same energy of belief. The quality is equally and indifferently
displayed in the spirit of the fighting, the tenderness of the pathos,
the startling vigour and strangeness of the incidents, the natural
strain of the conversations, and the humanity and charm of the
characters. Trivial talk over a meal, the dying words of heroes, the
delights of Beulah or the Celestial City, Apollyon and my Lord
Hate-good, Great-heart, and Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, all have been imagined
with the same clearness, all written of with equal gusto and precision,
all created in the same mixed element, of simplicity that is almost
comical, and art that, for its purpose, is faultless.
It was in much the same spirit that our artist sat down to his drawings.
He is by nature a Bunyan of the pencil. He, too, will draw anything,
from a butcher at work on a dead sheep, up to the courts of Heaven. "A
Lamb for Supper" is the name of one of his designs, "Their Glorious
Entry" of another. He has the same disregard for the ridiculous, and
enjoys somewhat of the same privilege of style, so that we are pleased
even when we laugh the most. He is literal to the verge of folly. If
dust is to be raised from the unswept parlour, you may be sure it will
"fly abundantly" in the picture. If Faithful is to lie "as dead" before
Moses, dead he shall lie with a warrant--dead and stiff like granite;
nay (and here the artist must enhance upon the symbolism of the author),
it is with the identical stone tables of the law that Moses fells the
sinner. Good and bad people, whom we at once distinguish in the text by
their names, Hopeful, Honest, and Valiant-for-Truth, on the one hand, as
against By-ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord Old-man on the other,
are in these drawings as simply distinguished by their costume. Good
people, when not armed _cap-a-pie_, wear a speckled tunic girt about the
waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad people swagger in
tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large
majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a
garden-party. Worldly-Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, stands
before Christian in laced hat, embroidered waistcoat, and trunk-hose.
But above all examples of this artist's intrepidity, commend me to the
print entitled "Christian Finds it Deep." "A great darkness and horror,"
says the text, have fallen on the pilgrim; it is the comfortless
deathbed with which Bunyan so strikingly concludes the sorrows and
conflicts of his hero. How to represent this worthily the artist knew
not; and yet he was determined to represent it somehow. This was how he
did: Hopeful is still shown to his neck above the water of death; but
Christian has bodily disappeared, and a blot of solid blackness
indicates his place.
As you continue to look at these pictures, about an inch square for the
most part, sometimes printed three or more to the page, and each having
a printed legend of its own, however trivial the event recorded, you
will soon become aware of two things: first, that the man can draw, and,
second, that he possesses the gift of an imagination. "Obstinate
reviles," says the legend; and you should see Obstinate reviling. "He
warily retraces his steps"; and there is Christian, posting through the
plain, terror and speed in every muscle. "Mercy yearns to go" shows you
a plain interior with packing going forward, and, right in the middle,
Mercy yearning to go--every line of the girl's figure yearning. In "The
Chamber called Peace" we see a simple English room, bed with white
curtains, window valance and door, as may be found in many thousand
unpretentious houses; but far off, through the open window, we behold
the sun uprising out of a great plain, and Christian hails it with his
hand:
"Where am I now! is this the love and care
Of Jesus, for the men that pilgrims are!
Thus to provide! That I should be forgiven!
And dwell already the next door to heaven!"
