We have, in this concluding chapter, to take a review of Bunyan's merits
as a writer, with especial reference to the works on which his fame
mainly rests, and, above all, to that which has given him his chief title
to be included in a series of Great Writers, "The Pilgrim's Progress."
Bunyan, as we have seen, was a very copious author. His works, as
collected by the late industrious Mr. Offor, fill three bulky quarto
volumes, each of nearly eight hundred double-columned pages in small
type. And this copiousness of production is combined with a general
excellence in the matter produced. While few of his books approach the
high standard of "The Pilgrim's Progress" or "Holy War," none, it may be
truly said, sink very far below that standard. It may indeed be affirmed
that it was impossible for Bunyan to write badly. His genius was a
native genius. As soon as he began to write at all, he wrote well.
Without any training, is he says, in the school of Aristotle or Plato, or
any study of the great masters of literature, at one bound he leapt to a
high level of thought and composition. His earliest book, "Some Gospel
Truths Opened," "thrown off," writes Dr. Brown, "at a heat," displays the
same ease of style and directness of speech and absence of stilted
phraseology which he maintained to the end. The great charm which
pervades all Bunyan's writings is their naturalness. You never feel that
he is writing for effect, still less to perform an uncongenial piece of
task-work. He writes because he had something to say which was worth
saying, a message to deliver on which the highest interests of others
were at stake, which demanded nothing more than a straightforward
earnestness and plainness of speech, such as coming from the heart might
best reach the hearts of others. He wrote as he spoke, because a
necessity was laid upon him which he dared not evade. As he says in a
passage quoted in a former chapter, he might have stepped into a much
higher style, and have employed more literary ornament. But to attempt
this would be, to one of his intense earnestness, to degrade his calling.
He dared not do it. Like the great Apostle, "his speech and preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the
Spirit and in power." God had not played with him, and he dared not play
with others. His errand was much too serious, and their need and danger
too urgent to waste time in tricking out his words with human skill. And
it is just this which, with all their rudeness, their occasional bad
grammar, and homely colloquialisms, gives to Bunyan's writings a power of
riveting the attention and stirring the affections which few writers have
attained to. The pent-up fire glows in every line, and kindles the
hearts of his readers. "Beautiful images, vivid expressions, forcible
arguments all aglow with passion, tender pleadings, solemn warnings, make
those who read him all eye, all ear, all soul." This native vigour is
attributable, in no small degree, to the manner in which for the most
part Bunyan's works came into being. He did not set himself to compose
theological treatises upon stated subjects, but after he had preached
with satisfaction to himself and acceptance with his audience, he usually
wrote out the substance of his discourse from memory, with the
enlargements and additions it might seem to require. And thus his
religious works have all the glow and fervour of the unwritten utterances
of a practised orator, united with the orderliness and precision of a
theologian, and are no less admirable for the excellence of their
arrangement than for their evangelical spirit and scriptural doctrine.
Originally meant to be heard, they lose somewhat by being read. But few
can read them without being delighted with the opulence of his
imagination and impressed with the solemn earnestness of his convictions.
Like the subject of the portrait described by him in the House of the
Interpreter, he stands "like one who pleads with men, the law of truth
written upon his lips, the world behind his back, and a crown of gold
above his head."
These characteristics, which distinguish Bunyan as a writer from most of
his Puritan contemporaries, are most conspicuous in the works by which he
is chiefly known, "The Pilgrim's Progress," the "Holy War," the "Grace
Abounding," and we may add, though from the repulsiveness of the subject
the book is now scarcely read at all, the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman."
One great charm of these works, especially of "The Pilgrim's Progress,"
lies in the pure Saxon English in which they are written, which render
them models of the English speech, plain but never vulgar, homely but
never coarse, and still less unclean, full of imagery but never obscure,
always intelligible, always forcible, going straight to the point in the
fewest and simplest words; "powerful and picturesque," writes Hallam,
"from concise simplicity." Bunyan's style is recommended by Lord
Macaulay as an invaluable study to every person who wishes to gain a wide
command over his mother tongue. Its vocabulary is the vocabulary of the
common people. "There is not," he truly says, "in 'The Pilgrim's
Progress' a single expression, if we except a few technical terms of
theology, that would puzzle the rudest peasant." We may, look through
whole pages, and not find a word of more than two syllables. Nor is the
source of this pellucid clearness and imaginative power far to seek.
