keeps a harp in his house to be lent out for a price, and not to use
it for its music.

Returning, then, to the principal proposition, I say that one can see
clearly how the Latin would have given its good gift to few, but the
Mother Tongue will serve many. For the willingness of heart which
awaits this service, is in those who, through misuse of the world,
have left Literature to men who have made of her a harlot; and these
nobles are princes, barons, knights, and many other noble people, not
only men, but women, whose language is that of the people and
unlearned. Again, the Latin would not have been giver of a useful
gift, as the Mother Tongue will be; forasmuch as nothing is useful
except inasmuch as it is used; nor is there a perfect existence with
inactive goodness. Even so of gold, and pearls, and other treasures
which are subterranean, those which are in the hand of the miser are
in a lower place than is the earth wherein the treasure was concealed.
The gift truly of this Commentary is the explanation of the Songs, for
whose service it is made. It seeks especially to lead men to wisdom
and to virtue, as will be seen by the process of this treatise. This
design those only could have in use in whom true nobility is sown,
after the manner that will be described in the fourth treatise; and
these are almost all men of the people, as those are noble which in
this chapter are named above. And there is no contradiction, though
some learned man may be amongst them; for, as says my Master Aristotle
in the first book of the Ethics, "One swallow does not make the
Spring." It is, then, evident that the Mother Tongue will give the
useful thing where Latin would not have given it. Again, the Mother
Tongue will give that gift unasked, which the Latin would not have
given, because it will give itself in form of a Commentary which never
was asked for by any person. But this one cannot say of the Latin,