16. MR. MACAULAY, from his Review of Southey's *Life of Bunyan*:—

'The characteristic peculiarity of the "Pilgrim's Progress" is, that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. It is not so with the "Pilgrim's Progress." That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. In the wildest parts of Scotland, it 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 highest miracle of genius—that things which 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 turn-stile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. 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 kept guard, and on the battlements of which walked persons clothed all in gold—the cross and the sepulchre—the steep hill and the pleasant arbour—the stately front of the House Beautiful by the wayside—the low green Valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and covered with flocks—are all as well known to us as the sights of our own street. Then we come to the narrow place, where Apollyon strode right across the whole breadth of the way, to stop the journey of Christian; and where, afterwards, the pillar was set up, to testify how bravely the Pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of the precipices on both sides falls blacker and blacker. The clouds gather over-head. Dolefal voices, the clanking of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard through the darkness. The way hardly discernible in gloom, and close by the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes, to terrify the adventurer. Thence he goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark valley, he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones and ashes of those whom they had slain. Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, till at length the towers of a distant city appear before the traveller; and soon he is in the midst of the unimpeachable multitudes 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 Belgian Row—with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth. Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant river, which is bordered on both sides by fruit-trees. On the left side, branches off the path 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. 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 sowns of birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearls, on the other side of that black and cold river over which there is no bridge.

'All the stages of the journey—all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims—the giants and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones and shining ones—the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money—the black man in the bright vesture. Mr. Worldly-wiseman and my Lord Hate-good—Mr. Taikative and Mrs. Timorous—all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress, with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jessie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer that ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. Religion has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in his allegory. The feeling which predominates through the whole book is a feeling of tenderness for wack, timid, and harassed minds. The character of Mr. Fearing of Mr. Feeble-mind—of Mr. Despondency, and his daughter Miss Much-afraid—the account of poor Little-faith, who was robbed by the three thieves of his spending money—the description of Christian's terror in the 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.

'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 racket 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 bounty 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. 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."

'There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the "Pilgrim's Progress," which can be fully 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. 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, in many fields of battle, the swearing drunken bravura of Rupert and Lonsford. Every age produces such men as Byrend—he might have found all his kindred among the public men of that time; among the Peers—my Lord Turnabout, my Lord Time-server, and Lord Fair-speech. In the House of Commons—Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Anything, and Mr. Facing-both-ways; nor would the person of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues, have been wanting.'

MR. MACACLAY'S character of John Bunyan, from his invaluable History of England:—

'To the names of Baxter and Howe must be added the name of a man far below them in station and in acquired knowledge, but in virtue their equal, and in genius their superior, JOHN BUNYAN. Bunyan had been bred a tinker, and had served as a private soldier. Early in life he had been fearfully tortured by remorse for his youthful sins, the worst of which seem, however, to have been such as the world thinks venal. His keen sensibility, and his powerful imagination, made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. At length the clouds broke. From the depths of despair, the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. An irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessing of which he was himself possessed. He joined the Baptists, and became a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He knew no language but the English as it was spoken by the common people. He had studied no great model of composition, with the exception—an important exception undoubtedly—of our noble translation of the Bible. His native force of genius, and his experimental knowledge of all the religious passions, from despair to ecstasy, amply supplied in him the want of learning. His rude oratory roused and melted hearers, who listened, without interest, to the laboured discourses of great logicans and Hebraists. His works are widely circulated among the hambler classes. One of them, the PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, was, in his own lifetime, translated into several foreign languages. It was, however, scarcely known to the learned and polite, and had been, during near a century, the delight of pious cottagers and artisans, before it was publicly commended by any man of high literary eminence. At length critics condescended to inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little book was really a masterpiece. Bunyan, indeed, is as decidedly the first of allieorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakespeare the first of dramatists. Other allegorists have shown great ingenuity, but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to make abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love.'

LORD CAMPBELL.—It is one of the extraordinary signs of the times in which we live, to witness the highest judicial functionary in the kingdom speaking, without sectarian partiality, and in the highest terms of praise, of a preaching mechanic. It is in Lord John Campbell's Life of Chief Justice Hale, when the judges, before whom Mrs. Bunyan had so powerfully pleaded for her husband's liberty, were trumpeted out of Bedford, she burst into tears, saying, 'Not so much because they are so hard-hearted against me and my husband, but to think what a sad account such poor creatures will have to give at the coming of the Lord:'—

'Little do we know what is for our permanent good,' says Lord John Campbell. 'Had Bunyan then been discharged, and allowed to enjoy liberty, he no doubt would have returned to his trade, filling up his intervals of leisure with field-prevailing; his name would not have survived his own generation, and he could have done little for the religious improvement of mankind. The prison doors were shut upon him for twelve years. Being cut off from the external world, he communed with his own soul; and inspired by Him who touched Elijah's hallowed lips with fire, he composed the noblest of allegories, the merit of which was first discovered by the lowly, but which is now lauded by the most refined critics, and which has done more to awaken piety, and to enforce the precepts of Christian morality, than all the sermons which have been published by all the prelates of the Anglican church.'

The Penny Encyclopedia is the only work which has treated the 'Pilgrim's Progress' with disrespect. Under the article John Bunyan, it says:—

'Among his works, the "Pilgrim's Progress" has attained the greatest notoriety. If a judgment is to be formed of the merits of a book by the number of times it has been reprinted, and the many languages into which it has been translated, no production in English literature is superior to this coarse allegory. On a composition which has been extolled by Dr. Johnson, and which, in our own times, has received a very high critical opinion in its favour, it is hazardous to venture a disapproval; and we, perhaps, speak the opinion of a small minority when we confess that to us it appears to be mean, jejune, and wearisome.'

Probably this is the glorious minority of one. Such an opinion may excite pity and indignation, but needs no comment.

The 'Pilgrim's Progress' has proved an invaluable aid to the Sunday-school Teacher, and to the Missionary. One of the latter wrote home with

1 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. I. p. 601.

joy to inform his Christian friends, that a Malay sat up three nights to read it, never having before seen so beautiful a book, and praying that the Holy Spirit may influence his countrymen to read, and also enlighten their hearts to understand the wondrous dream. The pundit who was engaged to translate it into Singhalese, was so deeply affected by the story, that, at times, he could not proceed; when he had passed the wicket-gate, and Christian's burden fell from his shoulders, at the sight of Christ crucified, he was overcome with joy—he laughed, wept, clapped his hands, danced, and shouted, 'delightful, delightful!' It was especially blessed to the persecuted Christian natives in Ceylon; in their distress when driven from home, in places of danger, they encouraged each other by repeating portions of scripture, and the vivid delineations of perseverance and triumph from the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

No book, the result of human labour and ingenuity, has been so eminently useful. Let Homer have the credit of his lofty poem, Plato of his Philosophy, Cicero of his elegancies, and Aquinas of his subtleties; but for real value, as connected with human happiness, our unlettered mechanic rises infinitely their superior.

CHAPTER IX.