In 1782 Clerk of Eldin had privately printed his _Essay_, which contained suggestions for an attack from to-windward, with the line broken up into echeloned divisions in close resemblance to the disposition laid down in Nelson's memorandum.

In 1790 this part of his work was published.

Meanwhile an even more elaborate and well-reasoned assault on the whole principle of the single line had appeared in France.

In 1787 the Vicomte de Grenier, a French flag officer, had produced his _L'Art de la Guerre sur Mer_, in which he boldly attacked the law laid down by De Grasse, that so long as men-of-war carried their main armament in broadside batteries there could never be any battle order but the single line ahead.

In Grenier's view the English had already begun to discard it, and he insists that, in all the actions he had seen in the last two wars, the English, knowing the weakness of the single line, had almost always concentrated on part of it without regular order.