Indeed, whosoever will take the trouble of comparing the two works which, turning upon nearly the same allegory, and bearing very similar titles, came into existence at or about the very same time, will plainly see their total dissimilarity. Bunyan's is a close and continued allegory, in which the metaphorical fiction is sustained with all the minuteness of a real story. In Dr. Patrick's the same plan is generally announced as arising from the earnest longing of a traveller, whom he calls Philotheus or Theophilus, whose desires are fixed on journeying to Jerusalem as a pilgrim. After much distressing uncertainty, caused by the contentions of pretended guides, who recommend different routes, he is at length recommended to a safe and intelligent one. Theophilus hastens to put himself under his pilotage, and the good man gives forth his instructions for the way, and in abundant detail, so that all the dangers of error and indifferent company may be securely avoided; but in all this, very little care is taken even to preserve the appearance of the allegory: in a word, you have, almost in plain terms, the moral and religious precepts necessary to be observed in the actual course of a moral and religious life. The pilgrim, indeed, sets out upon his journey, but it is only in order again to meet with his guide, who launches further into whole chapters of instructions, with scarcely a reply from the passive pupil. It is needless to point out the extreme difference between this strain of continued didactics, rather encumbered than enlivened by a starting metaphor, which, generally quite lost sight of, the author recollects every now and then, as if by accident—and the thoroughly life-like manner in which John Bunyan puts the adventures of his pilgrim before us. Two circumstances alone strike us as trenching somewhat on the manner of him of Elstow: the one is where the guide awakens some sluggish pilgrims, whom he finds sleeping by the way;[6] the other is where their way is crossed by two horsemen, who insist upon assuming the office of guide. 'The one is a pleasing talker, excellent company by reason of his pleasant humour, and of a carriage very pleasant and inviting; but they observed he had a sword by his side, and a pair of pistols before him, together with another instrument hanging at his belt, which was formed for pulling out of eyes.'[7] The pilgrims suspected this well-armed cavalier to be one of that brood who will force others into their own path, and then put out their eyes in case they should forsake it. They have not got rid of their dangerous companion, by whom the Romish church is indicated, when they are accosted by a man of a quite different shape and humour, 'more sad and melancholy, more rude, and of a heavier wit also, who crossed their way on the right-hand.' He also (representing, doubtless, the Presbyterians or Sectaries) pressed them with eagerness to accept his guidance, and did little less than menace them with total destruction if they should reject it. A dagger and a pocket-pistol, though less openly and ostentatiously disposed than the arms of the first cavalier, seem ready for the same purposes; and he, therefore, is repulsed, as well as his neighbour. These are the only passages in which the church dignitary might be thought to have caught for a moment the spirit of the tinker of Bedford. Through the rest of his parable, which fills a well-sized quarto volume, the dean no doubt evinces considerable learning, but, compared to Bunyan, may rank with the dullest of all possible doctors; 'a worthy neighbour, indeed, and a marvellous good bowler—but for Alexander, you see how 'tis.' Yet Dr. Patrick had the applause of his own time. The first edition of his Parable appeared, as has been mentioned, in 1678; and the sixth, which now lies before us, is dated 1687.[8]
Mr. Southey introduces the following just eulogium on our classic of the common people:
"Bunyan was confident in his own powers of expression; he says—
—thine only way
Before them all, is to say out thy say
In thine own native language, which no man
Now useth, nor with ease dissemble can.
And he might well be confident in it. His is a homespun style, not a manufactured one; and what a difference is there between its homeliness, and the flippant vulgarity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom Brown school! If it is not a well of English undefiled to which the poet as well as the philologist must repair, if they would drink of the living waters, it is a clear stream of current English—the vernacular speech of his age, sometimes indeed in its rusticity and coarseness, but always in its plainness and its strength. To this natural style Bunyan is in some degree beholden for his general popularity;—his language is every where level to the must ignorant reader, and to the meanest capacity: there is a homely reality about it; a nursery tale is not more intelligible, in its manner of narration, to a child. Another cause of his popularity is, that he taxes the imagination as little as the understanding. The vividness of his own, which, as his history shows, sometimes could not distinguish ideal impressions from actual ones, occasioned this. He saw the things of which he was writing as distinctly with his mind's eye as if they were indeed passing before him in a dream. And the reader perhaps sees them more satisfactorily to himself, because the outline only of the picture is presented to him; and the author having made no attempt to fill up the details, every reader supplies them according to the measure and scope of his own intellectual and imaginative powers."
Mr. Southey, observing with what general accuracy this apostle of the people writes the English language, notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which his youth must have been passed, pauses to notice one gross and repeated error. 'The vulgarism alluded to,' says the laureate, 'consists in the almost uniform use of a for have—never marked as a contraction, e.g. might a made me take heed—like to a been smothered.' Under favour, however, this is a sin against orthography rather than grammar: the tinker of Elstow only spelt according to the pronunciation of the verb to have, then common in his class; and the same form appears a hundred times in Shakspeare. We must not here omit to mention the skill with which Mr. Southey has restored much of Bunyan's masculine and idiomatic English, which had been gradually dropped out of successive impressions by careless, or unfaithful, or what is as bad, conceited correctors of the press.
The speedy popularity of the Pilgrim's Progress had the natural effect of inducing Bunyan again to indulge the vein of allegory in which his warm imagination and clear and forcible expression had procured him such success. Under this impression, he produced the second part of his Pilgrim's Progress; and well says Mr. Southey, that none but those who have acquired the ill habit of always reading critically, can feel it as a clog upon the first. The first part is, indeed, one of those delightfully simple and captivating tales which, as soon as finished, we are not unwilling to begin again. Even the adult becomes himself like the child who cannot be satisfied with the repetition of a favourite tale, but harasses the story-telling aunt or nurse, to know more of the incidents and characters. In this respect Bunyan has contrived a contrast, which, far from exhausting his subject, opens new sources of attraction, and adds to the original impression. The pilgrimage of Christiana, her friend Mercy, and her children, commands sympathy at least as powerful as that of Christian himself, and it materially adds to the interest which we have taken in the progress of the husband, to trace the effects produced by similar events in the case of women and children.
"There is a pleasure," says the learned editor, "in travelling with another companion the same ground—a pleasure of reminiscence, neither inferior in kind nor degree to that which is derived from a first impression. The characters are judiciously marked: that of Mercy, particularly, is sketched with an admirable grace and simplicity; nor do we read of any with equal interest, excepting that of Ruth in Scripture, so beautifully, on all occasions, does the Mercy of John Bunyan unfold modest humility regarding her own merits, and tender veneration for the matron Christiana."
"The distinctions between the first and second part of the Pilgrim's Progress are such as circumstances render appropriate; and as John Bunyan's strong mother wit enabled him to seize upon correctly. Christian, for example, a man, and a bold one, is represented as enduring his fatigues, trials, and combats, by his own stout courage, under the blessing of heaven: but to express that species of inspired heroism by which women are supported in the path of duty, notwithstanding the natural feebleness and timidity of their nature, Christiana and Mercy obtain from the interpreter their guide, called Great-heart, by whose strength and valour their lack of both is supplied, and the dangers and distresses of the way repelled and overcome.
"The author hints, at the end of the second part, as if 'it might be his lot to go this way again;' nor was his mind that light species of soil which could be exhausted by two crops. But he left to another and very inferior hand the task of composing a third part, containing the adventures of one Tender Conscience, far unworthy to be bound up, as it sometimes is, with John Bunyan's matchless parable."
'Tis necessary a writing critic should understand how to write. And though every writer is not bound to show himself in the capacity of critic, every writing critic is bound to show himself capable of being a writer.