n 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