Bunyan was essentially a man of one book, and that book the very best,
not only for its spiritual teaching but for the purity of its style, the
English Bible. "In no book," writes Mr. J. R. Green, "do we see more
clearly than in 'The Pilgrim's Progress' the new imaginative force which
had been given to the common life of Englishmen by their study of the
Bible. Bunyan's English is the simplest and homeliest English that has
ever been used by any great English writer, but it is the English of the
Bible. His images are the images of prophet and evangelist. So
completely had the Bible become Bunyan's life that one feels its phrases
as the natural expression of his thoughts. He had lived in the Bible
till its words became his own."
All who have undertaken to take an estimate of Bunyan's literary genius
call special attention to the richness of his imaginative power. Few
writers indeed have possessed this power in so high a degree. In
nothing, perhaps, is its vividness more displayed than in the reality of
its impersonations. The _dramatis persons_ are not shadowy abstractions,
moving far above us in a mystical world, or lay figures ticketed with
certain names, but solid men and women of our own flesh and blood, living
in our own everyday world, and of like passions with ourselves. Many of
them we know familiarly; there is hardly one we should be surprised to
meet any day. This lifelike power of characterization belongs in the
highest degree to "The Pilgrim's Progress." It is hardly inferior in
"The Holy War," though with some exceptions the people of "Mansoul" have
failed to engrave themselves on the popular memory as the characters of
the earlier allegory have done. The secret of this graphic power, which
gives "The Pilgrim's Progress" its universal popularity, is that Bunyan
describes men and women of his own day, such as he had known and seen
them. They are not fancy pictures, but literal portraits. Though the
features may be exaggerated, and the colours laid on with an unsparing
brush, the outlines of his bold personifications are truthfully drawn
from his own experience. He had had to do with every one of them. He
could have given a personal name to most of them, and we could do the
same to many. We are not unacquainted with Mr Byends of the town of Fair
Speech, who "always has the luck to jump in his judgment with the way of
the times, and to get thereby," who is zealous for Religion "when he goes
in his silver slippers," and "loves to walk with him in the streets when
the sun shines and the people applaud him." All his kindred and
surroundings are only too familiar to us--his wife, that very virtuous
woman my Lady Feigning's daughter, my Lord Fair-speech, my Lord
Time-server, Mr. Facingbothways, Mr. Anything, and the Parson of the
Parish, his mother's own brother by the father's side, Mr. Twotongues.
Nor is his schoolmaster, one Mr. Gripeman, of the market town of
Lovegain, in the county of Coveting, a stranger to us. Obstinate, with
his dogged determination and stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his
shallow impressionableness, are among our acquaintances. We have, before
now, come across "the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of Conceit," and
have made acquaintance with Mercy's would-be suitor, Mr. Brisk, "a man of
some breeding and that pretended to religion, but who stuck very close to
the world." The man Temporary who lived in a town two miles off from
Honesty, and next door to Mr. Turnback; Formalist and Hypocrisy, who were
"from the land of Vainglory, and were going for praise to Mount Sion";
Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, "fast asleep by the roadside with fetters
on their heels," and their companions, Shortwind, Noheart,
Lingerafterlust, and Sleepyhead, we know them all. "The young woman
whose name was Dull" taxes our patience every day. Where is the town
which does not contain Mrs. Timorous and her coterie of gossips, Mrs.
Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Lightmind, and Mrs. Knownothing, "all
as merry as the maids," with that pretty fellow Mr. Lechery at the house
of Madam Wanton, that "admirably well-bred gentlewoman"? Where shall we
find more lifelike portraits than those of Madam Bubble, a "tall, comely
dame, somewhat of a swarthy complexion, speaking very smoothly with a
smile at the end of each sentence, wearing a great purse by her side,
with her hand often in it, fingering her money as if that was her chief
delight;" of poor Feeblemind of the town of Uncertain, with his "whitely
look, the cast in his eye, and his trembling speech;" of Littlefaith, as
"white as a clout," neither able to fight nor fly when the thieves from
Dead Man's Lane were on him; of Ready-to-halt, at first coming along on
his crutches, and then when Giant Despair had been slain and Doubting
Castle demolished, taking Despondency's daughter Much-afraid by the hand
and dancing with her in the road? "True, he could not dance without one
crutch in his hand, but I promise you he footed it well. Also the girl
was to be commanded, for she answered the musick handsomely." In
Bunyan's pictures there is never a superfluous detail. Every stroke
tells, and helps to the completeness of the portraiture.
