BUNYAN AND OTHER WRITERS OF FICTION.
[Sidenote: John Bunyan (1628-1688).]
So great an endowment is genius, that neither the effect produced nor
the fame achieved by all the eloquent and learned divines of Charles
II.'s age can be for an instant compared to the achievement of a poor
and almost illiterate mechanic, whom Macaulay classes with Milton as one
of the only two men of that period--he might have excepted Thomas
Burnet--to whom had been vouchsafed any considerable measure of
imagination. John Bunyan, the one man who has attained to write a
successful prose allegory on a large scale, and to infuse true emotion
into an exercise of ingenuity, and who probably owed less to study and
training than any other of the great authors of the modern world, was
born at Elstow, a village in the neighbourhood of Bedford, in November,
1628. He is usually described as a 'tinker,' but, as he was not an
itinerant, 'brazier' would be a more correct appellation. The trade was
his father's, who was also a very small freeholder. Bunyan probably
received some instruction at Bedford grammar school, and his narrative
of his boyhood shows that he must have had considerable knowledge of the
Bible, which impressed his imaginative temper more than he knew at the
time. According to his own account he was wild and profane in his youth,
but nothing very definite can be extracted from these self-accusations,
and it would rather appear that it was only for a short time that he
could even be described as careless. In 1644, partly perhaps from grief
at the death of his mother and dissatisfaction with his father's speedy
re-marriage, he enlisted into the army, doubtless the Parliamentary
force, though he strangely or prudently leaves the point uncertain.
About the end of 1648 he married, and through the influence of his wife,
whose name he does not tell us, and by the aid of two religious books
which she brought him among her scanty possessions, he accomplished what
he afterwards came to consider a merely outward reformation. The attempt
to subjugate the inward man involved him for several years in the most
distressing spiritual conflicts, described with extreme power in his
_Grace Abounding_. They conducted him eventually to peace, and into the
Baptist congregation of Mr. Gifford, who had been helpful to him. In
1655 he became a preacher, and in the following year produced his first
book, _Some Gospel Truths Opened_, to which was prefixed a
recommendatory letter by John Burton, who says, 'This man is not chosen
out of an earthly, but out of the heavenly university.'
In 1660 the revival under the Restoration government of obsolete
enactments against conventicles, with no endeavour to discriminate
between seditious conspirators like the Fifth Monarchy men and harmless
worshippers like the Baptists, compelled the reluctant Bedford
magistrates to arrest and imprison Bunyan as an unlicensed preacher. He
might have escaped, or have obtained release by a trifling submission,
but with the spirit of a Christian martyr he disdained either course,
and abode contentedly in prison for nearly twelve years. His captivity
in the commodious county gaol was by no means oppressive; indeed, in the
first part of it he enjoyed a large measure of liberty, afterwards
withdrawn. He supported himself by making tagged laces, as well as by
the publication of some books, of which _Grace Abounding_ (1666) is the
most important. The first part of _Pilgrim's Progress_ was also written
in prison, but, as Bunyan's best biographer, Dr. John Brown, almost
proves, during a second and comparatively brief confinement in 1676. In
1672 Bunyan published his _Defence of Justification by Faith_, a coarse
and violent attack on the _Design of Christianity_, by Dr., afterwards
Bishop Fowler, one of the most tolerant divines of the age, but who was
provoked to reply with almost equal acrimony. In the same year Charles
II.'s merciful but entirely illegal suspension of all statutes against
Papists and Nonconformists liberated Bunyan, who even obtained a licence
to preach, and became stated minister of the Baptist congregation at
Bedford, then meeting in a barn in an orchard. Notwithstanding some few
molestations, of which the second imprisonment in 1675-76 was the chief,
the remainder of his life was in general tranquil and prosperous. The
first part of _Pilgrim's Progress_ appeared in 1678, and, though not
half-a-dozen copies of it are now known to exist, immediately attained
the highest popularity. Edition followed edition, the first two or three
with remarkable additions and improvements. Bunyan frequently visited
London, where he became a popular preacher; his influence was courted,
though unsuccessfully, by the government itself, and in 1688, the year
of his death, he had become in some sort chaplain to the Lord Mayor, 'an
Anabaptist, a very odd ignorant person,' says Evelyn. His principal
works in the interval had been: _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_,
1680; _The Holy War_, 1682; the second part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_,
1684; _The Jerusalem Sinner Saved_, 1688. His death, on August 31st,
1688, took place in London, and was occasioned by cold contracted on a
journey which he had undertaken to reconcile a father with his son.
