subsistence from
you, but the rest, infinitely the greater number (and especially we
French and English), were so far from stooping to so base an example,
that there never passed, till this very hour, six words between us. For
our horses were of our own breeding, our arms of our own forging, and our
clothes of our own cutting out and sewing." Plato was by chance up on
the next shelf, and observing those that spoke to be in the ragged plight
mentioned a while ago, their jades lean and foundered, their weapons of
rotten wood, their armour rusty, and nothing but rags underneath, he
laughed loud, and in his pleasant way swore, by ---, he believed them.

Now, the Moderns had not proceeded in their late negotiation with secrecy
enough to escape the notice of the enemy. For those advocates who had
begun the quarrel, by setting first on foot the dispute of precedency,
talked so loud of coming to a battle, that Sir William Temple happened to
overhear them, and gave immediate intelligence to the Ancients, who
thereupon drew up their scattered troops together, resolving to act upon
the defensive; upon which, several of the Moderns fled over to their
party, and among the rest Temple himself. This Temple, having been
educated and long conversed among the Ancients, was, of all the Moderns,
their greatest favourite, and became their greatest champion.

Things were at this crisis when a material accident fell out. For upon
the highest corner of a large window, there dwelt a certain spider,
swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers
of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like
human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle
were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes, all after the modern way of
fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the
centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own
lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally
out upon all occasions of prey or defence. In this mansion he had for
some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by
swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below; when it was
the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose
curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he
went, where, expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight upon one
of the outward walls of the spider's cit