The same reality characterizes the descriptive part of "The Pilgrim's
Progress." As his characters are such as he must meet with every day in
his native town, so also the scenery and surroundings of his allegory are
part of his own everyday life, and reproduce what he had been brought up
amidst in his native county, or had noticed in his tinker's wanderings.
"Born and bred," writes Kingsley, "in the monotonous Midland, he had no
natural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country
houses, he saw about him." The Slough of Despond, with its treacherous
quagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a wayfarer might
heedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half drowned in mire;
Byepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile and footpath on the
other side of the fence; the pleasant river fringed with meadows, green
all the year long and overshadowed with trees; the thicket all overgrown
with briars and thorns, where one tumbled over a bush, another stuck fast
in the dirt, some lost their shoes in the mire, and others were fastened
from behind with the brambles; the high wall by the roadside over which
the fruit trees shot their boughs and tempted the boys with their unripe
plums; the arbour with its settle tempting the footsore traveller to
drowsiness; the refreshing spring at the bottom of Hill Difficulty; all
are evidently drawn from his own experience. Bunyan, in his long tramps,
had seen them all. He had known what it was to be in danger of falling
into a pit and being dashed to pieces with Vain Confidence, of being
drowned in the flooded meadows with Christian and Hopeful; of sinking in
deep water when swimming over a river, going down and rising up half
dead, and needing all his companion's strength and skill to keep his head
above the stream. Vanity Fair is evidently drawn from the life. The
great yearly fair of Stourbridge, close to Cambridge, which Bunyan had
probably often visited in his tinker days, with its streets of booths
filled with "wares of all kinds from all countries," its "shows,
jugglings, cheats games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that
of every kind," its "great one of the fair," its court of justice and
power of judgment, furnished him with the materials for his picture.
Scenes like these he draws with sharp defined outlines. When he had to
describe what he only knew by hearsay, his pictures are shadowy and cold.
Never having been very far from home, he had had no experience of the
higher types of beauty and grandeur in nature, and his pen moves in
fetters when he attempts to describe them. When his pilgrims come to the
Hill Difficulty and the Delectable Mountains, the difference is at once
seen. All his nobler imagery is drawn from Scripture. As Hallam has
remarked, "There is scarcely a circumstance or metaphor in the Old
Testament which does not find a place bodily and literally in 'The
Pilgrim's Progress,' and this has made his imagination appear more
creative than it really is."
It would but weary the reader to follow the details of a narrative which
is so universally known. Who needs to be told that in the pilgrimage
here described is represented in allegorical dress the course of a human
soul convinced of sin, struggling onwards to salvation through the trials
and temptations that beset its path to its eternal home? The book is so
completely wrought into the mind and memory, that most of us can at once
recall the incidents which chequer the pilgrim's way, and realize their
meaning; the Slough of Despond, in which the man convinced of his guilt
and fleeing from the wrath to come, in his agonizing self-consciousness
is in danger of being swallowed up in despair; the Wicket Gate, by which
he enters on the strait and narrow way of holiness; the Interpreter's
House, with his visions and acted parables; the Wayside Cross, at the
sight of which the burden of guilt falls from the pilgrim's back, and he
is clothed with change of raiment; the Hill Difficulty, which stands
right in his way, and which he must surmount, not circumvent; the lions
which he has to pass, not knowing that they are chained; the Palace
Beautiful, where he is admitted to the communion of the faithful, and
sits down to meat with them; the Valley of Humiliation, the scene of his
desperate but victorious encounter with Apollyon; the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, with its evil sights and doleful sounds, where one of
the wicked ones whispers into his ear thoughts of blasphemy which he
cannot distinguish from the suggestions of his own mind; the cave at the
valley's mouth, in which, Giant Pagan having been dead this many a day,
his brother, Giant Pope, now sits alone, grinning at pilgrims as they
pass by, and biting his nails because he cannot get at them; Vanity Fair,
the picture of the world, as St. John describes it, hating the light that
