are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turnstile, with which we are not perfectly acquaint ed. The wicket gate, and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction; the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it; the Interpreter's house, and all its fair shows; the prisoner in the iron cage; the palace, at the doors of which armed men

undo his button, would be thrown into the shade by a vast blaze of pavilions, standards, armour, and herald's coats. He would illustrate the Orlando Furioso well, the Orlando Innamorato still better, the Arabian Nights best of all. Fairy palaces and gardens, porticoes of agate, and groves flowering with emeralds and rubies, inhabited by people for whom nobody cares, these are his proper domain. He would succeed admirably in the enchanted ground of Alcina, or the mansion of Aladdin. But he should avoid Milton and Bunyan. The characteristic peculiarity of the Pil-kept guard, and on the battlements of which grim's Progress is, that it is the only work of walked persons clothed all in gold; the cross its kind which possesses a strong human in- and the sepulchre; the steep hill and the pleaterest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. sant arbour; the stately front of the House The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many Beautiful by the wayside; the low green valley thousands with tears. There are some good of Humiliation, rich with grass and covered allegories in Johnson's works, and some of with flocks, all are as well known to us as the still higher merit by Addison. In these per- sights of our own street. Then we come to the formances there is, perhaps, as much wit and narrow place where Apollyon strode right ingenuity as in the Pilgrim's Progress. But across the whole breadth of the way, to stop the pleasure which is produced by the Vision | the journey of Christian, and where afterwards of Mirza, or the Vision of Theodore, the gene- the pillar was set up to testify how bravely the alogy of Wit, or the contest between Rest and pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we adLabour, is exactly similar to the pleasure vance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper. which we derive from one of Cowley's Odes, The shade of the precipices on both sides falls or from a Canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure blacker and blacker. The clouds gather overwhich belongs wholly to the understanding, head. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, and in which the feelings have no part what- and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are ever. Nay, even Spenser himself, though heard through the darkness. The way, hardly assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever discernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, allegory interesting. It was in vain that he its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes, to lavished the riches of his mind on the House terrify the adventurer. Thence he goes on, of Pride, and the House of Temperance. One amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, bodies of those who have perished lying in the pervades the whole of the Faerie Queen. We ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark become sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly valley, he passes the dens in which the old Sins, and long for the society of plain men and giants dwelt, amidst the bones and ashes of women. Of the persons who read the first those whom they had slain. Canto, not one in ten reaches the end of the Then the road passes straight on through a First Book, and not one in a hundred perse-waste moor, till at length the towers of a disveres to the end of the poem. Very few and ❘ tant city appear before the traveller; and soon very weary are those who are in at the death he is in the midst of the innumerable multiof the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, which are said to have been destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less stout than that of a commentator would have held out to the end.

tudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and Britain Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth.

left side, branches off the path leading to that horrible castle, the court-yard of which is paved with the skulls of pilgrims; and right onward are the sheepfolds and orchards of the Delectable Mountains.

It is not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That wonderful book, while it obtains admira- Thence we go on by the little hill of the sil tion from the most fastidious critics, is loved ver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, by those who are too simple to admire it. along the bank of that pleasant river which is Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were desul-bordered on both sides by fruit trees. On the tory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of Scotlard the Pilgrim's Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the Giant-Killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path, as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the aighest miracle of genius-that things which | bridge.

From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green arbour. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, on the other side of that black and cold river over which there is no

