we the woodcuts in the body of the volume to the same
hand that drew the plan. It seems, however, more than probable. The
literal particularity of mind which, in the map, laid down the
flower-plots in the devil's garden, and carefully introduced the
court-house in the town of Vanity, is closely paralleled in many of the
cuts; and in both, the architecture of the buildings and the disposition
of the gardens have a kindred and entirely English air. Whoever he was,
the author of these wonderful little pictures may lay claim to be the
best illustrator of Bunyan.[43] They are not only good illustrations,
like so many others; but they are like so few, good illustrations of
Bunyan. Their spirit, in defect and quality, is still the same as his
own. The designer also has lain down and dreamed a dream, as literal, as
quaint, and almost as apposite as Bunyan's; and text and pictures
make but the two sides of the same homespun yet impassioned story. To
do justice to the designs, it will be necessary to say, for the
hundredth time, a word or two about the masterpiece which they adorn.

All allegories have a tendency to escape from the purpose of their
creators; and as the characters and incidents become more and more
interesting in themselves, the moral, which these were to show forth,
falls more and more into neglect. An architect may command a wreath of
vine-leaves round the cornice of a monument; but if, as each leaf came
from the chisel, it took proper life and fluttered freely on the wall,
and if the vine grew, and the building were hidden over with foliage and
fruit, the architect would stand in much the same situation as the writer
of allegories. The "Faery Queen" was an allegory, I am willing to
believe; but it survives as an imaginative tale in incomparable verse.
The case of Bunyan is widely different; and yet in this also Allegory,
poor nymph, although never quite forgotten, is sometimes rudely thrust
against the wall. Bunyan was fervently in earnest; with "his fingers in
his ears, he ran on," straight for his mark. He tells us himself, in the
conclusion to the first part, that he did not fear to raise a laugh;
indeed, he feared nothing, and said anything; and he was greatly served
in this by a certain rustic privilege of his style, which, like the talk
of strong uneducated men, when it does not impress by its force, still
charms by its simplicity. The mere story and the allegorical design
enjoyed perhaps his equal favour.