puts to shame its own self-chosen darkness, and putting it out if it can,
where the Pilgrim's fellow, Faithful, seals his testimony with his death,
and the Pilgrim himself barely escapes; the "delicate plain" called Ease,
and the little hill, Lucre, where Demas stood "gentlemanlike," to invite
the passersby to come and dig in his silver mine; Byepath Meadow, into
which the Pilgrim and his newly-found companion stray, and are made
prisoners by Giant Despair and shut up in the dungeons of Doubting
Castle, and break out of prison by the help of the Key of Promise; the
Delectable Mountains in Immanuel's Land, with their friendly shepherds
and the cheering prospect of the far-off heavenly city; the Enchanted
Land, with its temptations to spiritual drowsiness at the very end of the
journey; the Land of Beulah, the ante-chamber of the city to which they
were bound; and, last stage of all, the deep dark river, without a
bridge, which had to be crossed before the city was entered; the entrance
into its heavenly gates, the pilgrim's joyous reception with all the
bells in the city ringing again for joy; the Dreamer's glimpse of its
glories through the opened portals--is not every stage of the journey,
every scene of the pilgrimage, indelibly printed on our memories, for our
warning, our instruction, our encouragement in the race we, as much as
they, have each one to run? Have we not all, again and again, shared the
Dreamer's feelings--"After that they shut up the Gates; which, when I had
seen, I wished myself among them," and prayed, God helping us, that our
"dangerous journey"--ever the most dangerous when we see its dangers the
least--might end in our "safe arrival at the desired country"?
"The Pilgrim's Progress" exhibits Bunyan in the character by which he
would have most desired to be remembered, as one of the most influential
of Christian preachers. Hallam, however, claims for him another
distinction which would have greatly startled and probably shocked him,
as the father of our English novelists. As an allegorist Bunyan had many
predecessors, not a few of whom, dating from early times, had taken the
natural allegory of the pilgrimage of human life as the basis of their
works. But as a novelist he had no one to show him the way. Bunyan was
the first to break ground in a field which has since then been so
overabundantly worked that the soil has almost lost its productiveness;
while few novels written purely with the object of entertainment have
ever proved so universally entertaining. Intensely religious as it is in
purpose, "The Pilgrim's Progress" may be safely styled the first English
novel. "The claim to be the father of English romance," writes Dr.
Allon, "which has been sometimes preferred for Defoe, really pertains to
Bunyan. Defoe may claim the parentage of a species, but Bunyan is the
creator of the genus." As the parent of fictitious biography it is that
Bunyan has charmed the world. On its vivid interest as a story, its
universal interest and lasting vitality rest. "Other allegorises,"
writes Lord Macaulay, "have shown great ingenuity, but no other
allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to make its
abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love." Whatever its
deficiencies, literary and religious, may be; if we find incongruities in
the narrative, and are not insensible to some grave theological
deficiencies; if we are unable without qualification to accept
Coleridge's dictum that it is "incomparably the best 'Summa Theologiae
Evangelicae' ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired;" even
if, with Hallam, we consider its "excellencies great indeed, but not of
the highest order," and deem it "a little over-praised," the fact of its
universal popularity with readers of all classes and of all orders of
intellect remains, and gives this book a unique distinction. "I have,"
says Dr. Arnold, when reading it after a long interval, "always been
struck by its piety. I am now struck equally or even more by its
profound wisdom. It seems to be a complete reflexion of Scripture." And
to turn to a critic of very different character, Dean Swift: "I have been
better entertained and more improved," writes that cynical pessimist, "by
a few pages of this book than by a long discourse on the will and
intellect." The favourite of our childhood, as "the most perfect and
complex of fairy tales, so human and intelligible," read, as Hallam says,
"at an age when the spiritual meaning is either little perceived or
little regarded," the "Pilgrim's Progress" becomes the chosen companion
of our later years, perused with ever fresh appreciation of its teaching,
and enjoyment of its native genius; "the interpreter of life to all who
are perplexed with its problems, and the practical guide and solace of
all who need counsel and sympathy."
