Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/86

 extremely high, hot words passed on both sides, and ill blood was plentifully bred. Here a solitary Ancient, squeezed up among a whole shelf of Moderns, offered fairly to dispute the case, and to prove by manifest reasons that the priority was due to them from long possession, and in regard of their prudence, antiquity, and above all, their great merits towards the Moderns. But these denied the premises, and seemed very much to wonder how the Ancients could pretend to insist upon their antiquity, when it was so plain (if they went to that) that the Moderns were much the more ancient of the two. As for any obligations they owed to the Ancients, they renounced them all. Tis true," said they, "we are informed some few of our party have been so mean to borrow their subsistence from you, but the rest, infinitely the greater number, and 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 are of our own breeding, our arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own cutting-out and sewing." Plato was by chance upon the next shelf, and observing