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. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by
many thousands with tears. There are some good allegories in Johnson's
works, and some of still higher merit by Addison. In these performances
there is, perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as in the Pilgrim's Progress.
But the pleasure which is produced by the Vision of Mirza, or the Vision
of Theodore, the genealogy of Wit, or the contest between Rest and Labour,
is exactly similar to the pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's
Odes, or from a Canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure which belongs wholly
to the understanding, and in which the feelings have no part whatever. Nay,
even Spencer himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever
lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory interesting. It
was in vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House of Pride,
and the House of Temperance. One unpardonable fault, the fault of
tediousness, pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We become sick of
Cardinal Virtues and Deadly Sins, and long for the society of plain men
and women. Of the persons who read the first Canto, not one in ten reaches
the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end
of the poem. Very few and very weary are those who are in at the death of
the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, which are said to have been
destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less
stout than that of a commentator would have held out to the end.
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. Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were
desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an
exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was one
of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common
merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most
pedantic of critics, and the most bigoted of tories. In the wildest parts
of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress 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,--all are 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 overhead. Doleful 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, runs 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 innumerable 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 Britain 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
leading to that horrible castle, the courtyard of which is paved with the
skulls of pilgrims; and right onwards are the sheepfolds and orchards of
the Delectable Mountains.
From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the logs 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 songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines
night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of
pearl, 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,--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 Hategood,--Mr. Talkative, 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 Jeanie
Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer that ever
gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of many
celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. We have not an Othello,
but jealousy; not an Iago but perfidy; not a Brutus, but patriotism. The
mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, 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.
The Pilgrim's Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect allegory. The types
are often inconsistent with each other; and sometimes the allegorical
disguise is altogether thrown off. The river, for example, is emblematic
of death; and we are told that every human being must pass through the
river. But Faithful does not pass through it. He is martyred, not in
shadow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about
Esau's birthright, and about his own convictions of sin, as Bunyan might
have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels at the House
Beautiful catechise Christiana's boys, as any good ladies might catechise
any boys at a Sunday School. But we do not believe, that any man, whatever
might be his genius, and whatever his good luck, could long continue a
figurative history without falling into many inconsistencies.
The passages which it is most difficult to defend, are those in which he
altogether drops the allegory, and puts into the mouth of his pilgrims
religious ejaculations and disquisitions, better suited to his own pulpit
at Bedford or Reading, than to the Enchanted Ground or the Interpreter's
Garden. Yet even these passages, though we will not undertake to defend
them against the objection of critics, we feel that we could ill spare. We
feel that the story owes much of its charm to these occasional glimpses of
solemn and affecting subjects, which will not be hidden, which force
themselves through the veil, and appear before us in their native aspect.
The effect is not unlike that which is said to have been produced on the
ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen flaming through his
mask, and giving life and expression to what would else have been an
inanimate and uninteresting disguise.
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 rudest 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 homely 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.
Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan
in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we
suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of
Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely
superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times;
and we are not afraid to say, that, 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.--_Edinburgh Review_.
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