Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/271

Rh make a progress through the whole library, examine the number and strength of their party, and concert their affairs. This messenger performed all things very industriously, and brought back with him a list of their forces in all fifty thousand, consisting chiefly of light-horse, heavy-armed foot, and mercenaries: whereof the foot, were in general but sorrily armed, and worse clad: their horses large, but extremely out of case and heart; however some few, by trading among the ancients, had furnished themselves tolerably enough.

While things were in this ferment, discord grew extremely high; hot words passed on both sides, and ill blood was plentifully bred. Here a solitary ancient, squeezed up among a whole shelf of moderns, offered fairly to dispute the case, and to prove by manifest reason, that the priority was due to them, from long possession; and in regard of their prudence, antiquity, and above all, their great merits toward the moderns. But these denied the premisses, and seemed very much to wonder, how the ancients could pretend to insist upon their antiquity, when it was so plain (if they went to that) that the moderns, were much the more ancient of the two. As for any obligations they owed to the ancients, they renounced them all. It is true, said they, we are informed, some few of our party have been so mean to borrow their subsistence from you; but the rest, infinitely the greater number (and especially