may be imputed to their being forgotten, or neglected, or hid in a
corner. For anything else of genuine that the Moderns may pretend
to, I cannot recollect; unless it be a large vein of wrangling and
satire, much of a nature and substance with the spiders' poison;
which, however they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is
improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin
of the age. As for us, the Ancients, we are content with the bee,
to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice:
that is to say, our flights and our language. For the rest,
whatever we have got has been by infinite labour and search, and
ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that,
instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to till our hives
with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of
things, which are sweetness and light."

It is wonderful to conceive the tumult arisen among the books upon
the close of this long descant of AEsop: both parties took the
hint, and heightened their animosities so on a sudden, that they
resolved it should come to a battle. Immediately the two main
bodies withdrew, under their several ensigns, to the farther parts
of the library, and there entered into cabals and consults upon the
present emergency. The Moderns were in very warm debates upon the
choice of their leaders; and nothing less than the fear impending
from their enemies could have kept them from mutinies upon this
occasion. The difference was greatest among the horse, where every
private trooper pretended to the chief command, from Tasso and
Milton to Dryden and Wither. The light-horse were commanded by
Cowley and Despreaux. There came the bowmen under their valiant
leaders, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes; whose strength was such
that they could shoot their arrows beyond the atmosphere, never to