Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/100

26 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, hoodwinked, and headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dullness 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 excrescences 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 worshippers, 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,