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Lecture I. - SesamePart I. - Sesame: Of Kings` Treasuries
Part I. - Sesame: Of Kings` Treasuries
Sesame ^1
[Footnote 1: This lecture was given December 6, 1864, at Rusholme Town Hall,
Manchester, in aid of a library fund for the Rusholme Institute.]
"You shall each have a cake of sesame, - and ten pound."
Lucian: The Fisherman.
My first duty this evening is to ask your pardon for the ambiguity of
title under which the subject of lecture has been announced: for indeed I am
not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to
contain wealth; but of quite another order of royalty, and another material of
riches, than those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to ask your
attention for a little while on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in
taking a friend to see a favorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most
to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we unexpectedly reached
the best point of view by winding paths. But - and as also I have heard it
said, by men practised in public address, that hearers are never so much
fatigued as by the endeavor to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to his
purposes, - I will take the slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly that
I want to speak to you about the treasures hidden in books; and about the way
we find them, and the way we lose them. A grave subject, you will say; and a
wide one! Yes; so wide that I shall make no effort to touch the compass of it.
I will try only to bring before you a few simple thoughts about reading, which
press themselves upon me every day more deeply, as I watch the course of the
public mind with respect to our daily enlarging means of education; and the
answeringly wider spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of literature.
2. It happens that I have practically some connection with schools for
different classes of youth; and I receive many letters from parents respecting
the education of their children. In the mass of these letters I am always
struck by the precedence which the idea of a "position in life" takes above
all other thoughts in the parents` - more especially in the mothers` - minds.
"The education befitting such and such a station in life" - this is the
phrase, this the object, always. They never seek, as far as I can make out, an
education good in itself; even the conception of abstract rightness in
training rarely seems reached by the writers. But an education "which shall
keep a good coat on my son`s back; - which shall enable him to ring with
confidence the visitors` bell at double-belled doors; which shall result
ultimately in establishment of a double-belled door to his own house; - in a
word, which shall lead to `advancement in life`; - this we pray for on bent
knees - and this is all we pray for." It never seems to occur to the parents
that there may be an education which, in itself, is advancement in life; -
that any other than that may perhaps be advancement in Death; and that this
essential education might be more easily got, or given, than they fancy, if
they set about it in the right way; while it is for no price, and by no favor,
to be got, if they set about it in the wrong.
3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective in the mind of
this busiest of countries, I suppose the first - at least that which is
confessed with the greatest frankness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus
to youthful exertion - is this of "Advancement in Life." May I ask you to
consider with me what this idea practically includes, and what it should
include?
Practically, then, at present, "advancement in life" means, becoming
conspicuous in life; - obtaining a position which shall be acknowledged by
others to be respectable or honorable. We do not understand by this
advancement in general, the mere making of money, but the being known to have
made it; not the accomplishment of any great aim, but the being seen to have
accomplished it. In a word, we mean the gratification of our thirst for
applause. That thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first
infirmity of weak ones; and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive influence
of average humanity: the greatest efforts of the race have always been
traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of
pleasure.
4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. I want you only to
feel how it lies at the root of effort; especially of all modern effort. It is
the gratification of vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil, and balm
of repose; so closely does it touch the very springs of life that the wounding
of our vanity is always spoken of (and truly) as in its measure mortal; we
call it "mortification," using the same expression which we should apply to a
gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And although few of us may be physicians
enough to recognize the various effect of this passion upon health and energy,
I believe most honest men know, and would at once acknowledge, its leading
power with them as a motive. The seaman does not commonly desire to be made
captain only because he knows he can manage the ship better than any other
sailor on board. He wants to be made captain that he may be called captain.
The clergyman does not usually want to be made a bishop only because he
believes no other hand can, as firmly as his, direct the diocese through its
difficulties. He wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be called "My
Lord." And a prince does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject to gain,
a kingdom, because he believes that no one else can as well serve the State,
upon its throne; but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as "Your
Majesty," by as many lips as may be brought to such utterance.
5. This, then, being the main idea of "advancement in life," the force of
it applies, for all of us, according to our station, particularly to that
secondary result of such advancement which we call "getting into good
society." We want to get into good society, not that we may have it, but that
we may be seen in it; and our notion of its goodness depends primarily on its
conspicuousness.
Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put what I fear you may
think an impertinent question? I never can go on with an address unless I
feel, or know, that my audience are either with me or against me: I do not
much care which, in beginning; but I must know where they are; and I would
fain find out, at this instant, whether you think I am putting the motives of
popular action too low. I am resolved, to-night, to state them low enough to
be admitted as probable; for whenever, in my writings on Political Economy, I
assume that a little honesty, or generosity - or what used to be called
"virtue" - may be calculated upon as a human motive of action, people always
answer me, saying, "You must not calculate on that: that is not in human
nature: you must not assume anything to be common to men but acquisitiveness
and jealousy; no other feeling ever has influence on them, except
accidentally, and in matters out of the way of business." I begin,
accordingly, to-night low in the scale of motives; but I must know if you
think me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask those who admit the love of
praise to be usually the strongest motive in men`s minds in seeking
advancement, and the honest desire of doing any kind of duty to be an entirely
secondary one, to hold up their hands. (About a dozen hands held up - the
audience, partly not being sure the lecturer is serious, and, partly, shy of
expressing opinion.) I am quite serious - I really do want to know what you
think; however, I can judge by putting the reverse question. Will those who
think that duty is generally the first, and love of praise the second, motive,
hold up their hands? (One hand reported to have been held up, behind the
lecturer.) Very good; I see you are with me, and that you think I have not
begun too near the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting farther
question, I venture to assume that you will admit duty as at least a secondary
or tertiary motive. You think that the desire of doing something useful, or
obtaining some real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, though a
secondary one, in most men`s desire of advancement. You will grant that
moderately honest men desire place and office, at least in some measure, for
the sake of beneficent power; and would wish to associate rather with sensible
and well-informed persons than with fools and ignorant persons, whether they
are seen in the company of the sensible ones or not. And finally, without
being troubled by repetition of any common truisms about the preciousness of
friends, and the influence of companions, you will admit, doubtless, that
according to the sincerity of our desire that our friends may be true, and our
companions wise - and in proportion to the earnestness and discretion with
which we choose both, will be the general chances of our happiness and
usefulness.
6. But, granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our
friends well, how few of us have the power! or, at least, how limited, for
most, is the sphere of choice! Nearly all our associations are determined by
chance, or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know
whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most
need them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath,
only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse
of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man
of science, and be answered good-humoredly. We may intrude ten minutes` talk
on a cabinet minister, answered probably with words worse than silence, being
deceptive; or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a
bouquet in the path of a Princess, or arresting the kind glance of a Queen.
And yet these momentary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions,
and powers in pursuit of little more than these; while, meantime, there is a
society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we
like, whatever our rank or occupation; - talk to us in the best words they can
choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it
is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long, -
kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain
it! - in those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our bookcase shelves, -
we make no account of that company, - perhaps never listen to a word they
would say, all day long!
7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the apathy
with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying us to listen
to them; and the passion with which we pursue the company, probably of the
ignoble who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this,
- that we can see the faces of the living men, and it is themselves, and not
their sayings, with which we desire to become familiar. But it is not so.
Suppose you never were to see their faces; - suppose you could be put behind a
screen in the statesman`s cabinet, or the prince`s chamber, would you not be
glad to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond the
screen? And when the screen is only a little less, folded in two instead of
four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a
book, and listen all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied,
determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men; - this station of audience,
and honorable privy council, you despise!
8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living people talk of
things that are passing, and are of immediate interest to you, that you desire
to hear them. Nay; that cannot be so, for the living people will themselves
tell you about passing matters much better in their writings than in their
careless talk. But I admit that this motive does influence you, so far as you
prefer those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring writings, -
books, properly so called. For all books are divisible into two classes, the
books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this distinction - it is
not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and
the good one that does. It is a distinction of species. There are good books
for the hour, and good ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones
for all time. I must define the two kinds before I go farther.
9. The good book of the hour, then, - I do not speak of the bad ones, -
is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise
converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need
to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend`s present talk would be.
These bright accounts of travels; good-humored and witty discussions of
question; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact -
telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history,; all
these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more
general, are a peculiar possession of the present age; we ought to be entirely
thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of
them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place
of true books: for strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely
letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend`s letter may be delightful, or
necessary, to-day: whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The
newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assuredly it is not
reading for all day. So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which
gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, and weather last year
at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real
circumstances of such and such events, however valuable for occasional
reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a "book" at all, nor in
the real sense, to be "read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a
written thing; and written, not with the view of mere communication, but of
permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak
to thousands of people at once; if he could, he would - the volume is mere
multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India, if you
could, you would; you write instead: that is mere conveyance of voice. But a
book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but
to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be
true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet
said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it,
clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his
life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him; -
this, the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and
earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever; engrave
it on rock, if he could; saying, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate,
and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapor
and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your
memory." That is his "writing"; it is, in his small human way, and with
whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture.