Of Bunyan's character there can be but one opinion, he was a truly
Apostolic man. As no one's diction is more forcible, unadulterated
Saxon, so no life has better expressed the sturdy, sterling virtues of
the Englishman. A wider culture would have enriched both his mind and
his writings, but with the probable result of turning a remarkable man
into an ordinary one. His good sense and his humility are illustrated by
a charming anecdote. 'Ah, Mr. Bunyan,' said a grateful hearer, 'that was
a sweet sermon!' 'You need not tell me that,' replied Bunyan, 'the devil
whispered it to me before I was well out of the pulpit.'
It is unnecessary to dwell at any great length upon the characteristics
of so famous and universally known a book as _Pilgrim's Progress_.
Though professedly a vision, and treating of spiritual things, it ranks
with _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Gulliver's Travels_ as one of the great
realistic books of the English language. All three are examples of the
possibility of rendering scenes wholly imaginary, and in fact
impossible, truer to the apprehension than experience itself by the
narrator's own air of absolute conviction, and by unswerving fidelity to
truth of detail. In Bunyan's case the triumph is the more remarkable, as
his personages are not even imaginary men and women, but mere
embodiments of moral or theological qualities. Yet Faithful and Hopeful
are as real as Crusoe and Friday. Before he began to write he must have
realized what he wished to describe with a vividness only conceivable by
regarding it as an outward expression of his own spiritual experience.
He had himself been Christian and Faithful and the captive in Doubting
Castle; he had gazed on Vanity Fair, and passed through the Valley of
the Shadow of Death. The fact that his allegory is in truth an
autobiography explains what Macaulay calls the characteristic
peculiarity of _Pilgrim's Progress_: 'it is the only work of its kind
which possesses a strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the
fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many thousands with
tears.' Elsewhere he says, '_Pilgrim's Progress_ is perhaps the only
book about which, after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated
minority has come over to the opinion of the common people.' It may be
added that _Pilgrim's Progress_, unlike other celebrated works, is a
_bona fide_ and unmistakable allegory. _Don Quixote_ may have a much
deeper purpose than that of satirizing chivalric romances, but not one
reader in a hundred cares to fathom it. Spenser undoubtedly intended to
shadow forth Elizabeth in Gloriana; but the perception of the poet's
purpose contributes nothing to the enjoyment of his poem. In Bunyan,
however, the allegory is the book, too plain to be overlooked by the
most careless reader; and all the minor allegories that combine to
enrich the main action are equally apparent for what they are, and yet
the obvious invention has all the force of reality. 'Bunyan,' says
Macaulay, 'is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the
interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors men
are mere personifications. The mind of Bunyan, on the other hand, was so
imaginative that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men.
A dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect
than a dialogue between two human beings in most plays.' Macaulay
proceeds to compare Bunyan in this particular with Shelley, and the
comparison is just; but it is surprising that neither he nor Mr. Froude
should have dwelt on Bunyan's deeper affinity to a great predecessor of
whom he assuredly never read a line--Dante. Dante's personifications,
indeed, are feeble compared to Bunyan's; it is doubtful whether some of
them are even intended as such. The might of his imagination, however,
like Bunyan's, is shown in his power of reconciling us to its wildest
flights by the intensity of his realism; and the chief distinction is
that while Bunyan's materials are necessarily drawn from the only worlds
he knew, the narrow and prosaic world of Bedford and the sublime world
of the Bible, Dante disposed of all his age could give in philosophy,
political life, human learning, the influence of art and the scrutiny of
nature. Bunyan is hence a very contracted and terrestrial Dante, but so
far as he goes he is a true Dante; he cannot soar with his great
predecessor, but if Dante had succeeded him he would not have disdained
to have built upon his massive groundwork. Both suffer from the
inevitable progress of mankind beyond the conceptions which in their day
were accepted as matters of course. Dante's _Inferno_ now seems rather
grotesque than terrible. Christian's forsaking his kindred in the City
of Destruction, which to Bunyan appeared a duty, now seems selfishness.
That the fame of both should have survived such profound modifications
of belief is one of the most striking evidences of their greatness. One
great advantage Bunyan possessed: the Bible had prepared the way for
him. There is probably no other such instance of the assimilation of one
literature by another as the domestication of the Bible in England. The
Greek and Hebrew authors of the Scriptures were better known to the
public that Bunyan principally addressed than the majority of their own
writers, and he had no need, like other men of original genius, to
painfully create the taste by which he was ultimately to be judged. From
the first _Pilgrim's Progress_ took rank as a classic; well might Dr.
Arnold call it 'a complete reflection of Scripture.' Its chief blemish,
the somewhat prosaic and self-seeking character of its piety, harmonized
entirely with the current teaching of the pulpit, and offered no
stumbling-block to a generation which had not so much as heard of
'other-worldliness.' Its popularity soon received the usual attestation
of piracies, spurious continuations, and imitations in all languages.
The question whether Bunyan was indebted for his allegory to any
predecessor is hardly worth discussing. Some general resemblance must
necessarily exist between books treating of pilgrimages, and here the
resemblance is no more than general. The second part was published in
1684. Its inferiority to the first part is universally admitted, but is
less than is usually entailed by the endeavour to append an artificial
supplement to an inspired book. Many passages are fully worthy of the
first part, and as a whole it abounds with life and variety.
Three only of Bunyan's numerous publications, besides _Pilgrim's
Progress_, claim a place in literature: _The Holy War_ (1682); _The Life
and Death of Mr. Badman_ (1680); _Grace Abounding_ (1665). Of these _The
Holy War_ is the most important, and affords a highly instructive
contrast with _Pilgrim's Progress_. It is the peculiar virtue of the
latter, while full of wisdom and profitableness, to be in no way
professedly didactic. Bunyan himself tells us that he did not sit down
to compose it; the thoughts came spontaneously into his mind; he wrote
it because he could not help himself. There was thus no need for
laboriously instilling lessons which inhered in the original conception,
and came forward of themselves as the story flowed along. The elaborate
construction of _The Holy War_ precludes belief in a like inspiration.
There can, in fact, be little doubt that the idea is consciously derived
from _Paradise Lost_. In both the banished fiends cast about for some
means of retaliating upon their omnipotent foe; in Milton their attack
is levelled against the Garden of Eden, in Bunyan against the soul of
man. All human attributes, virtuous or vicious, are allegorized with
graphic liveliness, but at length one wearies of the crowd of
abstractions; and where strength was most necessary, Bunyan is weak.
Emanuel is not godlike, and Diabolus is not terrible. The book is
perhaps chiefly interesting as an index to the great progress effected
since Bunyan's time in spirituality as regards men's religious
conceptions, and in freedom and enlightenment as concerns the things of
earth. No one would now depict the offended majesty of Heaven as so like
the offended majesty of the Stuarts; or deem that the revolters' offence
could be mitigated by the abjectness of their submission; or try
criminals with such unfairness; or lecture them upon conviction with
such lack of judicial decorum. Bunyan's own spirit seems narrower than
of old; among the traitors upon whom Emanuel's ministers execute justice
he includes not only Notruth and Pitiless, but also Election-doubter and
Vocation-doubter, who represent the majority of the members of the
Church of England. The whole tone, in truth, is such as might be
expected from one nurtured upon the Old rather than the New Testament,
and who had never conceived any doubts of the justice of the Israelites'
dealings with the Canaanites. The literary power, nevertheless, is
unabated; much ingenuity is shown in keeping up the interest of the
story; and there is the old gift of vitalizing abstractions by
uncompromising realism of treatment. The following passage is a
remarkable instance of the dependence of Bunyan's style upon his inward
mind. Seldom have joy and elation of spirit elevated homely diction into
so near an approach to magnificence:
'Well, I told you before, how the prisoners were entertained
by the noble Prince Emmanuel, and how they behaved themselves
before him, and how he sent them away to their home with pipe
and tabor going before them. And now you must think, that those
of the town that had all this while waited to hear of their
death, could not but be exercised with sadness of mind, and
with thoughts that pricked like thorns. Nor could their
thoughts be kept to one point; the wind blew with them all this
while at great uncertainties, yea, their hearts were like a
balance that had been disquieted with shaking hand. But at last
as they, with many a long look, looked over the wall of
Mansoul, they thought that they saw some returning to the town;
and thought again, who should they be? At last they discerned
that they were the prisoners. But can you imagine, how their
hearts were surprised with wonder! Especially when they
perceived also in what equipage, and with what honour they were
sent home. They went down to the camp in black, but they came
back to the town in white; they went down to the camp in ropes,
they came back in chains of gold; they went down to the camp
with their feet in tatters, but they came back with their steps
enlarged under them; they went also to the camp looking for
death, but they came back from thence with assurance of life;
they went down to the camp with heavy hearts, but came back
again with pipe and tabor playing before them. So, so soon as
they were come to Eye-gate, the poor and tottering town of
Mansoul adventured to give a shout; and they gave such a shout,
as made the captains in the Prince's army leap at the sound
thereof. Alas! for them, poor hearts, who could blame them,
since their dead friends were come to life again! For it was to
them as life from the dead, to see the ancients of the town of
Mansoul to shine in such splendour. They looked for nothing but
the axe and the block; but behold! joy and gladness, comfort
and consolation, and such melodious notes attending of them,
that was sufficient to make a sick man well. So when they came
up, they saluted each other with Welcome, welcome, and blessed
be he that spared you. They added also, we see it is well with
you, but how must it go with the town of Mansoul, and will it
go well with the town of Mansoul, said they? Then answered them
the Recorder, and my lord Mayor, Oh! tidings! glad tidings!