A page or two further, from the top of the House Beautiful, the damsels
point his gaze toward the Delectable Mountains: "The Prospect," so the
cut is ticketed--and I shall be surprised, if on less than a square of
paper you can show me one so wide and fair. Down a cross road on an
English plain, a cathedral city outlined on the horizon, a hazel shaw
upon the left, comes Madam Wanton dancing with her fair enchanted cup,
and Faithful, book in hand, half pauses. The cut is perfect as a symbol;
the giddy movement of the sorceress, the uncertain poise of the man
struck to the heart by a temptation, the contrast of that even plain of
life whereon he journeys with the bold, ideal bearing of the wanton--the
artist who invented and portrayed this had not merely read Bunyan, he
had also thoughtfully lived. The Delectable Mountains--I continue
skimming the first part--are not on the whole happily rendered. Once,
and once only, the note is struck, when Christian and Hopeful are seen
coming, shoulder-high, through a thicket of green shrubs--box, perhaps,
or perfumed nutmeg; while behind them, domed or pointed, the hills stand
ranged against the sky. A little further, and we come to that
masterpiece of Bunyan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground; where,
in a few traits, he has set down the latter end of such a number of the
would-be good; where his allegory goes so deep that, to people looking
seriously on life, it cuts like satire. The true significance of this
invention lies, of course, far out of the way of drawing; only one
feature, the great tedium of the land, the growing weariness in
welldoing, may be somewhat represented in a symbol. The pilgrims are
near the end: "Two Miles Yet," says the legend. The road goes ploughing
up and down over a rolling heath; the wayfarers, with outstretched arms,
are already sunk to the knees over the brow of the nearest hill; they
have just passed a milestone with the cipher two; from overhead a great,
piled, summer cumulus, as of a slumberous summer afternoon, beshadows
them: two miles! it might be hundreds. In dealing with the Land of
Beulah the artist lags, in both parts, miserably behind the text, but in
the distant prospect of the Celestial City more than regains his own.
You will remember when Christian and Hopeful "with desire fell sick."
"Effect of the Sunbeams" is the artist's title. Against the sky, upon a
cliffy mountain, the radiant temple beams upon them over deep, subjacent
woods; they, behind a mound, as if seeking shelter from the
splendour--one prostrate on his face, one kneeling, and with hands
ecstatically lifted--yearn with passion after that immortal city. Turn
the page, and we behold them walking by the very shores of death;
Heaven, from this nigher view, has risen half-way to the zenith, and
sheds a wider glory; and the two pilgrims, dark against that brightness,
walk and sing out of the fulness of their hearts. No cut more thoroughly
illustrates at once the merit and the weakness of the artist. Each
pilgrim sings with a book in his grasp--a family Bible at the least for
bigness; tomes so recklessly enormous that our second impulse is to
laughter. And yet that is not the first thought, nor perhaps the last.
Something in the attitude of the manikins--faces they have none, they
are too small for that--something in the way they swing these monstrous
volumes to their singing, something perhaps borrowed from the text, some
subtle differentiation from the cut that went before and the cut that
follows after--something, at least, speaks clearly of a fearful joy, of
Heaven seen from the deathbed, of the horror of the last passage no less
than of the glorious coming home. There is that in the action of one of
them which always reminds me, with a difference, of that haunting last
glimpse of Thomas Idle, travelling to Tyburn in the cart. Next come the
Shining Ones, wooden and trivial enough; the pilgrims pass into the
river; the blot already mentioned settles over and obliterates
Christian. In two more cuts we behold them drawing nearer to the other
shore; and then, between two radiant angels, one of whom points upward,
we see them mounting in new weeds, their former lendings left behind
them on the inky river. More angels meet them; Heaven is displayed, and
if no better, certainly no worse, than it has been shown by others--a
place, at least, infinitely populous and glorious with light--a place
that haunts solemnly the hearts of children. And then this symbolic
draughtsman once more strikes into his proper vein. Three cuts conclude
the first part. In the first the gates close, black against the glory
struggling from within. The second shows us Ignorance--alas! poor
Arminian!--hailing, in a sad twilight, the ferryman Vain-Hope; and in
the third we behold him, bound hand and foot, and black already with the
hue of his eternal fate, carried high over the mountain-tops of the
world by two angels of the anger of the Lord. "Carried to Another
Place," the artist enigmatically names his plate--a terrible design.
Wherever he touches on the black side of the supernatural his pencil
grows more daring and incisive. He has many true inventions in the
perilous and diabolic; he has many startling nightmares realised. It is
not easy to select the best; some may like one and some another; the
nude, depilated devil bounding and casting darts against the Wicket
Gate; the scroll of flying horrors that hang over Christian by the Mouth
of Hell; the horned shade that comes behind him whispering blasphemies;
the daylight breaking through that rent cave-mouth of the mountains and
falling chill adown the haunted tunnel; Christian's further progress
along the causeway, between the two black pools, where, at every yard or
two, a gin, a pitfall, or a snare awaits the passer-by--loathsome white
devilkins harbouring close under the bank to work the springes,
Christian himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point at the
nearest noose, and pale discomfortable mountains rising on the farther
side; or yet again, the two ill-favoured ones that beset the first of
Christian's journey, with the frog-like structure of the skull, the
frog-like limberness of limbs--crafty, slippery, lustful-looking devils,
drawn always in outline as though possessed of a dim, infernal
luminosity. Horrid fellows are they, one and all; horrid fellows and
horrific scenes. In another spirit that Good-Conscience "to whom Mr.