The secret of this universal acceptableness of "The Pilgrim's Progress"
lies in the breadth of its religious sympathies. Rigid Puritan as Bunyan
was, no book is more completely free from sectarian narrowness. Its
reach is as wide as Christianity itself, and it takes hold of every human
heart because it is so intensely human. No apology is needed for
presenting Mr. Froude's eloquent panegyric: "The Pilgrim, though in
Puritan dress, is a genuine man. His experience is so truly human
experience that Christians of every persuasion can identify themselves
with him; and even those who regard Christianity itself as but a natural
outgrowth of the conscience and intellect, and yet desire to live nobly
and make the best of themselves, can recognize familiar footprints in
every step of Christian's journey. Thus 'The Pilgrim's Progress' is a
book which when once read can never be forgotten. We too, every one of
us, are pilgrims on the same road; and images and illustrations come back
to us from so faithful an itinerary, as we encounter similar trials, and
learn for ourselves the accuracy with which Bunyan has described them.
Time cannot impair its interest, or intellectual progress make it cease
to be true to experience." Dr. Brown's appreciative words may be added:
"With deepest pathos it enters into the stern battle so real to all of
us, into those heart-experiences which make up, for all, the discipline
of life. It is this especially which has given to it the mighty hold
which it has always had upon the toiling poor, and made it the one book
above all books well-thumbed and torn to tatters among them. And it is
this which makes it one of the first books translated by the missionary
who seeks to give true thoughts of God and life to heathen men."
The Second Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress" partakes of the character of
almost all continuations. It is, in Mr. Froude's words, "only a feeble
reverberation of the first part, which has given it a popularity it would
have hardly attained by its own merits. Christiana and her children are
tolerated for the pilgrim's sake to whom they belong." Bunyan seems not
to have been insensible of this himself, when in his metrical preface he
thus introduces his new work:
"Go now my little book to every place
Where my first Pilgrim has but shown his face.
Call at their door; if any say 'Who's there?'
Then answer thus, 'Christiana is here.'
If they bid thee come in, then enter thou
With all thy boys. And then, as thou know'st how,
Tell who they are, also from whence they came;
Perhaps they'll know them by their looks or name."
But although the Second Part must be pronounced inferior, on the whole,
to the first, it is a work of striking individuality and graphic power,
such as Bunyan alone could have written. Everywhere we find strokes of
his peculiar genius, and though in a smaller measure than the first, it
has added not a few portraits to Bunyan's spiritual picture gallery we
should be sorry to miss, and supplied us with racy sayings which stick to
the memory. The sweet maid Mercy affords a lovely picture of gentle
feminine piety, well contrasted with the more vigorous but still
thoroughly womanly character of Christiana. Great-Heart is too much of
an abstraction: a preacher in the uncongenial disguise of a knightly
champion of distressed females and the slayer of giants. But the other
new characters have generally a vivid personality. Who can forget Old
Honesty, the dull good man with no mental gifts but of dogged sincerity,
who though coming from the Town of Stupidity, four degrees beyond the
City of Destruction, was "known for a cock of the right kind," because he
said the truth and stuck to it; or his companion, Mr. Fearing, that most
troublesome of pilgrims, stumbling at every straw, lying roaring at the
Slough of Despond above a month together, standing shaking and shrinking
at the Wicket Gate, but making no stick at the Lions, and at last getting
over the river not much above wetshod; or Mr. Valiant for Truth, the
native of Darkland, standing with his sword drawn and his face all bloody
from his three hours' fight with Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick;
Mr. Standfast, blushing to be found on his knees in the Enchanted Ground,
one who loved to hear his Lord spoken of, and coveted to set his foot
wherever he saw the print of his shoe; Mr. Feeblemind, the sickly,
melancholy pilgrim, at whose door death did usually knock once a day,
betaking himself to a pilgrim's life because he was never well at home,
resolved to run when he could, and go when he could not run, and creep
when he could not go, an enemy to laughter and to gay attire, bringing up
the rear of the company with Mr. Readytohalt hobbling along on his
crutches; Giant Despair's prisoners, Mr. Despondency, whom he had all but
starved to death--and Mistress Much-afraid his daughter, who went through
the river singing, though none could understand what she said? Each of
these characters has a distinct individuality which lifts them from
shadowy abstractions into living men and women. But with all its
excellencies, and they are many, the general inferiority of the history
of Christiana and her children's pilgrimage to that of her husband's must
be acknowledged. The story is less skilfully constructed; the interest
is sometimes allowed to flag; the dialogues that interrupt the narrative
are in places dry and wearisome--too much of sermons in disguise. There
is also a want of keeping between the two parts of the allegory. The
Wicket Gate of the First Part has become a considerable building with a
summer parlour in the Second; the shepherds' tents on the Delectable
Mountains have risen into a palace, with a dining-room, and a looking-
glass, and a store of jewels; while Vanity Fair has lost its former bad
character, and has become a respectable country town, where Christiana
and her family, seeming altogether to forget their pilgrimage, settled
