In all that is strongest and deepest in me,—that fits me for my work, and
gives light or shadow to my being, I have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli.
In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with
Marmontel.
In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts of things and of
people, with Dean Swift.
Any one who can understand the natures of those three men, can understand
mine; and having said so much, I am content to leave both life and work
to be remembered or forgotten, as their uses may deserve.
DENMARK HILL,
1_st_ _January_, 1871.
Lecture I.
Sesame.
Of King’s Treasuries
“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 favourite 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
endeavour to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to his purpose,—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.
It happens that I have practically some connexion 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
favour, to be got, if they set about it in the wrong.
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 honourable. 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.
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 a few of us may be physicians enough to recognise 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 that 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 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.
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.
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-humouredly. 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 ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves,—we
make no account of that company,—perhaps never listen to a word they
would say, all day long!
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 honourable privy council, you despise!
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. Yet 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.
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-humoured
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 talking thing, but a written thing; and
written, not with a 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 for ever; 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
vapour, 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.”
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. {5} 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.
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 yourself 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.
“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 labour 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 portières 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 recognise our presence.”
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.
(1) 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.
(2) 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 analyse that cruel reticence in the breasts of
wise men which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They do not
give it 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 know that all the gold they could get was there; and
without any trouble of 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.
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 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 chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain
of the metal.
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 for evermore 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 intermarriages, 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 for ever.
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 school 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 colour of the ground of any man’s fancy: on that ground they lie
in wait, and rend them 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 favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he
gives to his favourite 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.
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, {6} 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.
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 _κατακρίνω_, 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 defence 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 practically possible, mainly, 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.”
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 or 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 Müller’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.
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 spared 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 herdman’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 licence,
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 the 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.”
Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up his verse, as a
loose writer would. He needs all the three;—especially those three, and
no more than those—“creep,” and “intrude,” and “climb;” no other words
would or could serve the turn, and no more could be added. For they
exhaustively comprehend the three classes, correspondent to the three
characters, of men who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First,
those who “_creep_” into the fold; who do not care for office, nor name,
but for secret influence, and do all things occultly and cunningly,
consenting to any servility of office or conduct, so only that they may
intimately discern, and unawares direct, the minds of men. Then those
who “intrude” (thrust, that is) themselves into the fold, who by natural
insolence of heart, and stout eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly
perseverant self-assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common
crowd. Lastly, those who “climb,” who, by labour and learning, both
stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of their own
ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, and become “lords over the
heritage,” though not “ensamples to the flock.”