That is a "Book."
10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so written.
But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in
kindness? or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise
people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever
bit of a wise man`s work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his
book, or his piece of art. ^2 It is mixed always with evil fragments -
ill-done, redundant, affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily
discover the true bits, and those are the book.
[Footnote 2: Note this sentence carefully, and compare the "Queen of the Air,"
Section 106.]
11. Now books of this kind have been written in all ages by their
greatest men: - by great readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These
are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before; -
yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do
you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that - that what you lose
to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid,
or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter
yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to
respect that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and
audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its
society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the
mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you
may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered
into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy
of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly
tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the
society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in
them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead.
12. "The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself for, I must
also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living
aristocracy in this: - it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else.
No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of
those Elysian gates, In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters
there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but
brief question: - "Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the
companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for
the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it.
But on other terms? - no. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you.
The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his
thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither feign nor interpret;
you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them,
and share our feelings, if you would recognize our presence"
13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. You
must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No ambition
is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your
love in these two following ways:
I. - First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into
their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your own expressed
by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not
read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects.
Very ready we are to say of a book, "How good this is - that`s exactly
what I think!" But the right feeling is, "How strange that is! I never thought
of that before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall,
some day." But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go
to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards,
if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be sure
also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning
all at once; - nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time
arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong
words too; but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, but
in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. I
cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyze that cruel reticence in the
breasts of wise men which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They do
not give it to you by way of help, but of reward; and will make themselves
sure that you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. But it is the same
with the physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason
why the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever there is of
gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings and people might
now that all the gold they could get was there; and without any trouble and
digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as
much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. She puts it in little
fissures in the earth, nobody knows where: you may dig long and find none; you
must dig painfully to find any.
14. And it is just the same with men`s best wisdom. When you come to a
good book, you must ask yourself, "Am I inclined to work as an Australian
miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim
myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?"
And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at the cost of tiresomeness, for
it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the
author`s mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush
and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and
learning; your smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to
get at any good author`s meaning without those tools and that fire; often you
will need sharpest, finest chiseling, and patientest fusing, before you can
gather one grain of the metal.
15. And therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and
authoritatively (I know I am right in this,) you must get into the habit of
looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable
by syllable - nay, letter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the
opposition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in the function of
signs, that the study of books is called "literature," and that a man versed
in it is called, by the consent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man
of books, or of words, you may yet connect with that accidental nomenclature
this real fact: - that you might read all the books in the British Museum (if
you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," uneducated
person; but that if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, -
that is to say, with real accuracy, - you are forevermore in some measure an
educated person. The entire difference between education and non-education
(as regards the merely intellectual part of it) consists in this accuracy. A
well-educated gentleman may not know many languages, - may not be able to
speak any but his own, - may have read very few books. But whatever language
he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces
rightly; above all, he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the words of
true descent and ancient blood at a glance, from words of modern canaille;
remembers all their ancestry, their inter-marriages, distant relationships,
and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held, among the
national noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. But an uneducated
person may know, by memory, many languages, and talk them all, and yet truly
know not a word of any, - not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever and
sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports; yet he has
only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illiterate person:
so also the accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once
mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted by
educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the
parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of
inferior standing forever.
16. And this is right; but it is a pity that the accuracy insisted on is
not greater, and required to a serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin
quantity should excite a smile in the House of Commons; but it is wrong that a
false English meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the accent of words
be watched; and closely: let their meaning be watched more closely still, and
fewer will do the work. A few words well chosen and distinguished, will do
work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, equivocally, in the
function of another. Yes; and words, if they are not watched, will do deadly
work sometimes. There are masked words droning and skulking about us in Europe
just now, - (there never were so many, owing to the spread of a shallow,
blotching, blundering, infectious, "information," or rather deformation,
everywhere, and to the teaching of catechisms and phrases at schools instead
of human meanings) - there are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody
understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for,
live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that, or the other, of
things dear to them: for such words wear chameleon cloaks - "ground-lion"
cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man`s fancy: on that ground they lie
in wait, and rend him with a spring from it. There never were creatures of
prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly,
as these masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men`s ideas:
whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his
favorite masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have
an infinite power over him, - you cannot get at him but by its ministry.
17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the English, there is a fatal
power of equivocation put into men`s hands, almost whether they will or no, in
being able to use Greek or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be
awful; and Saxon or otherwise common words when they want it to be vulgar.
What a singular and salutary effect, for instance, would be produced on the
minds of people who are in the habit of taking the Form of the "Word" they
live by, for the Power of which that Word tells them, if we always either
retained, or refused, the Greek form "biblos," or "biblion," as the right
expression for "book" - instead of employing it only in the one instance in
which we wish to give dignity to the idea, and translating it into English
everywhere else. How wholesome it would be for many simple persons, if, in
such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 19, we retained the Greek expression,
instead of translating it, and they had to read - "Many of them also which
used curious arts, brought their bibles together, and burnt them before all
men; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of
silver"! Or if, on the other hand, we translated where we retain it, and
always spoke of "The Holy Book," instead of "Holy Bible," it might come into
more heads than it does at present, that the Word of God, by which the heavens
were, of old, and by which they are now kept in store, ^3 cannot be made a
present of to anybody in morocco binding; nor sown on any wayside by help
either of steam plough or steam press; but is nevertheless being offered to us
daily, and by us with contumely refused; and sown in us daily, and by us, as
instantly as may be, choked.
[Footnote 3: 2 Peter iii. 5-7.]
18. So, again, consider what effect has been produced on the English
vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous Latin form "damno," in translating the
Greek karakPivw, when people charitably wish to make it forcible; and the
substitution of the temperate "condemn" for it, when they choose to keep it
gentle; and what notable sermons have been preached by illiterate clergymen on
- "He that believeth not shall be damned"; though they would shrink with
horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, "The saving of his house, by which he
damned the world"; or John viii. 10, 11, "Woman, hath no man damned thee? She
saith, No man, Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither do I damn thee; go and sin no
more." And divisions in the mind of Europe, which have cost seas of blood and
in the defense of which the noblest souls of men have been cast away in
frantic desolation, countless as forest leaves - though, in the heart of them,
founded on deeper causes - have nevertheless been rendered practicably
possible, namely, by the European adoption of the Greek word for a public
meeting, "ecclesia," to give peculiar respectability to such meetings, when
held for religious purposes; and other collateral equivocations, such as the
vulgar English one of using the word "priest" as a contraction for
"presbyter."
19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the habit you must
form. Nearly every word in your language has been first a word of some other
language - of Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of eastern
and primitive dialects). And many words have been all these; - that is to say,
have been Greek first, Latin next, French and German next, and English last:
undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the lips of each nation; but
retaining a deep vital meaning, which all good scholars feel in employing
them, even at this day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn it; young
or old - girl or boy - whoever you may be, if you think of reading seriously
(which, of course, implies that you have some leisure at command), learn your
Greek alphabet; then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and
whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read Max
Muller`s lectures thoroughly, to begin with; and, after that, never let a word
escape you that looks suspicious. It is severe work; but you will find it,
even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general
gain to your character, in power and precision, will be quite incalculable.
Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, Greek or Latin, or
French. It takes a whole life to learn any language perfectly. But you can
easily ascertain the meanings through which the English word has passed; and
those which in a good writer`s work it must still bear.
20. And now, merely for example`s sake, I will, with your permission,
read a few lines of a true book with you, carefully; and see what will come
out of them. I will take a book perfectly known to you all. No English words
are more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with less sincerity. I
will take these few following lines of "Lycidas":
"Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain),
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake,
`How well could I have spar`d for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies` sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make,
Than how to scramble at the shearers` feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest;
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learn`d aught else, the least
That to the faithful herdsman`s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.`"
Let us think over this passage, and examine its words.
First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. Peter, not only
his full episcopal function, but the very types of it which Protestants
usually refuse most passionately? His "mitred" locks! Milton was no Bishop -
lover; how comes St. Peter to be `mitred"? "Two massy keys he bore." Is this,
then, the power of the keys claimed by the Bishops of Rome, and is it
acknowledged here by Milton only in a poetical license, for the sake of its
picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden keys to help his
effect? Do not think it. Great men do not play stage tricks with doctrines of
life and death: only little men do that. Milton means what he says; and means
it with his might too - is going to put the whole strength of his spirit
presently into the saying of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, he
was a lover of true ones; and the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the
type and head of true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, "I will
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven" quite honestly. Puritan
though he be, he would not blot it out of the book because there have been bad
bishops; nay, in order to understand him, we must understand that verse first;
it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under our breath, as if it
were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply
to be kept in mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason
on it if we go on a little farther, and come back to it. For clearly this
marked insistence on the power of the true episcopate is to make us feel more
weightily what is to be charged against the false claimants of episcopate; or
generally, against false claimants of power and rank in the body of the
clergy; they who, "for their bellies` sake, creep, and intrude, and climb into
the fold."
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