Honest had spoken in his lifetime," a cowled, grey, awful figure, one
hand pointing to the heavenly shore, realises, I will not say all, but
some at least of the strange impressiveness of Bunyan's words. It is no
easy nor pleasant thing to speak in one's lifetime with Good-Conscience;
he is an austere, unearthly friend, whom maybe Torquemada knew; and the
folds of his raiment are not merely claustral, but have something of the
horror of the pall. Be not afraid, however; with the hand of that
appearance Mr. Honest will get safe across.
[Illustration: Obstinate reviles]
[Illustration: Mr. Worldly-Wiseman]
[Illustration: He warily retraces his steps]
[Illustration: Christian at the gate]
[Illustration: The parlour unswept]
[Illustration: The chamber called Peace]
[Illustration: The prospect]
[Illustration: Is met by Apollyon]
[Illustration: The fiend in discourse]
[Illustration: The conflict]
[Illustration: Close combat]
[Illustration: The deadly thrust]
[Illustration: Thanksgiving for victory]
[Illustration: His last weapon--All-prayer]
[Illustration: Whispering blasphemies]
[Illustration: Snares, traps, gins, and pitfalls]
[Illustration: Madam Wanton]
[Illustration: Two miles yet]
[Illustration: Effect of the sunbeams]
[Illustration: Carried to another place]
Yet perhaps it is in sequences that this artist best displays himself.
He loves to look at either side of a thing: as, for instance, when he
shows us both sides of the wall--"Grace Inextinguishable" on the one
side, with the devil vainly pouring buckets on the flame, and "The Oil
of Grace" on the other, where the Holy Spirit, vessel in hand, still
secretly supplies the fire. He loves, also, to show us the same event
twice over, and to repeat his instantaneous photographs at the interval
of but a moment. So we have, first, the whole troop of pilgrims coming
up to Valiant, and Great-heart to the front, spear in hand and
parleying; and next, the same cross-roads, from a more distant view, the
convoy now scattered and looking safely and curiously on, and Valiant
handing over for inspection his "right Jerusalem blade." It is true that
this designer has no great care after consistency: Apollyon's spear is
laid by, his quiver of darts will disappear, whenever they might hinder
the designer's freedom; and the fiend's tail is blobbed or forked at his
good pleasure. But this is not unsuitable to the illustration of the
fervent Bunyan, breathing hurry and momentary inspiration. He, with
his hot purpose, hunting sinners with a lasso, shall himself forget the
things that he has written yesterday. He shall first slay Heedless in
the Valley of the Shadow, and then take leave of him talking in his
sleep, as if nothing had happened, in an arbour on the Enchanted Ground.
And again, in his rhymed prologue, he shall assign some of the glory of
the siege of Doubting Castle to his favourite Valiant-for-the-Truth, who
did not meet with the besiegers till long after, at that dangerous
corner by Deadman's Lane. And, with all inconsistencies and freedoms,
there is a power shown in these sequences of cuts: a power of joining on
one action or one humour to another; a power of following out the moods,
even of the dismal subterhuman fiends engendered by the artist's fancy;
a power of sustained continuous realisation, step by step, in nature's
order, that can tell a story, in all its ins and outs, its pauses and
surprises, fully and figuratively, like the art of words.
One such sequence is the fight of Christian and Apollyon--six cuts,
weird and fiery, like the text. The pilgrim is throughout a pale and
stockish figure; but the devil covers a multitude of defects. There is
no better devil of the conventional order than our artist's Apollyon,
with his mane, his wings, his bestial legs, his changing and terrifying
expression, his infernal energy to slay. In cut the first you see him
afar off, still obscure in form, but already formidable in suggestion.
