In this publication will be found all the desired information on this
interesting subject.
Letter from Mr. Offer to Mr. Cottle, on transmitting to him Mr. O.'s
correspondence with Mr. Southey, relating to a charge of Plagiarism in
John Bunyan.
"Hackney, March 6, 1847.
Dear sir,
Enclosed I send you copies of the correspondence relative to 'Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress,' with Mr. Southey.
About the year 1825, two gentlemen called to see my book rarities, and
among them a copy of 'Duyfken's ande Willemynkyns Pilgrimagee,' with five
cuts by Bolswert, published at Antwerp, 1627, the year before Bunyan's
birth. The first plate represents a man asleep--a pilgrim by his
bed-side--in the perspective two pilgrims walking together, they are then
seen on the ground by some water--in the extreme distance the sun
setting. Another plate represents the two pilgrims in a fair, Punch and
Judy, &c. A third, one pilgrim under a rock, within a circle of candles,
a magician with his wand, smoke and demons over the dismayed pilgrim's
head. A fourth, two pilgrims ascending a steep hill, one of them falling
head-long down. From a glance of a few moments at this curious book,
there shortly afterwards appeared in a newspaper in the North, an account
of Banyan's having borrowed some of his plot from this work. This was
answered by Mr. Montgomery, and others. Upon Mr. Southey not being able
to find the book, when he had undertaken to write the 'Life and Times of
Bunyan,' he addressed a letter to his publisher, Mr. Major, in which he
says, 'Can you give me Mr. Donce's direction, that I may ask him for some
account of the French poem? Cottle refers me to 'Dunlop's History of
Fiction,' for an account of a German book, which is of the same
character. Bunyan I am sure knew nothing either of the one or the other.
If the allegory was not an extension of the most common and obvious of
all similitudes--the _germ_ of it might be found in his own works.' Major
asked my advice, and I shewed him the book and gave him some little
account of it; and soon after I received from Dr. Southey the following
letter.
'Keswick, 16 April, 1829.
Sir,--Mr. Major has favoured me with your account of the Dutch work in
your possession, which in many parts bears a remarkable resemblance to
the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' It would require the strongest possible
evidence to convince me, against my will, that Bunyan is not an original
writer. The book we know he could not have read in the original; and if
there had been a translation of it, it is hardly likely that it should
have remained undiscovered till this time; it being almost impossible
that it should come into the hands of any one who had not read the
Pilgrim's Progress. This is possible, that Bunyan may have heard an
account of the book from some Dutch baptist in England, or some English
one who had seen it in Holland. I do not think that his obligations to it
can have been more than this; but of this I can better judge when I have
perused the book, which my knowledge of the language enables me to do, if
you favor me with it.
Great men have sometimes been plagiarists; a grave charge of this kind
has recently been proved upon Lord Bacon,--no less than that of having
taken the fundamental principle of his philosophy from his name-sake,
Roger, and claimed it as his own. Bunyan, I am fully persuaded, was too
honest and too righteous a man to be guilty of any such baseness. He was
in a beaten path of Allegory,--a name, a hint he may have taken, but I
think nothing more. You will judge from this, sir, how very far from my
intentions or inclination, it would be, in the slightest respect, to
depreciate John Bunyan, whose book I have loved from my childhood. And
whatever his obligations to the Dutchman may have been, if any there
should prove to be, it is surely better that they should be stated by one
who loves and honours his memory, than brought forward hereafter by some
person in a different spirit; for nothing of this kind can long escape
discovery now. My present persuasion is, that he owes nothing to it
directly. Something perhaps, indirectly, but not much. And I promise you
that I will do him no wrong.
Should you favor me by entrusting me with the book, I shall of course
make due mention of the obligation you have conferred.