Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics Part 8

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 a.s.sertion, 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.'

"Do not think Milton uses those three words to fill up his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the three; specially 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 cla.s.ses, 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-a.s.sertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, those who 'climb,' who by labor 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.'

"Now go on:--

"'Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast.

Blind mouths--'

"I pause again, for this is a strange expression; a broken metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly.

"Not so: its very audacity and pithiness are intended to make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries of right character, in the two great offices of the Church--those of bishop and pastor.

"A Bishop means a person who sees.

"A Pastor means one who feeds.

"The most unbishoply character a man can have is therefore to be Blind.

"The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be fed,--to be a Mouth.

"Take the two reverses together, and you have 'blind mouths.' We may advisably follow out this idea a little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook. Whereas their real office is not to rule; though it may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke; it is the king's office to rule; the bishop's office is to oversee the flock; to number it, sheep by sheep; to be ready always to give full account of it. Now it is clear he cannot give account of the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the bodies of his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any moment, he can obtain the history from childhood of every living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back street, Bill, and Nancy, knocking each other's teeth out!--Does the bishop know all about it? Has he his eye upon them? Has he had his eye upon them?

Can he circ.u.mstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple; he is no bishop,--he has sought to be at the helm instead of the masthead; he has no sight of things. 'Nay,' you say, it is not his duty to look after Bill in the back street. What! the fat sheep that have full fleeces--you think it is only those he should look after, while (go back to your Milton) 'the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, besides what the grim wolf with privy paw' (bishops knowing nothing about it) 'daily devours apace, and nothing said'?

"'But that's not our idea of a bishop.' Perhaps not; but it was St.

Paul's; and it was Milton's. They may be right, or we may be; but we must not think we are reading either one or the other by putting our meaning into their words.

"I go on.

"'But, swolln with wind, and the rank mist they draw.'

"This is to meet the vulgar answer that 'if the poor are not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls; they have spiritual food.'

"And Milton says, 'They have no such thing as spiritual food; they are only swolln with wind.' At first you may think that is a coa.r.s.e type, and an obscure one. But, again, it is a quite literally accurate one.

Take up your Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find out the meaning of 'Spirit.' It is only a contraction of the Latin word 'breath,' and an indistinct translation of the Greek word for 'wind.' The same word is used in writing. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth;' and 'So is every one that is born of the Spirit,' born of the breath, that is, for it means the breath of G.o.d, in soul and body. We have the true sense of it in our words 'inspiration' and 'expire.' Now, there are two kinds of breath with which the flock may be filled; G.o.d's breath and man's. The breath of G.o.d is health and life and peace to them, as the air of heaven is to the flocks on the hills; but man's breath--the word he calls spiritual--is disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it; they are puffed up by it, as a body by the vapors of its own decomposition. This is literally true of all false religious teaching; the first and last and fatalest sign of it is that 'puffing up.'

"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 further 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.'

"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 a.s.suredly to say, 'Thus Milton thought,' not 'Thus I thought, in misreading Milton.'"

3. In reading successive poems and prose selections from different authors, strong resemblances in thought or language are frequently detected. It is a thought-provoking process to bring such similar pa.s.sages to a definite comparison. Even where the same topic is treated differently by two authors, the different or contrasted points of view are suggestive. Calling such familiar pa.s.sages to mind is in itself a good practice, and it is well to cultivate this mode of turning previous knowledge into use.

To ill.u.s.trate this point, let us call to mind some familiar pa.s.sages, touching the winter snow-storm and the fireside comforts, from Whittier, Emerson, and Lowell.

Whittier's description of a snow-storm in "Snow-Bound" is well known:--

"Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made h.o.a.ry with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the gla.s.s the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

"So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature's geometric signs, In starry flake and pellicle All day the h.o.a.ry meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own.

Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,-- A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden-wall, or belt of wood; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road; The bridle-post an old man sat With loose-flung coat and high c.o.c.ked hat; The well-curb had a Chinese roof; And even the long sweep, high aloof, In its slant splendor, seemed to tell Of Pisa's leaning miracle."

Again the fireside joy is expressed:--

"Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it pa.s.sed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.

"What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how the north-wind raved?

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow."

If these pa.s.sages and others in "Snow-Bound" are familiar to the children in previous study, the reading of Emerson's "The Snow-Storm,"

might set them to recalling a whole series of pictures from Whittier:--

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

"Come see the north wind's masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore, Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow."

The architecture of the snow can be compared point by point in both authors, in the objects about the farmhouse, while the picture of the snug comforts of the fireplace is in both.

Of a somewhat different, yet closely related, character is the description in the Prelude to Part Second, in the "Vision of Sir Launfal":--

"Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, Which crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day, Each flitting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost.

"Within the hall are the song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer."

The elfin builders of the frost have raised even more delicate structures than the snow. The descriptive power of the poets in picturing nature's handiwork cannot be better seen than in these pa.s.sages. It is hardly worth while to suggest the points of resemblance which children will quickly detect in these pa.s.sages, as the comparison of--

"Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide,"

with this,--

"The merrier up its roaring draught.

The great throat of the chimney laughed."

Such pa.s.sages, suggesting like thoughts in earlier studies, are very frequent and spring up in unexpected quarters.

For example, Emerson, in "Waldeinsamkeit," says:--

"I do not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like G.o.d it useth me."

Again, in the "Apology," he says:--