Science advances, old
knowledge becomes ignorance; it is poetry that does not die, and
that will not die, while -
"The triple pride
Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde."
JOHN BUNYAN
Dr. Johnson once took Bishop Percy's little daughter on his knee,
and asked her what she thought of the "Pilgrim's Progress." The
child answered that she had not read it. "No?" replied the Doctor;
"then I would not give one farthing for you," and he set her down
and took no further notice of her.
This story, if true, proves that the Doctor was rather intolerant.
We must not excommunicate people because they have not our taste in
books. The majority of people do not care for books at all.
There is a descendant of John Bunyan's alive now, or there was
lately, who never read the "Pilgrim's Progress." Books are not in
his line. Nay, Bunyan himself, who wrote sixty works, was no great
reader. An Oxford scholar who visited him in his study found no
books at all, except some of Bunyan's own and Foxe's "Book of
Martyrs."
Yet, little as the world in general cares for reading, it has read
Bunyan more than most. One hundred thousand copies of the "Pilgrim"
are believed to have been sold in his own day, and the story has
been done into the most savage languages, as well as into those of
the civilised world.
Dr. Johnson, who did not like Dissenters, praises the "invention,
imagination, and conduct of the story," and knew no other book he
wished longer except "Robinson Crusoe" and "Don Quixote.
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