good tidings of good; and of great joy to poor Mansoul! Then
they gave another shout, that made the earth to ring again.
After this, they enquired yet more particularly, how things
went in the camp, and what message they had from Emmanuel to
the town. So they told them all passages that had happened to
them at the camp, and every thing that the Prince did to them.
This made Mansoul wonder at the wisdom and grace of the Prince
Emmanuel; then they told them what they had received at his
hands, for the whole town of Mansoul; and the Recorder
delivered it in these words, Pardon, Pardon, Pardon for
Mansoul; and this shall Mansoul know to-morrow. Then he
commanded, and they went and summoned Mansoul to meet together
in the market-place to-morrow, there to hear their general
pardon read.
'But who can think what a turn, what a change, what an
alteration this hint of things did make in the countenance of
the town of Mansoul; no man of Mansoul could sleep that night
for joy; in every house there was joy and music, singing and
making merry, telling and hearing of Mansoul's happiness was
then all that Mansoul had to do; and this was the burden of all
their song, "Oh! more of this at the rising of the sun! more of
this to-morrow! Who thought yesterday, would one say, that this
day would have been such a day to us? And who thought, that saw
our prisoners go down in irons, that they would have returned
in chains of gold! Yea, they that judged themselves as they
went to be judged of their judge, were, by his mouth,
acquitted, not for that they were innocent, but of the Prince's
mercy, and sent home with pipe and tabor."'
_The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_ is a piece of prose indeed, and its
realism is, perhaps, the more effective from being wholly devoid of the
least particle of imagination. The genesis and purpose of the book are
thus stated by the author: 'As I was considering with myself what I had
written concerning the progress of the Pilgrim from this world to glory,
and how it had been acceptable to many in this nation, it came again
into my mind to write, as then of him that was going to heaven, so now
of the life and death of the ungodly, and of their travel from this
world to hell.' Had this conception been strictly carried out, the
narrative must have been a failure from the want of admixture of light
and shade. The Christian of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ is a mixed
character, and though we are scarcely in doubt as to the ultimate
success of his adventure, this is sufficiently chequered with peril and
hardship to keep our interest alert. This evidently cannot be the case
with Mr. Badman, whose career is not only a monotony, but a monotony of
sordid evil; and who only excites a flickering sort of interest in
virtue of the sympathy naturally felt for the victim of the animosity of
his creator. Bunyan, however, has not been faithful to his original
plan, and has in a measure redeemed one fault in art by committing
another. As a rule, nothing is more reprehensible in a fiction than
inordinate digression; but here it is the greatest relief to be turned
away from the repulsive career of Mr. Badman to the running commentary
in which Bunyan opens his mind on a variety of subjects, spiritual and
secular, ranging from earnest rebukes of the maxim to be anon formulated
as 'buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest,' to foolish
stories of the deaths of persecutors, quite in the vein of the Methodist
anecdotes satirized by Sydney Smith. This garrulity is greatly promoted
by the inartistic character of the machinery employed, a dialogue
between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive, which allows the writer to say
whatever he pleases. It is evident that he has real persons and actual
transactions continually in his mind, and it would not be surprising to
learn that his book made no inconsiderable commotion in the town of
Bedford.
