Sighing, he struck his breast, and cried, "Alas! Shall a three decker's huge unwieldy mass, 'Mid croud of foes, stand stupidly at bay, And by rude force, like Ajax, gain the day? No!--let Invention!------"
And at the moment his Lordship becomes pregnant, and is delivered of a project that solves every difficulty.
The reader will recollect Commodore Johnstone's discovery, that "the aliquot parts being equal to the whole, two frigates are indisputably tantamount to a line of battle-ship; nay, that they are superior to it, as being more manageable." Now, a sloop being more docile than a frigate, and a cutter more versatile than a sloop, &c. &c. is it not obvious that the _force_ of any vessel must be in an inverse ratio to its _strength_? Hence, Lord Buckingham most properly observes,
Our light arm'd fleet will spread a general panic, For speed is power, says Pinchbeck, the mechanic.
The only objection to this system, is the trite professional idea, that ships having been for some years past in the habit of sailing directly forwards, must necessarily form and fight _in a straight line_; but according to Lord Buckingham's plan, the line of battle in future is to be like the line of beauty, _waving_ and _tortuous_; so that if the French, who confessedly are the most imitative people on the earth, should wish to copy our manoeuvres, their larger ships will necessarily be thrown into confusion, and consequently be beaten.
But as Sir Gregory Page Turner finely says, "infallibility is not given to human nature." Our prodigious Marquis, therefore, diffident of his talents, and not yet satisfied with his plan, rakes into that vast heap of knowledge, which he has collected from reading, and forms into one _compost_, all the naval inventions of every age and country, in order to meliorate and fertilize the colder genius of Great Britain. "In future," says the drummer,
All ages, and all countries, shall combine, To form our navy's variegated line. Like some vast whale, or all-devouring shark, High in the midst shall rise old Noah's _ark_: Or, if that ark be lost, of equal bulk, Our novel Noah rigs--the _Justice Hulk_: An Argo next, the peerless Catherine sends, The gorgeous gift of her _Mingrelian_ friends: