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.