Meanwhile Momus, fearing the worst, and calling to mind an ancient
prophecy which bore no very good face to his children the Moderns,
bent his flight to the region of a malignant deity called
Criticism. She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova
Zembla; there Momus found her extended in her den, upon the spoils
of numberless volumes, half devoured. At her right hand sat
Ignorance, her father and 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, hood-
winked, and head-strong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About
her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness 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; while I
make factions among the gods, and gain them over to our party."

Momus, having thus delivered himself, stayed not for an answer, but
left the goddess to her own resentment. Up she rose in a rage,
and, as it is the form on such occasions, began a soliloquy: "It