down comfortably, enjoy the society of the good people of the place, and
the sons marry and have children. These same children also cause the
reader no little perplexity, when he finds them in the course of the
supposed journey transformed from sweet babes who are terrified with the
Mastiffs barking at the Wicket Gate, who catch at the boughs for the
unripe plums and cry at having to climb the hill; whose faces are stroked
by the Interpreter; who are catechised and called "good boys" by
Prudence; who sup on bread crumbled into basins of milk, and are put to
bed by Mercy--into strong young men, able to go out and fight with a
giant, and lend a hand to the pulling down of Doubting Castle, and
becoming husbands and fathers. We cannot but feel the want of
_vraisemblance_ which brings the whole company of pilgrims to the banks
of the dark river at one time, and sends them over in succession,
following one another rapidly through the Golden Gate of the City. The
four boys with their wives and children, it is true, stay behind awhile,
but there is an evident incongruity in their doing so when the allegory
has brought them all to what stands for the close of their earthly
pilgrimage. Bunyan's mistake was in gratifying his inventive genius and
making his band of pilgrims so large. He could get them together and
make them travel in company without any sacrifice of dramatic truth,
which, however, he was forced to disregard when the time came for their
dismissal. The exquisite pathos of the description of the passage of the
river by Christian and Hopeful blinds us to what may be almost termed the
impossibility of two persons passing through the final struggle together,
and dying at the same moment, but this charm is wanting in the prosaic
picture of the company of fellow-travellers coming down to the water's
edge, and waiting till the postman blows his horn and bids them cross.
Much as the Second Part contains of what is admirable, and what no one
but Bunyan could have written, we feel after reading it that, in Mr.
Froude's words, the rough simplicity is gone, and has been replaced by a
tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish. "Giants, dragons, and angelic
champions carry us into a spurious fairyland where the knight-errant is a
preacher in disguise. Fair ladies and love-matches, however decorously
chastened, suit ill with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the
soul and sin." With the acknowledged shortcomings of the Second Part of
"The Pilgrim's Progress," we may be well content that Bunyan never
carried out the idea hinted at in the closing words of his allegory:
"Shall it be my lot to go that way again, I may give those that desire it
an account of what I am here silent about; in the meantime I bid my
reader--Adieu."
Bunyan's second great allegorical work, "The Holy War," need not detain
us long. Being an attempt, and in the nature of things an unsuccessful
attempt, to clothe what writers on divinity call "the plan of salvation"
in a figurative dress, the narrative, with all its vividness of
description in parts, its clearly drawn characters with their picturesque
nomenclature, and the stirring vicissitudes of the drama, is necessarily
wanting in the personal interest which attaches to an individual man,
like Christian, and those who are linked with or follow his career. In
fact, the tremendous realities of the spiritual history of the human race
are entirely unfit for allegorical treatment as a whole. Sin, its
origin, its consequences, its remedy, and the apparent failure of that
remedy though administered by Almighty hands, must remain a mystery for
all time. The attempts made by Bunyan, and by one of much higher
intellectual power and greater poetic gifts than Bunyan--John Milton--to
bring that mystery within the grasp of the finite intellect, only render
it more perplexing. The proverbial line tells us that--
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
Bunyan and Milton were as far as possible from being "fools"; but when
both these great writers, on the one hand, carry us up into the Council
Chamber of Heaven and introduce us to the Persons of the ever-blessed
Trinity, debating, consulting, planning, and resolving, like a sovereign
and his ministers when a revolted province has to be brought back to its
allegiance; and, on the other hand, take us down to the infernal regions,
and makes us privy to the plots and counterplots of the rebel leaders and
hearers of their speeches, we cannot but feel that, in spite of the
magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely
picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded
if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their
essential mysteries. In point of individual personal interest, "The Holy
War" contrasts badly with "The Pilgrim's Progress." The narrative moves
in a more shadowy region. We may admire the workmanship; but the same
undefined sense of unreality pursues us through Milton's noble epic, the
outcome of a divinely-fired genius, and Bunyan's humble narrative,
drawing its scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its _dramatis
personae_, from the writer's own surroundings in the town and corporation
of Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the
great Parliamentary War. The catastrophe also is eminently
unsatisfactory. When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we
feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been
looking for all along. But the conclusion of "The Holy War" is too much
like the closing chapter of "Rasselas"--"a conclusion in which nothing is
concluded." After all the endless vicissitudes of the conflict, and the
final and glorious victory of Emmanuel and his forces, and the execution
of the ringleaders of the mutiny, the issue still remains doubtful. The
town of Mansoul is left open to fresh attacks. Diabolus is still at
large. Carnal Sense breaks prison and continues to lurk in the town.
