Note 15 — A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD ON THE ATTACKS MADE UPON MR. BURKE AND HIS PENSION, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, BY THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE, EARLY IN THE PRESENT SESSION OF PARLIAMENT. 1796.
Reading edition
Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec sævior ulla Pestis et ira Deûm Stygiis sese extulit undis. Virginei volucrum vultus, fœdissima ventris Proluvies, uncæque 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. Had he lived to see the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he would have had more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them.