,--"Swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw."

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power of the
keys, for now we can understand them. Note the difference between
Milton and Dante in their interpretation of this power: for once, the
latter is weaker in thought; he supposes _both_ the keys to be of the
gate of heaven; one is of gold, the other of silver: they are given by
St. Peter to the sentinel angel; and it is not easy to determine the
meaning either of the substances of the three steps of the gate, or of
the two keys. But Milton makes one, of gold, the key of heaven; the
other, of iron, the key of the prison in which the wicked teachers are
to be bound who "have taken away the key of knowledge, yet entered not
in themselves."

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to see and feed;
and, of all who do so it is said, "He that watereth, shall be watered
also himself." But the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not,
shall be _withered_ himself, and he that seeth not, shall himself be
shut out of sight,--shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that
prison opens here, as well as hereafter: he who is to be bound in
heaven must first be bound on earth. That command to the strong
angels, of which the rock-apostle is the image, "Take him, and bind him
hand and foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, against the
teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for
every falsehood enforced; so that he is more strictly fettered the more
he fetters, and farther outcast, as he more and more misleads, till at
last the bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as "the golden opes,
the iron shuts amain."

25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, and much more is
yet to be found in them; but we have done enough by way of example of
the kind of word-by-word examination of your author which is rightly
called "reading"; watching every accent and expression, and putting
ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our own
personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able assuredly
to say, "Thus Milton thought," not "Thus _I_ thought, in mis-reading
Milton." And by this process you will gradually come to attach less
weight to your own "Thus I thought" at other times. You will begin to
perceive that what you thought was a matter of no serious
importance;--that your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps the
clearest and wise