way,
Sweet Christiana opens with her key."

"Go then, my little Book," he says, "and tell young damsels of Mercy,
and old men of plain-hearted old Honest. Tell people of Master Fearing,
who was a good man, though much down in spirit. Tell them of
Feeble-mind, and Ready-to-halt, and Master Despondency and his daughter,
who 'softly went but sure.'

"When thou hast told the world of all these things,
Then turn about, my Book, and touch these strings,
Which, if but touched, will such a music make,
They'll make a cripple dance, a giant quake."

This second part introduces some new scenes, as well as characters and
experiences, but with the same broad sympathy and humor; and there are
closing descriptions not excelled in power and pathos by anything in the
earlier pilgrimage.

In his 'Apology' Bunyan says:--

"This book is writ in such a dialect
As may the minds of listless men affect."

The idiom of the book is purely English, acquired by a diligent study of
the English Bible. It is the simplest, raciest, and most sinewy English
to be found in any writer of our language; and Bunyan's amazing use of
this Saxon idiom for all the purposes of his story, and the range and
freedom of his imaginative genius therein, like certain of Tennyson's
'Idylls,' show it to be an instrument of symphonic capacity and variety.
Bunyan's own maxim is a good one:--"Words easy to be understood do often
hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air."

Of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' in both its parts, we may say in the words
of Milton:--

"These are works that could not be composed by the invocation of
Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to
that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and
knowledge, and send out his Seraphim, with the hallowed fire of
his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases,
without reference to station, birth, or education."

Let Bunyan speak for his own book:--

"Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?
Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?
Wouldst thou lose thyself and catch no harm,
And find thyself again, without a charm?
Wouldst read thyself, and read, thou knowst not what,
And yet know whether thou art blest or not
By reading the same lines? O then come hither!
And lay my book, thy head, and heart together."

Bunyan died of fever, in the house of a fr