Cut the second, "The Fiend in Discourse," represents him, not reasoning,
railing rather, shaking his spear at the pilgrim, his shoulder advanced,
his tail writhing in the air, his foot ready for a spring, while
Christian stands back a little, timidly defensive. The third illustrates
these magnificent words: "Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole
breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter: prepare
thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den that thou shalt go no
farther: here will I spill thy soul! And with that he threw a flaming
dart at his breast." In the cut he throws a dart with either hand,
belching pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his broad vans, and
straddling the while across the path, as only a fiend can straddle who
has just sworn by his infernal den. The defence will not be long against
such vice, such flames, such red-hot nether energy. And in the fourth
cut, to be sure, he has leaped bodily upon his victim, sped by foot and
pinion, and roaring as he leaps. The fifth shows the climacteric of the
battle; Christian has reached nimbly out and got his sword, and dealt
that deadly home-thrust, the fiend still stretched upon him, but "giving
back, as one that had received his mortal wound." The raised head, the
bellowing mouth, the paw clapped upon the sword, the one wing relaxed in
agony, all realise vividly these words of the text. In the sixth and
last, the trivial armed figure of the pilgrim is seen kneeling with
clasped hands on the betrodden scene of contest and among the shivers of
the darts; while just at the margin the hinder quarters and the tail of
Apollyon are whisking off, indignant and discomfited.
In one point only do these pictures seem to be unworthy of the text, and
that point is one rather of the difference of arts than the difference
of artists. Throughout his best and worst, in his highest and most
divine imaginations as in the narrowest sallies of his sectarianism, the
human-hearted piety of Bunyan touches and ennobles, convinces, accuses
the reader. Through no art beside the art of words can the kindness of a
man's affections be expressed. In the cuts you shall find faithfully
parodied the quaintness and the power, the triviality and the surprising
freshness of the author's fancy; there you shall find him outstripped in
ready symbolism and the art of bringing things essentially invisible
before the eyes: but to feel the contact of essential goodness, to be
made in love with piety, the book must be read and not the prints
examined.
Farewell should not be taken with a grudge; nor can I dismiss in any
other words than those of gratitude a series of pictures which have, to
one at least, been the visible embodiment of Bunyan from childhood up,
and shown him, through all his years, Great-heart lungeing at Giant
Maul, and Apollyon breathing fire at Christian, and every turn and town
along the road to the Celestial City, and that bright place itself, seen
as to a stave of music, shining afar off upon the hill-top, the candle
of the world.
FOOTNOTE:
[43] The illustrator was, in fact, a lady, Miss Eunice Bagster,
eldest daughter of the publisher, Samuel Bagster; except in the case
of the cuts depicting the fight with Apollyon, which were designed
by her brother, Mr. Jonathan Bagster. The edition was published in
1845. I am indebted for this information to the kindness of Mr.
Robert Bagster, the present managing director of the firm.--SIR
SIDNEY COLVIN'S NOTE.
AN APPEAL
TO THE
_Clergy of the Church of Scotland_
WITH A NOTE FOR THE LAITY
"_Had I a strong voice, as it is the weakest alive, yea, could I lift
it up as a trumpet, I would sound a retreat from our unnatural
contentions, and irreligious strivings for religion_"
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON, 1669
_William Blackwood & Sons_
_Edinburgh and London_
1875
Price 3d.]
(_Facsimile of original Title-page_)
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
WITH A NOTE FOR THE LAITY
"Had I a strong voice, as it is the weakest alive, yea, could I lift
it up as a trumpet, I would sound a retreat from our unnatural
contentions, and irreligious strivings for religion."--ARCHBISHOP
LEIGHTON, 1669.