Unbelief, that "nimble Jack," slips away, and can never be laid hold of.
These, therefore, and some few others of the more subtle of the
Diabolonians, continue to make their home in Mansoul, and will do so
until Mansoul ceases to dwell in the kingdom of Universe. It is true
they turn chicken-hearted after the other leaders of their party have
been taken and executed, and keep themselves quiet and close, lurking in
dens and holes lest they should be snapped up by Emmanuel's men. If
Unbelief or any of his crew venture to show themselves in the streets,
the whole town is up in arms against them; the very children raise a hue
and cry against them and seek to stone them. But all in vain. Mansoul,
it is true, enjoys some good degree of peace and quiet. Her Prince takes
up his residence in her borders. Her captains and soldiers do their
duties. She minds her trade with the heavenly land afar off; also she is
busy in her manufacture. But with the remnants of the Diabolonians still
within her walls, ready to show their heads on the least relaxation of
strict watchfulness, keeping up constant communication with Diabolus and
the other lords of the pit, and prepared to open the gates to them when
opportunity offers, this peace can not be lasting. The old battle will
have to be fought over again, only to end in the same undecisive result.
And so it must be to the end. If untrue to art, Bunyan is true to fact.
Whether we regard Mansoul as the soul of a single individual or as the
whole human race, no final victory can be looked for so long as it abides
in "the country of Universe." The flesh will lust against the spirit,
the regenerated man will be in danger of being brought into captivity to
the law of sin and death unless he keeps up his watchfulness and
maintains the struggle to the end.
And it is here, that, for purposes of art, not for purposes of truth, the
real failing of "The Holy War" lies. The drama of Mansoul is incomplete,
and whether individually or collectively, must remain incomplete till man
puts on a new nature, and the victory, once for all gained on Calvary, is
consummated, in the fulness of time, at the restitution of all things.
There is no uncertainty what the end will be. Evil must be put down, and
good must triumph at last. But the end is not yet, and it seems as far
off as ever. The army of Doubters, under their several captains,
Election Doubters, Vocation Doubters, Salvation Doubters, Grace Doubters,
with their general the great Lord Incredulity at their head, reinforced
by many fresh regiments under novel standards, unknown and unthought of
in Bunyan's days, taking the place of those whose power is past, is ever
making new attacks upon poor Mansoul, and terrifying feeble souls with
their threatenings. Whichever way we look there is much to puzzle, much
to grieve over, much that to our present limited view is entirely
inexplicable. But the mind that accepts the loving will and wisdom of
God as the law of the Universe, can rest in the calm assurance that all,
however mysteriously, is fulfilling His eternal designs, and that though
He seems to permit "His work to be spoilt, His power defied, and even His
victories when won made useless," it is but seeming,--that the triumph of
evil is but temporary, and that these apparent failures and
contradictions, are slowly but surely working out and helping forward
"The one unseen divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
"The mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation leaves
unsolved are made tolerable by Hope." To adopt Bunyan's figurative
language in the closing paragraph of his allegory, the day is certainly
coming when the famous town of Mansoul shall be taken down and
transported "every stick and stone" to Emmanuel's land, and there set up
for the Father's habitation in such strength and glory as it never saw
before. No Diabolonian shall be able to creep into its streets, burrow
in its walls, or be seen in its borders. No evil tidings shall trouble
its inhabitants, nor sound of Diabolian drum be heard there. Sorrow and
grief shall be ended, and life, always sweet, always new, shall last
longer than they could even desire it, even all the days of eternity.
