om being "fools"; but when
both these great writers, on the one hand, carry us up into the Council
Chamber of Heaven and introduce us to the Persons of the ever-blessed
Trinity, debating, consulting, planning, and resolving, like a sovereign
and his ministers when a revolted province has to be brought back to its
allegiance; and, on the other hand, take us down to the infernal regions,
and makes us privy to the plots and counterplots of the rebel leaders and
hearers of their speeches, we cannot but feel that, in spite of the
magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely
picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded
if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their
essential mysteries. In point of individual personal interest, "The Holy
War" contrasts badly with "The Pilgrim's Progress." The narrative moves
in a more shadowy region. We may admire the workmanship; but the same
undefined sense of unreality pursues us through Milton's noble epic, the
outcome of a divinely-fired genius, and Bunyan's humble narrative,
drawing its scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its _dramatis
personae_, from the writer's own surroundings in the town and corporation
of Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the
great Parliamentary War. The catastrophe also is eminently
unsatisfactory. When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we
feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been
looking for all along. But the conclusion of "The Holy War" is too much
like the closing chapter of "Rasselas"--"a conclusion in which nothing is
concluded." After all the endless vicissitudes of the conflict, and the
final and glorious victory of Emmanuel and his forces, and the execution
of the ringleaders of the mutiny, the issue still remains doubtful. The
town of Mansoul is left open to fresh attacks. Diabolus is still at
large. Carnal Sense breaks prison and continues to lurk in the town.
Unbelief, that "nimble Jack," slips away, and can never be laid hold of.
These, therefore, and some few others of the more subtle of the
Diabolonians, continue to make their home in Mansoul, and will do so
until Mansoul ceases to dwell in the kingdom of Universe. It is true
they turn chicken-hearted after the other leaders of their party have
been taken and executed, and keep themselves quiet and close, lurking in
dens and holes lest they