He believed in both with an energy of
faith that was capable of moving mountains. And we have to remark in him,
not the parts where inspiration fails and is supplied by cold and merely
decorative invention, but the parts where faith has grown to be
credulity, and his characters become so real to him that he forgets the
end of their creation. We can follow him step by step into the trap which
he lays for himself by his own entire good faith and triumphant
literality of vision, till the trap closes and shuts him in an
inconsistency. The allegories of the Interpreter and of the Shepherds of
the Delectable Mountains are all actually performed, like stage-plays,
before the pilgrims. The son of Mr. Great-grace visibly "tumbles hills
about with his words." Adam the First has his condemnation written
visibly on his forehead, so that Faithful reads it. At the very instant
the net closes round the pilgrims, "the white robe falls from the black
man's body." Despair "getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel"; it was in
"sunshiny weather" that he had his fits; and the birds in the grove about
the House Beautiful, "our country birds," only sing their little pious
verses "at the spring, when the flowers appear and the sun shines warm."
"I often," says Piety, "go out to hear them; we also ofttimes keep them
tame on our house." The post between Beulah and the Celestial City sounds
his horn, as you may yet hear in country places. Madam Bubble, that
"tall, comely dame, something of a swarthy complexion, in very pleasant
attire, but old," "gives you a smile at the end of each sentence"--a real
woman she; we all know her. Christiana dying "gave Mr. Stand-fast a
ring," for no possible reason in the allegory, merely because the touch
was human and affecting. Look at Great-heart, with his soldierly ways,
garrison ways, as I had almost called them; with his taste in weapons;
his delight in any that "he found to be a man of his hands"; his
chivalrous point of honour, letting Giant Maul get up again when he was
down, a thing fairly flying in the teeth of the moral; above all, with
his language in the inimitable tale of Mr. Fearing: "I thought I should
have lost my man"--"chicken-hearted"--"at last he came in, and I will say
that for my lord, he carried it wonderful lovingly to him." This is no
Independent minister; this is a stout, honest, big-busted ancient,
adjusting his shoulder-belts, twirling his long moustaches as he speaks.
Last and most rem