from naming. Swift discovered
Bunyan's literary power, and later Johnson and Southey did him justice.
In the nineteenth century his place was secured for ever, and Macaulay's
essay on him will probably retain its interest longer than anything else
that Macaulay wrote.

We are apt to think of him as a mere dreamer, spinning his cobwebs of
imagination wholly out of his own substance--a pure idealist, whose
writing dwells among his ideals in a region ignorant of the earth. In
one of his own apologies he tells us, apparently in answer to
accusations that had been made against him, that he did not take his
work from anybody, but that it came from himself alone. Doubtless that
is true so far as the real originality of his work is concerned, its
general conception, and the working out of its details point by point.
Yet, to imagine that if there had been no other English literature the
_Pilgrim's Progress_ would have been exactly what it is, is simply to
ignore the facts of the case. John Bunyan is far more interesting just
because his work is part of English literature, because it did feel the
influences of his own time and of the past, than it could ever have been
as the mere monstrosity of detachment which it has been supposed to be.
The idealist who merely dreams and takes no part in the battle, refusing
to know or utilise the writing of any other man, can be no fair judge of
the life which he criticises, and no reliable guide among its facts.

Bunyan might very easily indeed have been a pagan of the most worldly
type. It was extremely difficult for him to be a Puritan, not only on
account of outward troubles, but also of inward ones belonging to his
own disposition and experience. Accepting Puritanism, the easiest course
for him would have been that of fanaticism, and had he taken that course
he would certainly have had no lack of companions. It was far more
difficult to remain a Puritan and yet to keep his heart open to the
beauty and fascination of human life. Yet he was interested in what men
were writing or had written. All manner of songs and stories, heard in
early days in pot-houses, or in later times in prison, kept sounding in
his ears, and he wove them into his work. The thing that he meant to
say, and did say, was indeed one about which controversy and persecution
were raging, but, except in a very few general references, his writing
shows no sign of this. His eye is upon far-off things, the things of the
soul