es and analogies; but these passages are little oases in a
dry and thirsty land. The 'Life and Death of Mr. Badman' vividly
presents certain aspects of English provincial life in that day; but
they are repulsive, and the entire work is marred by flat moralizings
and coarse, often incredible stories.

The 'Holy War,' which Macaulay said would have been our greatest
religious allegory if the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had not been written, has
ceased to be much read. The conception of the conquest of the human soul
by the irresistible operation of divine force is so foreign to modern
thought and faith that Bunyan's similitude no longer seems a
verisimilitude. The pages abound with quaint, humorous, and lifelike
touches;--as where Diabolus stations at Ear-Gate a guard of deaf men
under old Mr. Prejudice, and Unbelief is described as "a nimble jack
whom they could never lay hold of";--but as compared with the 'Pilgrim's
Progress' the allegory is artificial, its elaboration of analogies is
ponderous and tedious, and its characters lack solidity and reality.

All these works, however, exhibit a remarkable command of the mother
tongue, a shrewd common-sense and mother wit, a fervid spiritual life,
and a wonderful knowledge of the English Bible. They may be likened to
more or less submerged wrecks kept from sinking into utter neglect by
the bond of authorship which connects them with the one incomparable
work which floats, unimpaired by time, on the sea of universal
appreciation and favor. Bunyan's unique and secure position in English
literature was gained by the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the first part of
which was published in 1678, and the second in 1685.

The broader, freer conception of the pilgrimage--as old in literature as
the ninetieth Psalm, apt and fond, as innumerable books show, from De
Guileville's 'Le Pelerinage de l'Homme' in the fourteenth century to
Patrick's 'Parable' three hundred years later--took sudden possession of
Bunyan's imagination while he was in prison, and kindled all his finest
powers. Then he undertook, poet-wise, to work out this conception,
capable of such diversity of illustration, in a form of literature that
has ever been especially congenial to the human mind. Unguided save by
his own consecrated genius, unaided by other books than his English
Bible and Fox's 'Book of Martyrs,' he proceeded with a simplicity of
purpose and felicity of expression, and with a fidelity to nature and
life, which gave