Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/92

 take warning, and consider duration and matter as well as method and art. You boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself: that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you 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 or four inches round, by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but fly-bane 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