298. Even Dean Swift, in his popular Letter to a Young Divine, says, 'I have been better entertained, and more informed by a few pages in the Pilgrim's Progress, than by a long discourse upon the will and the intellect, and simple and complex ideas.' Nothing short of extraordinary merit could have called for such a eulogy from so severe a critic.
299. Vol. iii., p. 166.
300. Within the Editor's memory, polished writers hesitated to name our incomparable allegorist, on account of his humble name and education. Thus Cowper sang—
'I name thee not, lest so despised a name Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame.'
Now nearly all men find it difficult to do that name sufficient honour. One of the most splendid steam-ships in America is called after his name. A magnificent ship, for the China trade, was built at Aberdeen by Walter Hood & Co., which so swiftly traversed the ocean as to have made the voyage from Canton to London in ninety-nine days, without any aid from steam. This beautiful and grand specimen of the perfection of naval architecture is named The John Bunyan. Roman Catholics have printed large editions of the Pilgrim, with slight omissions, for circulation among the young under the care of the nuns. Our English fanatics have committed a crime that would make a papist blush. A Rev. E. Neale has clumsily altered the Pilgrim's Progress, that Bunyan might appear to teach the things which Bunyan's righteous heaven-born soul abhorred. It is a piece of matchless self-conceit to think of mending that which has been admired by the wisest of the human race in all nations, and which has obtained an unbounded popularity. Such an attempt to alter it is an acknowledgment that all the boasted power of Oxford, Exeter, and Rome, are unable to invent a tale to supersede the matchless beauties of the work of our spiritually-minded, heavenly-assisted brazier. If Mr. Neale should, at any time, alter a deed and the punishment for that felony is transportation for life. A similar forgery was committed in a recent London edition of Dr. Cheever's Hill Difficulty. The Tractarians, doubtless, commit these scandalous outrages upon the Fathers, and all other writers, and deserve the contempt of every honest, upright mind.
301. Vol. i., p. 473.
302. Vol. i., p. 480.
303. Two views of this meeting-house, an exterior and interior, after its conversion into a workshop, are given in the Plate facing page i. of this Memoir. In the interior, part of the beams and pillars that supported the gallery still remain.
304. Toplady's Works, vol. iv., p. 463.
305. Vol. iii., p. 637.