All the stages of the journey, all the But we must return to Bunyan. The Pil forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, grim's Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect -giants and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones allegory. The types are often inconsistent and shining ones; the tall, comely, swarthy with each other; and sometimes the allegori Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her cal disguise is altogether thrown off. The side, and her fingers playing with the money; river, for example, is emblematic of death, the black man in the bright vesture; Mr. and we are told that every human being must Worldly-Wiseman, and my Lord Hategood; pass through the river. But Faithful does not Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous-are all pass through it. He is martyred, not in sha actually existing beings to us. We follow the dow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful travellers through their allegorical progress talks to Christian about Esau's birthright, and with interest not inferior to that with which about his own convictions of sin, as Bunyan we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, might have talked with one of his own conor Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. gregation. The damsels at the House BeautiBunyan is almost the only writer that ever ful catechise Christiana's boys, as any good gave to the abstract the interest of the con- ladies might catechise any boys at a Sunday. crete. In the works of many celebrated au- school. But we do not believe that any man, thors, men are mere personifications. We whatever might be his genius, and whatever have not an Othello, but jealousy; not an Iago, his good luck, could long continue a figurative but perfidy; not a Brutus, but patriotism. history without falling into many inconsist The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so encies. We are sure that inconsistencies, imaginative, that personifications, when he scarcely less gross than the worst into which dealt with them, became men. A dialogue Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the shortbetween two qualities in his dream, has more est and most elaborate allegories of the Spec. dramatic effect than a dialogue between two tator and the Rambler. The Tale of a Tub and human beings in most plays. In this respect the History of John Bull swarm with similar the genius of Bunyan bore a great resem- errors, if the name of error can be properly blance to that of a man who had very little applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not else in common with him, Percy Bysshe Shel- easy to make a simile go on all-fours. But ley. The strong imagination of Shelley made we believe that no human ingenuity could him an idolater in his own despite. Out of produce such a centipede as a long allegory, the most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, in which the correspondence between the out metaphysical system, he made a gorgeous ward sign and the thing signified should be Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and life- exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, an like forms. He turned atheism itself into a cient or modern, has yet achieved the advenmythology, rich with visions as glorious as the ture. The best thing, on the whole, that an gods that live in the marble of Phidias, or the allegorist can do, is to present to his readers a virgin saints that smile on us from the canvass succession of analogies, each of which may of Murillo. The Spirit of Beauty, the Prin- separately be striking and happy, without look ciple of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he ing very nicely to see whether they harmonize treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. with each other. This Bunyan has done; and, They took shape and colour. They were no though a minute scrutiny may detect inconlonger mere words; but "intelligible forms;" sistencies in every page of his tale, the general "fair humanities;" objects of love, of adora- effect which the tale produces on all persons, tion, or of fear. As there can be no stronger learned and unlearned, proves that he has done signs of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty well. The passages which it is most difficult than that tendency which was so common to defend, are those in which he altogether among the writers of the French school to turn drops the allegory, and puts into the mouth o images into abstractions-Venus, for example, his pilgrims religious ejaculations and disqui into Love, Minerva into Wisdom, Mars into sitions, better suited to his own pulpit at BedWar, and Bacchus into Festivity-so there can ford or Reading, than to the Enchanted Ground be no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical, of the Interpreter's Garden. Yet even these than a disposition to reverse this abstracting passages, though we will not undertake to deprocess, and to make individuals out of gene- fend them against the objections of critics, ralities. Some of the metaphysical and ethical we feel that we could ill spare. We feel tha theories of Shelley were certainly most absurd the story owes much of its charm to these or. and pernicious. But we doubt whether any casional glimpses of solemn and affecting modern poet has possessed in an equal degree subjects, which will not be hidden, which force the highest qualities of the great ancient mas-themselves through the veil, and appear before ters. The words bard and inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when applied to other modern writers, have a perfect propriety when applied to him. He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art, but an inspiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he might not improbably have given to the world some great work of the very highest rank in design and execution. But, aías!

ο Δαφν ς εβα ροον εκλυσε δινα τον Μωσαις φιλον ανδρα, τον ου Νυμφαισιν απεχθη

us in their native aspect. The effect is not unlike that which is said to have been produced on the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen flaming through his mask, and giving life and expression to what would else have been inanimate and uninteresting disguise.

It is very amusing and very instructive to compare the Pilgrim's Progress with the Grace Abounding. The latter work is indeed one of the most remarkable pieces of autobiography in the world. It is a full and open confession

of the fancies which passed through the mind of an illiterate man, whose affections were warm, whose nerves were irritable, whose imagination was ungovernable, and who was under the influence of the strongest religious excitement. In whatever age Bunyan had lived, the history of his feelings would, in all probability, have been very curious. But the time in which his lot was cast was the time of a great stirring of the human mind. A tremendous burst of public feeling, produced by the tyranny of the hierarchy, menaced the old ecclesiastical institutions with destruction. To the gloomy regularity of one intolerant church had succeeded the license of innumerable sects, drunk with the sweet and heady nist of their new liberty. Fanaticism, engidered by persecution, and destined to engender fresh persecution in turn, spread rapidly through society. Even the strongest and most commanding minds were not proof against this strange taint. Any time might have produced George Fox and James Naylor. But to one time alone belong the frantic delusions of such a statesman as Vane, and the hysterical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell.

every tinker that ever lived has been a black guard. Indeed Mr. Southey acknowledges this "Such he might have been expected to be by his birth, breeding, and vocation. Scarcely indeed, by possibility, could he have been otherwise." A man, whose manners and sen. timents are decidedly below those of his class, deserves to be called a blackguard. But it is surely unfair to apply so strong a word of reproach to one who is only what the great mass of every community must inevitably be. Those horrible internal conflicts which Bunyan has described with so much power of language prove, not that he was a worse man than his neighbours, but that his mind was constantly occupied by religious considera tions, that his fervour exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagination exercised despotic power over his body and mind. He heard voices from heaven: he saw strange visions of distant hills, pleasant and sunny as his own Delectable Mountains; from those seats he was shut out, and placed in a dark and horrible wilderness, where he wandered through ice and snow, striving to make his way into the happy region of light. At one time he was The history of Bunyan is the history of a seized with an inclination to work miracles. most excitable mind in an age of excitement. At another time he thought himself actually By most of his biographers he has been treated possessed by the devil. He could distinguish with gross injustice. They have understood the blasphemous whispers. He felt his inferin a popular sense, all those strong terms of nal enemy pulling at his clothes behind him. self-condemnation which he employed in a He spurned with his feet, and struck with his theological sense. They have, therefore, re- hands, at the destroyer. Sometimes he was presented him as an abandoned wretch, re- tempted to sell his part in the salvation of manclaimed by means almost miraculous; or, to kind. Sometimes a violent impulse urged him use their favourite metaphor, "as a brand to start up from his food, to fall on his knees, plucked from the burning." Mr. Ivimey calls and break forth into prayer. At length he him the depraved Bunyan, and the wicked fancied that he had committed the unpardontinker of Elstow. Surely Mr. Ivimey oughtable sin. His agony convulsed his robust to have been too familiar with the bitter accu- frame. He was, he says, as if his breastbone sations which the most pious people are in the would split; and this he took for a sign that habit of bringing against themselves, to under- he was destined to burst asunder like Judas. stand literally all the strong expressions which The agitation of his nerves made all his moveare to be found in the Grace Abounding. It is ments tremulous; and this trembling, he supquite clear, as Mr. Southey most justly re- posed, was a visible mark of his reprobation, marks, that Mr. Bunyan never was a vicious like that which had been set on Cain. At one man. He married very early; and he solemn time, indeed, an encouraging voice seemed ly declares that he was strictly faithful to his to rush in at the window, like the noise of wife. He does not appear to have been a wind, but very pleasant, and commanded, as drunkard. He owns, indeed, that when a boy, he says, a great calm in his soul. At another he never spoke without an oath. But a single time, a word of comfort "was spoke loud admonition cured him of this bad habit for life; unto him; it showed a great word; it seemed and the cure must have been wrought early: to be writ in great letters." But these intervals for at eighteen he was in the army of the Par- of ease were short. His state, during two liament; and if he had carried the vice of years and a half, was generally the most horriprofaneness into that service, he would doubt- ble that the human mind can imagine. "I less have received something more than an walked," says he, with his own peculiar eloadmonition from Sergeant Bind-their-kings-in-quence, "to a neighbouring town; and sat chains, or Captain Hew-Agag-in-pieces-before- down upon a settle in the street, and fell into the-Lord. Bell-ringing, and playing at hockey a very deep pause about the most fearful state on Sundays, seem to have been the worst vices of this depraved tinker. They would have passed for virtues with Archbishop Laud. It is quite clear that, from a very early age, Bunyan was a man of a strict life and of a tender conscience. "He had been," says Mr. Southey, "a blackguard." Even this we think too hard a censure. Bunyan was not, we admit, so fine a gentleman as Lord Digby; yet he was a blackguard no otherwise than as

my sin had brought me to; and, after long musing, I lifted up my head; but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me light; and as if the very stones in the streets and tiles upon the houses did band themselves against me. Methought that they all combined together to banish me out of the world! I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had sin. ned against the Saviour. Oh, how happy now

was every creature over I! for they stood fast, | of Isaiah to the he isehold and guests of Gaius

and kept their station. But I was gone and lost." Scarcely any madhouse could produce an instance of delusion so strong, or of misery

so acute.

and then sallies out to attack Slaygood, whe was of the nature of flesh-eaters, in his den These are inconsistencies; but they are inconsistencies which add, we think, to the interest of the narrative. We have not the least doubt that Bunyan had in view some stout old Greatheart of Naseby and Worcester, who prayed with his men before he drilled them; who knew the spiritual state of every dragoon in his troop; and who, with the praises of God in his mouth, and a two-edged sword in his hand, had turned to flight, on many fields of battle, the swearing, drunken bravoes of Rupert and Lunsford.

