Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/84

endeavouring to climb up, was cruelly obstructed by his own unhappy weight and tendency towards his centre, a quality to which those of the Modern party are extreme subject; for being light-headed, they have in speculation a wonderful agility, and conceive nothing too high for them to mount, but in reducing to practice, discover a mighty pressure about their posteriors and their heels. Having thus failed in his design, the disappointed champion bore a cruel rancour to the Ancients, which he resolved to gratify by showing all marks of his favour to the books of their adversaries, and lodging them in the fairest apartments; when at the same time, whatever book had the boldness to own itself for an advocate of the Ancients, was buried alive in some obscure corner, and threatened, upon the least displeasure, to be turned out of doors. Besides, it so happened that about this time there was a strange confusion of place among all the books in the Library; for which several reasons were assigned. Some imputed it to a great heap of learned dust which a perverse wind blew off from a shelf of Moderns into the Keeper's eyes. Others affirmed he had a humour to pick the worms out of the Schoolmen, and swallow them fresh