the one hand there is allegory, and on the
other hand there is live tale. Sometimes the allegory breaks through and
confuses the tale a little, as when Mercy begs for the great mirror that
hangs in the dining-room of the shepherds, and carries it with her
through the remainder of her journey. Sometimes the allegory has to stop
in order that a sermon may be preached on some particular point of
theology, and such sermons are by no means short. Still the story is so
true to life that its irresistible simplicity and naturalness carry it
on and make it immortal. When we read such a conversation as that
between old Honest and Mr. Standfast about Madam Bubble, we feel that
the tale has ceased to be an allegory altogether and has become a novel.
This is perhaps more noticeable in the Second Part than in the First.
The First Part is indeed almost a perfect allegory; although even there,
from time to time, the earnestness and rush of the writer's spirit
oversteps the bounds of consistency and happily forgets the moral
because the story is so interesting, or forgets for a moment the story
because the moral is so important. In the Second Part the two characters
fall apart more definitely. Now you have delightful pieces of crude
human nature, naive and sparkling. Then you have long and intricate
theological treatises. Neither the allegorical nor the narrative unity
is preserved to anything like the same extent as on the whole is the
case in Part I. The shrewd and humorous touches of human nature are
especially interesting. Bunyan was by no means the gentle saint who
shrank from strong language. When the gate of Doubting Castle is
opening, and at last the pilgrims have all but gone free, we read that
"the lock went damnable hard." When Great-Heart is delighted with Mr.
Honest, he calls him "a cock of the right kind." The poem _On Christian
Behaviour_, which we have quoted, contains the lines--

"When all men's cards are fully played,
Whose will abide the light?"

These are quaint instances of the way in which even the questionable
parts of the unregenerate life of the dreamer came in the end to serve
the uses of his religion.

There are many gems in the Second Part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ which
are full of mother-wit and sly fun. Mr. Honest confesses, "I came from
the town of Stupidity; it lieth about four degrees beyond the City of
Destruction." Then there is Mr. Fearing, that morbidly self-conscious
creature, who