many things,
Bunyan is happy in being like his unlettered Master in this also, that
the common people hear him gladly and never weary of hearing him.

It gives by far its noblest interest to Dante's noble book that we have
Dante himself in every page of his book. Dante is taken down into Hell,
he is then led up through _Purgatory_, and after that still up and up
into the very Paradise of God. But that hell all the time is the hell
that Dante had dug and darkened and kindled for himself. In the
Purgatory, again, we see Dante working out his own salvation with fear
and trembling, God all the time working in Dante to will and to do of His
good pleasure. And then the Paradise, with all its sevenfold glory, is
just that place and that life which God hath prepared for them that love
Him and serve Him as Dante did. And so it is in the _Holy War_. John
Bunyan is in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, but there are more men and other
men than its author in that rich and populous book, and other experiences
and other attainments than his. But in the _Holy War_ we have Bunyan
himself as fully and as exclusively as we have Dante in the _Divine
Comedy_. In the first edition of the _Holy War_ there is a frontispiece
conceived and executed after the anatomical and symbolical manner which
was so common in that day, and which is to be seen at its perfection in
the English edition of Jacob Behmen. The frontispiece is a full-length
likeness of the author of the _Holy War_, with his whole soul laid open
and his hidden heart 'anatomised.' Why, asked Wordsworth, and Matthew
Arnold in our day has echoed the question--why does Homer still so live
and rule without a rival in the world of letters? And they answer that
it is because he always sang with his eye so fixed upon its object.
'Homer, to thee I turn.' And so it was with Dante. And so it was with
Bunyan. Bunyan's _Holy War_ has its great and abiding and commanding
power over us just because he composed it with his eye fixed on his own
heart.

My readers, I have somewhat else to do,
Than with vain stories thus to trouble you;
What here I say some men do know so well
They can with tears and joy the story tell . . .
Then lend thine ear to what I do relate,
Touching the town of Mansoul and her state:
For my part, I (myself) was in the town,
Both when 'twas set up and when pulling down.
Let no man then count me a fable-maker,
Nor make my name or credit a p