Meanwhile let those who have such a glorious hope set before them keep
clean and white the liveries their Lord has given them, and wash often in
the open fountain. Let them believe in His love, live upon His word;
watch, fight, and pray, and hold fast till He come.
One more work of Bunyan's still remains to be briefly noticed, as bearing
the characteristic stamp of his genius, "The Life and Death of Mr.
Badman." The original idea of this book was to furnish a contrast to
"The Pilgrim's Progress." As in that work he had described the course of
a man setting out on his course heavenwards, struggling onwards through
temptation, trials, and difficulties, and entering at last through the
golden gates into the city of God, so in this later work his purpose was
to depict the career of a man whose face from the first was turned in the
opposite direction, going on from bad to worse, ever becoming more and
more irretrievably evil, fitter and fitter for the bottomless pit; his
life full of sin and his death without repentance; reaping the fruit of
his sins in hopeless sinfulness. That this was the original purpose of
the work, Bunyan tells us in his preface. It came into his mind, he
says, as in the former book he had written concerning the progress of the
Pilgrim from this world to glory, so in this second book to write of the
life and death of the ungodly, and of their travel from this world to
hell. The new work, however, as in almost every respect it differs from
the earlier one, so it is decidedly inferior to it. It is totally unlike
"The Pilgrim's Progress" both in form and execution. The one is an
allegory, the other a tale, describing without imagery or metaphor, in
the plainest language, the career of a "vulgar, middle-class,
unprincipled scoundrel." While "The Pilgrim's Progress" pursues the
narrative form throughout, only interrupted by dialogues between the
leading characters, "Mr. Badman's career" is presented to the world in a
dialogue between a certain Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive. Mr. Wiseman
tells the story, and Mr. Attentive supplies appropriate reflections on
it. The narrative is needlessly burdened with a succession of short
sermons, in the form of didactic discourses on lying, stealing, impurity,
and the other vices of which the hero of the story was guilty, and which
brought him to his miserable end. The plainness of speech with which
some of these evil doings are enlarged upon, and Mr. Badman's indulgence
in them described, makes portions of the book very disagreeable, and
indeed hardly profitable reading. With omissions, however, the book well
deserves perusal, as a picture such as only Bunyan or his rival in
lifelike portraiture, Defoe, could have drawn of vulgar English life in
the latter part of the seventeenth century, in a commonplace country town
such as Bedford. It is not at all a pleasant picture. The life
described, when not gross, is sordid and foul, is mean and commonplace.
But as a description of English middle-class life at the epoch of the
Restoration and Revolution, it is invaluable for those who wish to put
themselves in touch with that period. The anecdotes introduced to
illustrate Bunyan's positions of God's judgment upon swearers and
sinners, convicting him of a credulity and a harshness of feeling one is
sorry to think him capable of, are very interesting for the side-lights
they throw upon the times and the people who lived in them. It would
take too long to give a sketch of the story, even if a summary could give
any real estimate of its picturesque and vivid power. It is certainly a
remarkable, if an offensive book. As with "Robinson Crusoe" and Defoe's
other tales, we can hardly believe that we have not a real history before
us. We feel that there is no reason why the events recorded should not
have happened. There are no surprises; no unlooked-for catastrophes; no
providential interpositions to punish the sinner or rescue the good man.
Badman's pious wife is made to pay the penalty of allowing herself to be
deceived by a tall, good-looking, hypocritical scoundrel. He himself
pursues his evil way to the end, and "dies like a lamb, or as men call
it, like a Chrisom child sweetly and without fear," but the selfsame Mr.
Badman still, not only in name, but in condition; sinning onto the last,
and dying with a heart that cannot repent.
Mr. Froude's summing up of this book is so masterly that we make no
apology for presenting it to our readers. "Bunyan conceals nothing,
assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp and
shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the reward which
such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful; is powerful; he
enjoys all the pleasures which money can bring; his bad wife helps him to
ruin, but otherwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace. Bunyan has
made him a brute, because such men do become brutes. It is the real
punishment of brutal and selfish habits. There the figure stands--a
picture of a man in the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most
familiar; travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire,
as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of Despond and the
Valley of the Shadow of Death. Pleasures are to be found among the
primroses, such pleasures as a brute can be gratified by. Yet the reader
feels that even if there was no bonfire, he would still prefer to be with
Christian."
FOOTNOTES
{1} A small enclosure behind a cottage.