ive force which
had been given to the common life of Englishmen by their study of the
Bible. Bunyan's English is the simplest and homeliest English that has
ever been used by any great English writer, but it is the English of the
Bible. His images are the images of prophet and evangelist. So
completely had the Bible become Bunyan's life that one feels its phrases
as the natural expression of his thoughts. He had lived in the Bible
till its words became his own."

All who have undertaken to take an estimate of Bunyan's literary genius
call special attention to the richness of his imaginative power. Few
writers indeed have possessed this power in so high a degree. In
nothing, perhaps, is its vividness more displayed than in the reality of
its impersonations. The _dramatis persons_ are not shadowy abstractions,
moving far above us in a mystical world, or lay figures ticketed with
certain names, but solid men and women of our own flesh and blood, living
in our own everyday world, and of like passions with ourselves. Many of
them we know familiarly; there is hardly one we should be surprised to
meet any day. This lifelike power of characterization belongs in the
highest degree to "The Pilgrim's Progress." It is hardly inferior in
"The Holy War," though with some exceptions the people of "Mansoul" have
failed to engrave themselves on the popular memory as the characters of
the earlier allegory have done. The secret of this graphic power, which
gives "The Pilgrim's Progress" its universal popularity, is that Bunyan
describes men and women of his own day, such as he had known and seen
them. They are not fancy pictures, but literal portraits. Though the
features may be exaggerated, and the colours laid on with an unsparing
brush, the outlines of his bold personifications are truthfully drawn
from his own experience. He had had to do with every one of them. He
could have given a personal name to most of them, and we could do the
same to many. We are not unacquainted with Mr Byends of the town of Fair
Speech, who "always has the luck to jump in his judgment with the way of
the times, and to get thereby," who is zealous for Religion "when he goes
in his silver slippers," and "loves to walk with him in the streets when
the sun shines and the people applaud him." All his kindred and
surroundings are only too familiar to us--his wife, that very virtuous
woman my Lady Feigning's daughter, my Lord Fair-speech, my Lord
T