ght,
nimble gods, menial servants to Jupiter: those are his ministering
instruments in all affairs below. They travel in a caravan, more or less
together, and are fastened to each other like a link of galley-slaves, by
a light chain, which passes from them to Jupiter's great toe: and yet, in
receiving or delivering a message, they may never approach above the
lowest step of his throne, where he and they whisper to each other
through a large hollow trunk. These deities are called by mortal men
accidents or events; but the gods call them second causes. Jupiter
having delivered his message to a certain number of these divinities,
they flew immediately down to the pinnacle of the regal library, and
consulting a few minutes, entered unseen, and disposed the parties
according to their orders.

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 ga