Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?1
By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?
Note 2. In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.Edward Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xlviii.
Heart to conceive the understanding to direct, or the hand to execute. From Junius, letter xxxvii. Feb. 14, 1770. [back]