or the future, it was
decreed that all polemics of the larger size should be hold fast with a
chain.

By this expedient, the public peace of libraries might certainly have
been preserved if a new species of controversial books had not arisen of
late years, instinct with a more malignant spirit, from the war above
mentioned between the learned about the higher summit of Parnassus.

When these books were first admitted into the public libraries, I
remember to have said, upon occasion, to several persons concerned, how I
was sure they would create broils wherever they came, unless a world of
care were taken; and therefore I advised that the champions of each side
should be coupled together, or otherwise mixed, that, like the blending
of contrary poisons, their malignity might be employed among themselves.
And it seems I was neither an ill prophet nor an ill counsellor; for it
was nothing else but the neglect of this caution which gave occasion to
the terrible fight that happened on Friday last between the Ancient and
Modern Books in the King's library. Now, because the talk of this battle
is so fresh in everybody's mouth, and the expectation of the town so
great to be informed in the particulars, I, being possessed of all
qualifications requisite in an historian, and retained by neither party,
have resolved to comply with the urgent importunity of my friends, by
writing down a full impartial account thereof.

The guardian of the regal library, a person of great valour, but chiefly
renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion for the Moderns,
and, in an engagement upon Parnassus, had vowed with his own hands to
knock down two of the ancient chiefs who guarded a small pass on the
superior rock, but, 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 extremely 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 t