The Life of Nelson, of which Messrs Clarke and M'Arthur were the authors, is confessedly the most full and authentic, and the fountain whence all subsequent biographers have drawn the materials for more light and less valuable histories. Those eye-witnesses, however, of Nelson's great achievements, viewed every trait in their hero's character with so much partiality, that they passed silently over a few acts of doubtful policy, or such as might in some degree dim the lustre of his bright renown. Friendship may extenuate their fault, but history claims equally a record of the great examples we should imitate, and of the errors we should avoid. A Memoir of Admiral Hardy affords a fortunate, and a fitting opportunity, for supplying many suppressions in our hero's history, that brave officer having borne no insignificant share in those exploits of his friend, which have been rewarded and immortalized by his grateful country: nor can there be a more appropriate accompaniment, or a more suitable tribute to the great man's memory, than to unite it with that of his chosen friend.

In the year 1836, the following beautiful little poem addressed to Admiral Hardy, then Governor of Greenwich Hospital, by the ill-fated Mrs. Maclean, better known in the world of letters by the signature of L.E.L. appeared in the Drawing-Room Scrap-Book.