John Morley: “We may, indeed, be sure that neither of these two moods can ever hold a place in the breast of a commanding orator.”

True merit once resigned, No trick nor feint will serve as well.

Yet he had prepared this document for the very purpose of tempting France into a declaration of war.

For this line of contention he was called an “unpatriotic trumpet of disaster,” and other names commonly bestowed on all men in all countries who venture to say that what chances for the hour to be a popular war is a blunder.

A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.