It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to assume to myself the
glory of what belongs to his Majesty, and to his ministers, and to his
Parliament, and to the far greater majority of his faithful people: but
had I stood alone to counsel, and that all were determined to be guided
by my advice, and to follow it implicitly, then I should have been the
sole author of a war. But it should have been a war on my ideas and my
principles. However, let his Grace think as he may of my demerits with
regard to the war with Regicide, he will find my guilt confined to that
alone. He never shall, with the smallest color of reason, accuse me of
being the author of a peace with Regicide.--But that is high matter, and
ought not to be mixed with anything of so little moment as what may
belong to me, or even to the Duke of Bedford.
I have the honor to be, &c.
EDMUND BURKE.
FOOTNOTES:
[15]
Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec saevior ulla
Pestis et ira Deum Stygiis sese extulit undis.
Virginei volucrum vultus, foedissima ventris
Proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper
Ora fame.
Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that _he_ is Virgil) had
not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had conceived
her. Had he lived to our time, he would have been more overpowered with
the reality than he was with the imagination. Virgil only knew the
horror of the times before him.
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