Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/83

 create broils wherever they came, unless a world of care were taken, and therefore I advised that the champions of each side should be coupled together, or otherwise mixed, that like the blending of contrary poisons, their malignity might be employed among themselves. And it seems I was neither an ill prophet nor an ill counsellor; for it was nothing else but the neglect of this caution, which gave occasion to the terrible fight that happened on Friday last, between the Ancient and Modern books in the King's Library. Now because the talk of this battle is so fresh in everybody's mouth, and the expectation of the town so great to be informed in the particulars, I, being possessed of all qualifications requisite in an historian, and retained by neither party, have resolved to comply with the urgent importunity of my friends, by writing down a full impartial account thereof.

The guardian of the Regal Library—a person of great valour, but chiefly renowned for his humanity—had been a fierce champion for the Moderns, and in an engagement upon Parnassus had vowed with his own hands to knock down two of the Ancient chiefs, who guarded a small pass on the superior rock; but