Memorial thanking for being given the posts of Grand Master of the Silver Seal and Blue Ribbon, Deputy Privy Councillor, Left Cavalier Attendant-in-Ordinary, and Academician of the Bomun Pavilion同前謝表
云云。中樞地密。西省資華。邈若雲衢。謂一生之難到。蕞然蓬質。乃今日而得躋。退省僭踰。怳疑夢寐。伏念臣憃不諳事。直難離方。文拙速而訖無好詞。人或妄許。書泛觀而未至精析。世豈盡知。由此得其虛名。夫何逮於上聽。入官無有幾歲。歷位已踰列卿。一千載之遭時。實惟嘉會。十九年之典誥。可謂榮遊。三忝諍臣。再叨學士。以所閱詞林之淸選。尙足償男子之夙心。矧玆機密之司。本非凡庸之望。敢圖異渥遽及微軀。霜鬢兩垂。縱曰形容之枯槁。金衣雙引。忽爲途巷之光華。臣之得至於斯。物亦未之擬也。此蓋云云。發揮睿智。駕馭英雄。要開賢路之恢恢。幷採庸材之譾譾。臣敢不益研素履。更滌昏襟。所貢於君。唯有歲寒之節。苟渝此志。一如天鑑之明。云云。
And so forth. The Privy Council is a post of secrecy, and the Western Department (西省) is a grade that shines. Far off as a road among the clouds, I held it hard to reach in a whole lifetime; yet a petty stuff like a mugwort stalk has now climbed to it. Withdrawing and looking at how it overflows my measure, I am in a daze and suspect it is a dream.
Prostrate I consider that your servant, being foolish, is not practised in affairs, and being straight, finds it hard to leave off his corners. My writing is clumsy and no more than quick, with no fine phrases in it, yet people sometimes grant me their praise at random; my reading of books is cursory and has not come to splitting them finely, yet how should the world know all of that? Through this I got an empty name — and how is it that it reached even to the hearing above?
It is not many years since I entered office, yet the posts I have passed through already go beyond several ministerships (卿). To have met a season that comes once in a thousand years is truly a fair conjunction, and to have had charge of composing rescripts for nineteen years may be called a glorious roaming. Three times I defiled the place of an official who remonstrates, and twice I presumptuously received an academicianship. To have passed through the pure selections of the garden of letters is in itself ample to repay the mind a man held from the first.
How much more, this bureau charged with secrets is of itself not a thing an ordinary and mean man may hope for. Should I have dared to reckon that an extraordinary thickness would suddenly reach a lowly person? Frost-like hair hangs at both my temples, and though my appearance be dried and withered, golden robes lead the way on either side, and I have suddenly become the shining glory of road and street. That your servant has come to this is a thing that others too could not have reckoned.
This is, in the main, and so forth. You bring forth and spread out a bright wisdom and lead and employ heroes; and wishing to open wide and wide the road for worthy men, you have picked out even a shallow, shallow and mean timber along with the rest.
Shall your servant not dare to grind the keener what he has trodden from the first, and to wash out again his darkened breast? What he has to offer his sovereign is only a constancy that does not change even in the cold season; and if indeed he should change this purpose, the brightness of your heaven-like discernment will be watching all the while. And so forth.
Interlinear notes 1
中謝。
Here the words of thanks (中謝) are inserted.