Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/272

220 especially we French and English) were so far from stooping to so base an example, that there never passed, till this very hour, six words between us. For, our horses were of our own breeding, our arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own cutting out and sewing. Plato was by chance up on the next shelf, and observing those that spoke to be in the ragged plight mentioned a while ago; their jades lean and foundered, their weapons of rotten wood, their armour rusty, and nothing but rags underneath; he laughed loud and in his pleasant way swore, by he believed them.

Now, the moderns had not proceeded in their late negotiation with secrecy enough, to escape the notice of the enemy. For those advocates, who had begun the quarrel, by setting first on foot the dispute of precedency, talked so loud of coming to a battle, that Temple happened to overhear them, and gave immediate intelligence to the ancients; who, thereupon, drew up their scattered troops together, resolving to act upon the defensive: upon which, several of the moderns fled over to their party, and among the rest, Temple himself. This, Temple, having been educated and long conversed among the ancients, was, of all the moderns, their greatest favourite, and became their greatest champion.

Things were at this crisis, when a material accident fell out. For, upon the highest corner of a large window, there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded