see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say.' No person who knows the state trials can be 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 personified 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 Jefferies. The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle 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 divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would 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 dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. 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 seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress. APPENDIX. POMPEII. A POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL AT THE CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT, JULY, 1819. OH! land to Memory and to Freedom dear, And warm with classic glow the British song, * See Eustace's description of the Tomb of Virgil, on the Neapolitan coast. And sweep with magic hand the slumbering strings, Thy scenes of gay delight and wild despair, How rich that climate's sweets, how wild its storms, And poured its radiance on a scene as gay. Then mirth and music through Pompeii rung; Scarce treads on earth, and bounds and laughs with joy. In billowy clouds of fragrance to the skies. What 'vails it that where yonder heights aspire, Gigantic phantoms dimly seemed to glide,* To view with threatening scowl your fated lands, And nature's signal spoke the ruin near. In vain through many a night ye viewed from far Unroll its blazing folds from yonder height, Defies the sulphurous flame, the warning groan. The fated myriads to its gay delights. Of foaming breakers on a rocky shore. The enraptured throng in breathless transport views Ideal scenes, and forms of other days, Fair as the hopes of youth, a radiant band, The sister arts around her footstool stand, * Dio Cassius relates that figures of gigantic size appeared, for some time previous to the destruction of Pompeii, on the summits of Vesuvius. This appearance was probably occasioned by the fantastic forms which the smoke from the crater of the volcano assumed. |