptious notions,' and his head was 'somewhat
turned with fine people'; as to some extent it remained throughout
his innocent and honourable life.
In this frame of mind the boy was appointed to the CONQUEROR,
Captain Davie, humorously known as Gentle Johnnie. The captain had
earned this name by his style of discipline, which would have
figured well in the pages of Marryat: 'Put the prisoner's head in
a bag and give him another dozen!' survives as a specimen of his
commands; and the men were often punished twice or thrice in a
week.
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