Gentlemen,--The position of the Church of Scotland is now one of
considerable difficulty; not only the credit of the Church, not only the
credit of Christianity, but to some extent also that of the national
character, is at stake. You have just gained a great victory, in spite
of an opposition neither very logical nor very generous; you have
succeeded in effecting, by quiet constitutional processes, a great
reform which brings your Church somewhat nearer in character to what is
required by your Dissenting brethren. It remains to be seen whether you
can prove yourselves as generous as you have been wise and patient. And
the position, as I say, is one of difficulty. Many, doubtless, left the
Church for a reason which is now removed; many have joined other sects
who would rather have joined themselves with you, had you been then as
you now are; and for these you are bound to render as easy as may be the
way of reconciliation, and show, by some notable action, the reality of
your own desire for Peace. But I am not unaware that there are others,
and those possibly a majority, who hold very different opinions--who
regard the old quarrel as still competent, or have found some new reason
for dissent; and from these the Church, if she makes such an advance as
she ought to make, in all loyalty and charity, may chance to meet that
most sensible of insults--ridicule, in return for an honest offer of
reconciliation. I am not unaware, also, that there is yet another ground
of difficulty; and that those even who would be most ready to hold the
cause of offence as now removed will find it hard to forget the
past--will continue to think themselves unjustly used--will not be
willing to come back, as though they were repentant offenders, among
those who delayed the reform and quietly enjoyed their benefices, while
they bore the heat and burthen of the day in a voluntary exile for the
Truth's sake.
In view of so many elements of difficulty, no intelligent person can be
free from apprehension for the result; and you, gentlemen, may be
perhaps more ready now to receive advice, to hear and weigh the opinion
of one who is free, because he writes without name, than you would be at
any juncture less critical. There is now a hope, at least, that some
term may be put to our more clamorous dissensions. Those who are at all
open to a feeling of national disgrace look eagerly forward to such a
possibility; they have been witnesses already too long to the strife
that has divided this small corner of Christendom; and they cannot
remember without shame that there has been as much noise, as much
recrimination, as much severance of friends, about mere logical
abstractions in our remote island, as would have sufficed for the great
dogmatic battles of the Continent. It would be difficult to exaggerate
the pity that fills the heart at such a reflection; at the thought of
how this neck of barren hills between two inclement seaways has echoed
for three centuries with the uproar of sectarian battle; of how the east
wind has carried out the sound of our shrill disputations into the
desolate Atlantic, and the west wind has borne it over the German Ocean,
as though it would make all Europe privy to how well we Scottish
brethren abide together in unity. It is not a bright page in the annals
of a small country: it is not a pleasant commentary on the Christianity
that we profess; there is something in it pitiful, as I have said, for
the pitiful man, but bitterly humorous for others. How much time we have
lost, how much of the precious energy and patience of good men we have
exhausted, on these trivial quarrels, it would be nauseous to consider;
we know too much already when we know the facts in block; we know enough
to make us hide our heads for shame, and grasp gladly at any present
humiliation, if it would ensure a little more quiet, a little more
charity, a little more brotherly love in the distant future.
And it is with this before your eyes that, as I feel certain, you are
now addressing yourselves to the consideration of this important crisis.
It is with a sense of the blackness of this discredit upon the national
character and national Christianity that not you alone but many of other
Churches are now setting themselves to square their future course with
the exigencies of the new position of sects; and it is with you that the
responsibility remains. The obligation lies ever on the victor; and just
so surely as you have succeeded in the face of captious opposition in
carrying forth the substance of a reform of which others had despaired,
just as surely does it lie upon you as a duty to take such steps as
shall make that reform available, not to you only, but to all your
brethren who will consent to profit by it; not only to all the clergy,
but to the cause of decency and peace, throughout your native land. It
is earnestly hoped that you may show yourselves worthy of a great
opportunity, and do more for the public minds by the example of one act
of generosity and humility than you could do by an infinite series of
sermons.
Without doubt, it is your intention, on the earliest public opportunity,
to make some advance. Without doubt, it is your purpose to improve the
advantage you have gained, and to press upon those who quitted your
communion some thirty years ago your great desire to be once more united
to them. This, at least, will find a place in the most unfriendly
programme you can entertain; and if there are any in the Free Church (as
I doubt not there are some) who seceded, not so much from any dislike to
the just supremacy of the law, as from a belief that the law in these
ecclesiastical matters was applied unjustly, I know well that you will
be most eager to receive them back again; I know well that you will not
let any petty vanity, any scruple of worldly dignity, stand between them
and their honourable return. If, therefore, there were no more to be
done than to display to these voluntary exiles the deep sense of your
respect for their position, this appeal would be unnecessary, and you
might be left to the guidance of your own good feeling.