Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/276

224 are somewhat obliged for an increase of both, to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent portion of dirt, does not fail of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled from below; and one insect, furnishes you with a share of poison, to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this; whether is the nobler being of the two, that, which by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all, but flybane and a cobweb: or that, which by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgement, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax.

This dispute was managed with such eagerness, clamour, and warmth, that the two parties of books, in arms below, stood silent awhile, waiting in suspense what would be the issue; which was not long undetermined: for the bee, grown impatient at so much loss of time, fled straight away to a bed of roses, without looking for a reply; and left the spider, like an orator collected in himself, and just prepared to burst out.

It happened upon this emergency, that Æsop broke silence first. He had been of late most barbarously treated by a strange effect of the regent's humanity, who had torn off his title-page, sorely defaced one half of his leaves, and chained him fast among a shelf of moderns. Where soon discovering how high the quarrel was likely to proceed, he tried all his arts, and turned himself to a thousand forms. At length in the borrowed shape of an ass, the gent