Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/282

230 Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left, Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself had torn. There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, hood-winked, and head-strong, yet giddy, and perpetually turning. About her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners. The goddess herself had claws like a cat; her head, and ears, and voice resembled those of an ass: her teeth fallen out before, her eyes turned inward, as if she looked only upon herself; her diet was the overflowing of her own gall; her spleen was so large, as to stand prominent, like a dug of the first rate, nor wanted excrescencies in form of teats, at which a crew of ugly monsters were greedily sucking; and, what is wonderful to conceive, the bulk of spleen increased faster, than the sucking could diminish it. Goddess, said Momus, can you sit idly here, while our devout worshipers the moderns, are this minute entering into a cruel battle, and perhaps now lying under the swords of their enemies; who then hereafter will ever sacrifice, or build altars to our divinities? haste therefore to the British isle, and if possible, prevent their destruction; while I make factions among the gods, and gain them over to our party.

Momus, having thus delivered himself, staid not for an answer, but left the goddess to her own resentment. Up she rose in a rage, and, as it is the form upon such occasions, began a soliloquy: It is I (said she) who give wisdom to infants and idiots; by me, children grow wiser than their parents; by me, beaux become politicians, and school-boys judges