in 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 is I" (said she) "who
give wisdom to infants and idiots; by me children grow wiser than their
parents, by me beaux become politicians, and schoolboys judges of
philosophy; by me sophisters debate and conclude upon the depths of
knowledge; and coffee-house wits, instinct by me, can correct an author's
style, and display his minutest errors, without understanding a syllable
of his matter or his language; by me striplings spend their judgment, as
they do their estate, before it comes into their hands. It is I who have
deposed wit and knowledge from their empire over poetry, and advanced
myself in their stead. And shall a few upstart Ancients dare to oppose
me? But come, my aged parent, and you, my children dear, and thou, my
beauteous sister; let us ascend my chariot, and haste to assist our
devout Moderns, who are now sacrificing to us a hecatomb, as I perceive
by that grateful smell which from thence reaches my nostrils."

The goddess and her train, having mounted the chariot, which was drawn by
tame geese, flew over infinite regions, shedding her influence in due
places, till at length she arrived at her beloved island of Britain; but
in hovering over its metropolis, what blessings did she not let fall upon
her seminaries of Gresham and Covent-garden! And now she reached the
fatal plain of St. James's library, at what time the two armies were upon
the point to engage; where, entering with all her caravan unseen, and
landing upon a case of shelves, now desert, but once inhabited by a
colony of virtuosos, she stayed awhile to observe the posture of both
armies.

But here the tender cares of a mother began to fill her thoughts and move
in her breast: for at the head of a troup of Modern bowmen she cast her
eyes upon her son Wotton, to whom the fates had assigned a very short
thread. Wotton, a young hero, whom an unknown father of mortal race
begot by stolen embraces with this goddess. He was the darling of his
mother above all her children, and she resolved to go and comfort him.
But first, according to the good old custom of deities, she cast about to
change her shape, for fear the divinity of her countenance might dazzle
his mortal sight and overcharge the rest of his senses. She therefore