I have been reading _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ again—the third part and
all—and wish that some one would tell one what to think about it.
The English is racy, vigorous and often very beautiful; but the language
of any book is nothing except in so far as it reveals the writer. The
words in which a man clothes his thoughts are like all other clothes—the
cut raises presumptions about his thoughts, and these generally turn out
to be just, but the words are no more the thoughts than a man’s coat is
himself. I am not sure, however, that in Bunyan’s case the dress in
which he has clothed his ideas does not reveal him more justly than the
ideas do.
_The Pilgrim’s Progress_ consists mainly of a series of infamous libels
upon life and things; it is a blasphemy against certain fundamental ideas
of right and wrong which our consciences most instinctively approve; its
notion of heaven is hardly higher than a transformation scene at Drury
Lane; it is essentially infidel. “Hold out to me the chance of a golden
crown and harp with freedom from all further worries, give me angels to
flatter me and fetch and carry for me, and I shall think the game worth
playing, notwithstanding the great and horrible risk of failure; but no
crown, no cross for me. Pay me well and I will wait for payment, but if
I have to give credit I shall expect to be paid better in the end.”
There is no conception of the faith that a man should do his duty
cheerfully with all his might though, as far as he can see, he will never
be paid directly or indirectly either here or hereafter. Still less is
there any conception that unless a man has this faith he is not worth
thinking about. There is no sense that as we have received freely so we
should give freely and be only too thankful that we have anything to give
at all. Furthermore there does not appear to be even the remotest
conception that this honourable, comfortable and sustaining faith is,
like all other high faiths, to be brushed aside very peremptorily at the
bidding of common-sense.
What a pity it is that Christian never met Mr. Common-Sense with his
daughter, Good-Humour, and her affianced husband, Mr. Hate-Cant; but if
he ever saw them in the distance he steered clear of them, probably as
feeling that they would be more dangerous than Giant Despair, Vanity Fair
and Apollyon all together—for they would have stuck to him if he had let
them get in with him. Among other things they would have told him that,
if there was any truth in his opinions, neither man nor woman ought to
become a father or mother at all, inasmuch as their doing so would
probably entail eternity of torture on the wretched creature whom they
were launching into the world. Life in this world is risk enough to
inflict on another person who has not been consulted in the matter, but
death will give quittance in full. To weaken our faith in this sure and
certain hope of peace eternal (except so far as we have so lived as to
win life in others after we are gone) would be a cruel thing, even though
the evidence against it were overwhelming, but to rob us of it on no
evidence worth a moment’s consideration and, apparently, from no other
motive than the pecuniary advantage of the robbers themselves is infamy.
For the Churches are but institutions for the saving of men’s souls from
hell.
This is true enough. Nevertheless it is untrue that in practice any
Christian minister, knowing what he preaches to be both very false and
very cruel, yet insists on it because it is to the advantage of his own
order. In a way the preachers believe what they preach, but it is as men
who have taken a bad £10 note and refuse to look at the evidence that
makes for its badness, though, if the note were not theirs, they would
see at a glance that it was not a good one. For the man in the street it
is enough that what the priests teach in respect of a future state is
palpably both cruel and absurd while, at the same time, they make their
living by teaching it and thus prey upon other men’s fears of the
unknown. If the Churches do not wish to be misunderstood they should not
allow themselves to remain in such an equivocal position.
But let this pass. Bunyan, we may be sure, took all that he preached in
its most literal interpretation; he could never have made his book so
interesting had he not done so. The interest of it depends almost
entirely on the unquestionable good faith of the writer and the strength
of the impulse that compelled him to speak that which was within him. He
was not writing a book which he might sell, he was speaking what was
borne in upon him from heaven. The message he uttered was, to my
thinking, both low and false, but it was truth of truths to Bunyan.
No. This will not do. The Epistles of St. Paul were truth of truths to
Paul, but they do not attract us to the man who wrote them, and, except
here and there, they are very uninteresting. Mere strength of conviction
on a writer’s part is not enough to make his work take permanent rank.
Yet I know that I could read the whole of _The Pilgrim’s Progress_
(except occasional episodical sermons) without being at all bored by it,
whereas, having spent a penny upon Mr. Stead’s abridgement of _Joseph
Andrews_, I had to give it up as putting me out of all patience. I then
spent another penny on an abridgement of _Gulliver’s Travels_, and was
enchanted by it. What is it that makes one book so readable and another
so unreadable? Swift, from all I can make out, was a far more human and
genuine person than he is generally represented, but I do not think I
should have liked him, whereas Fielding, I am sure, must have been
delightful. Why do the faults of his work overweigh its many great
excellences, while the less great excellences of the _Voyage to Lilliput_
outweigh its more serious defects?
I suppose it is the prolixity of Fielding that fatigues me. Swift is
terse, he gets through what he has to say on any matter as quickly as he
can and takes the reader on to the next, whereas Fielding is not only
long, but his length is made still longer by the disconnectedness of the
episodes that appear to have been padded into the books—episodes that do
not help one forward, and are generally so exaggerated, and often so full
of horse-play as to put one out of conceit with the parts that are really
excellent.
Whatever else Bunyan is he is never long; he takes you quickly on from
incident to incident and, however little his incidents may appeal to us,
we feel that he is never giving us one that is not _bona fide_ so far as
he is concerned. His episodes and incidents are introduced not because
he wants to make his book longer but because he cannot be satisfied
without these particular ones, even though he may feel that his book is
getting longer than he likes.
. . .
And here I must break away from this problem, leaving it unsolved.
[1897.]