ionary should not
put itself into antagonism with general feeling, nor even with the feelings
of classes. We refer particularly to the ordinary and editorial teaching of
the article. If, indeed, the writer, being at issue with mankind, should
confess the difference, and give abstract of his full grounds, the case is
altered: the editor then, as it were, admits a correspondent to a statement
of his own individual views. The dictionary portion of the Britannica is
quite clear of any lapses on this point, so far as we know: the treatises
and dissertations rest upon their authors. The Penny Cyclopaedia was all but
clear: and great need was there that it should have been so. The Useful
Knowledge Society, starting on the principle of perfect neutrality in
politics and religion, was obliged to keep strict watch against the
entrance of all attempt even to look over the hedge. There were two--we
believe only two--instances of what we have called personality. The first
was in the article "Bunyan." It is worth while to extract all that is
said--in an article of thirty lines--about a writer who is all but
universally held to be the greatest master of allegory that ever wrote:

"His works were collected in two volumes, folio, 1736-7: among them
'The Pilgrim's Progress' has attained the greatest notoriety. If a
judgment is to be formed of the merits of a book by the number of times
it has been reprinted, and the many languages into which it has been
translated, no production in English literature is superior to this
coarse allegory. On a composition which has been extolled by Dr.
Johnson, and which in our own times has received a very high critical
opinion in its favor [probably Southey], it is hazardous to venture a
disapproval, and we, perhaps, speak the opinion of a small minority
when we confess that to us it appears to be mean, jejune and
wearisome."

--If the unfortunate critic who thus individualized himself had been a
sedulous reader of Bunyan, his power over {294} English would not have been
so _jejune_ as to have needed that fearful word. This little bit of
criticism excited much amusement at the time of its publication: but it was
so thoroughly exceptional and individual that it was seldom or never
charged on the book. The second instance occurred in the article
"Socinians." It had been arranged that the head-words of Christian sects
should be intrusted to members of the sects th