It was through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, overhung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blasphemy and lamentation, and passing amidst quagmires, snares, and pitfalls, close by the very mouth of hell, that Bunyan journeyed to that bright and fruitful land of Beulah, in which he sojourned during the latter days of his pilgrimage. The only trace which his cruel sufferings and temptations seem to have left behind them, was an affectionate compassion for those who were Every age produces such men as By-ends. still in the state in which he had once been. But the middle of the seventeenth century was Religion has scarcely ever worn a form so eminently prolific of such men. Mr. Southey calm and soothing as in his allegory. The feel- thinks that the satire was aimed at some paring which predominates through the whole ticular individual; and this seems by no means book is a feeling of tenderness for weak, timid, improbable. At all events, Bunyan must have and harassed minds. The character of Mr. | known many of those hypocrites who followed Fearing, of Mr. Feeble-Mind, of Mr. Despond-religion only when religion walked in silver ency and his daughter Miss Muchafraid; the slippers, when the sun shone, and when the account of poor Littlefaith, who was robbed people applauded. Indeed, he might have by the three thieves of his spending-money; easily found all the kindred of By-ends among the description of Christian's terror in the the public men of his time. He might have dungeons of Giant Despair, and in his passage through the river, all clearly show how strong a sympathy Bunyan felt, after his own mind had become clear and cheerful, for persons afflicted with religious melancholy.

found among the peers, my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, and my Lord Fairspeech; in the House of Commons, Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Anything, and Mr. Facing. both-ways; nor would "the parson of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues," have been wanting. The town of Bedford probably contained more than one politician, who, after contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the strumpets; and more than one priest who, during repeated changes in the discipline and doctrines of the church, had remained constant to nothing but his benefice.

Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Calvinists, admits that, if Calvinism had never | worn a blacker appearance than in Bunyan's works, it would never have become a term of reproach. In fact, those works of Bunyan with which we are acquainted, are by no means more Calvinistic than the homilies of the Church of England. The moderation of his opinions on the subject of predestination, gave offence to some zealous persons. We have scen an absurd allegory, the heroine of which is named Hephzibah, written by some raving supralapsarian preacher, who was dissatisfied with the mild theology of the Pilgrim's Progress. In this foolish book, if we recollect rightly, the Interpreter is called the Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. Mr. Southey tells us that the Ca-license given to the witnesses for the prosecutholics had also their Pilgrim's Progress without a Giant Pope, in which the Interpreter is the Director, and the House Beautiful Grace's Hall. It is surely a remarkable proof of the power of Bunyan's genius, that two religious parties, both of which regarded his opinions as heterodox, should have had recourse to him for

assistance.

There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the Pilgrim's Progress, which can be ully comprehended and enjoyed only by persons familiar with the history of the times through which Bunyan lived. The character of Mr. Greatheart, the guide, is an example. His fighting is, of course, allegorical; but the allegory is not strictly preserved. He delivers a sermon on imputed righteousness to his companions; and, soon after, he gives battle to Gian: Grim, who had taken upon him to back the lions He expounds the fifty-third chapter |

One of the most remarkable passages in the Pilgrim's Progress, is that in which the proceedings against Faithful are described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were conducted under Charles the Second. The

tion, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancour of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms prelimi nary to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord Hategood performs the office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs himself could have performed it.

"JUDGE. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee?

"FAITHFUL. May I speak a few words in my own defence?

"JUDGE. Sirrah, Sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say."

No person who knows the state trials can b

at a loss for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times "sinned up to it still," and even went beyond it. The imaginary trial of Faithful before a jury composed of personihed vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the real trial of Lady Alice Lisle before that tribunal where all the vices sat in the person of Jeffries.

divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain workingmen, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we could so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language; no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.

Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he The style of Bunyan is delightful to every dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for reader, and invaluable as a study to every per- fear of moving a sneer. To our refined foreson who wishes to obtain a wide command fathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay over the English language. The vocabulary on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buck. is the vocabulary of the common people. inghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to There is not an expression, if we except a few be compositions infinitely superior to the alle technical terms of theology, which would puz-gory of the preaching tinker. zle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the

We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seven. teenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds pro duced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pil grim's Progress.