_Grace Abounding_ resembles thousands of similar narratives in
essentials, differing principally in the vigour with which a terrifying
religious experience is portrayed. It does not, as some seem to have
taken for granted, terminate with what would be technically considered
as Bunyan's conversion; on the contrary, a large portion is employed in
recording his agonies of apprehension long after he had become a
recognized religious instructor, even so late as the beginning of his
imprisonment, when he was so little acquainted with the law as to
suppose himself in jeopardy of the gallows. Much might be said in
censure or compassion of his lamentably distorted views of divine
things; but one thing cannot be said: there is not from first to last
the slightest symptom of cant. The book is more sincere than Rousseau's
_Confessions_, but could not, like that book, have helped a Carlyle or a
George Eliot to learn that there was something in them. As _Pilgrim's
Progress_ may be termed a prosaic Divine Comedy, so might the Bunyan of
_Grace Abounding_ rank as a prosaic Augustine, but an Augustine without
a Monica. With the rarest exceptions, self is its beginning, middle, and
end; it is only when the author for a space becomes, unlike Cardinal
Newman, conscious of the existence of something besides God and his own
soul, that we catch the real moral of his tale, which he himself was far
from intending or perceiving. In his own incomparably forcible words: 'I
went myself in chains to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire
in my own conscience that I persuaded them to beware of. I can truly
say, and that without dissembling, that when I have been to preach I
have gone full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit-door, and there it
hath been taken off; and I have been at liberty in my mind until I have
done my work, and then immediately, even before I could get down the
pulpit-stairs, I have been as bad as I was before.' What is this but to
own that self-seeking is unprofitable even when cloaked with piety and
contrition; that there is no true peace save in disinterested service?
[Sidenote: Aphra Behn (1640-1689).]
Violent indeed is the transition from John Bunyan to Aphra Behn, but in
fact the living fiction of the age is almost summed up in these two
names. But for the demonstration of the contrary afforded by the state
of French literature since 1830, one would almost have been inclined to
formulate it as a maxim that the drama and the novel cannot flourish
together. The almost utter barrenness of the Restoration age in the
latter class of literature is certainly very remarkable. All needful
conditions seemed present in a teeming national life, clever writers,
and a public that craved to be amused. It seems difficult to offer any
explanation except that it had as yet occurred to none to depart from
French models, and that the French exemplars of the day, like Samuel
Weller, disdained all under the degree of 'a female markis.' Hence the
healthy realism without which the English novel cannot prosper was
impossible, and it was left to the Fieldings and Smolletts of the next
age to effect a momentous revolution in art by the simple discovery that
for the novelist's purpose, 'Jack was as good as his master.' One
variety of fiction, apparently still popular at the Restoration,
gradually died out--the interminable romance of the Clelia class, by
which French polite society under Louis XIII. had replaced the exploded
romance of chivalry. Of the few examples of this which English
literature still produced, it will suffice to name Lord Orrery's
_Parthenissa_, whose heroine, as an example of chastity, lived long
enough to be dethroned by Pamela. Mrs. Behn's tales, it need not be
said, are constructed upon principles in every respect antipodal to
_Parthenissa_; they are, however, much less objectionable than her
comedies. They are on the French pattern, brief and bright, but
inevitably conventional. At the present day, however, when the disuse
of an equally conventional fashion is restoring action to the rank from
which it had been almost displaced by dialogue, Mrs. Behn's tales might
be not unprofitably read as examples of movement and condensation; and
occasionally of strong situation, of which she rarely makes the most.
The most celebrated is _Oroonoko_, the groundwork of Southern's play,
and itself founded on facts within the authoress's knowledge. Among
other remarkable passages is one descriptive of the effects of the
electric eel. Mrs. Behn's stories are types of a large number of
miniature romances, apparently little noticed in their own day, and
utterly unknown in ours, which they have not always reached in other
fashion than Protus's
'Little tract on worming dogs,
Whereof the name, in sundry catalogues,
Is extant yet.'
'This class of literature,' says Mr. Gosse, 'was treated with marked
disdain, and having been read to pieces by the women, was thrown into
the fire.' One specimen, _Incognita_, deserves a word of mention as the
first work of the youthful Congreve. Some variety was introduced into
pure fiction by the importation from France by Mrs. Manley, already
mentioned as a dramatist, of the political novel, in which the actions
of living monarchs and statesmen were represented under transparent
disguises. The presses of Amsterdam and Cologne had long teemed with
such productions, and Mrs. Manley's _Atalanta_ and _Zarah_ are
conspicuous English examples. Another romance, _A New and further
Discovery of the Isle of Pines_, in a letter professing to emanate from
Cornelius van Sloetton, a Dutchman (1668), deserves some attention from
its possible influence on Defoe. It has been represented to be connected
with Australian discovery, with which it has in fact nothing to do, the
imaginary island being placed in the very centre of the Indian Ocean. It
afforded the theme for Voltaire's joke about the Englishman _qui
travaillait si bien_ that the island on which he was wrecked was shortly
afterwards found to be peopled by twelve thousand English Protestants.