the meaning of the word “secret” is not that of the English adjective, but is remote, apart, lonely, as in Virgil’s secretosque pios. The absurdity of supposing the word to be the same as our ordinary adjective led Bentley, among many ridiculous “improvements” of Milton’s language, to change it to “sacred.” Again, the word “recollect” is used in its etymological sense in these lines from “Paradise Lost”:
“But he, his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words,” etc.
So Milton uses the word “astonished” in its etymological sense of “thunderstruck,” attonitus, as when he makes Satan say that his associates
“Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool.”
Holland, in his translation of Livy, speaks of a knave who threw some heavy stones upon a certain king, “whereof the one smote the king upon his head, the other astonished his shoulder.”
Shakespeare, also, not unfrequently uses words in their classical sense. Thus when Cleopatra speaks of
“Such gifts as we greet modern friends withal,”
“modern” is used in the sense of “modal” (from modus, a fashion or manner); a modern friend, compared with a true friend, being what the fashion of a thing is, compared with the substance. So,—as De Quincey, to whom we owe this explanation, has shown,—when in the famous picture of life, “All the World’s a Stage,” the justice is described as
“Full of wise saws and modern instances,”