Fearing;
not single persons, but dozens, arise on the memory.
They come, as fresh, as vivid, as if they were out of Scott or
Moliere; the Tinker is as great a master of character and fiction as
the greatest, almost; his style is pure, and plain, and sound, full
of old idioms, and even of something like old slang. But even his
slang is classical.
Bunyan is everybody's author. The very Catholics have their own
edition of the Pilgrim: they have cut out Giant Pope, but have been
too good-natured to insert Giant Protestant in his place.
Unheralded, unannounced, though not uncriticised (they accused the
Tinker of being a plagiarist, of course), Bunyan outshone the Court
wits, the learned, the poets of the Restoration, and even the great
theologians.
His other books, except "Grace Abounding" (an autobiography), "The
Holy War," and "Mr. Badman," are only known to students, nor much
read by them. The fashion of his theology, as of all theology,
passed away; it is by virtue of his imagination, of his romance,
that he lives.
The allegory, of course, is full of flaws. It would not have been
manly of Christian to run off and save his own soul, leaving his
wife and family. But Bunyan shrank from showing us how difficult,
if not impossible, it is for a married man to be a saint.
Christiana was really with him all through that pilgrimage; and how
he must have been hampered by that woman of the world! But had the
allegory clung more closely to the skirts of truth, it would have
changed from a romance to a satire, from "The Pilgrim's Progress" to
"Vanity Fair.
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