But although the Second Part must be pronounced inferior, on the whole, to the first, it is a work of striking individuality and graphic power, such as Bunyan alone could have written. Everywhere we find strokes of his peculiar genius, and though in a smaller measure than the first, it has added not a few portraits to Bunyan's spiritual picture gallery we should be sorry to miss, and supplied us with racy sayings which stick to the memory. The sweet maid Mercy affords a lovely picture of gentle feminine piety, well contrasted with the more vigorous but still thoroughly womanly character of Christiana. Great-Heart is too much of an abstraction: a preacher in the uncongenial disguise of a knightly champion of distressed females and the slayer of giants. But the other new characters have generally a vivid personality. Who can forget Old Honesty, the dull good man with no mental gifts but of dogged sincerity, who though coming from the Town of Stupidity, four degrees beyond the City of Destruction, was "known for a cock of the right kind," because he said the truth and stuck to it; or his companion, Mr. Fearing, that most troublesome of pilgrims, stumbling at every straw, lying roaring at the Slough of Despond above a month together, standing shaking and shrinking at the Wicket Gate, but making no stick at the Lions, and at last getting over the river not much above wetshod; or Mr. Valiant for Truth, the native of Darkland, standing with his sword drawn and his face all bloody from his three hours' fight with Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick; Mr. Standfast, blushing to be found on his knees in the Enchanted Ground, one who loved to hear his Lord spoken of, and coveted to set his foot wherever he saw the print of his shoe; Mr. Feeblemind, the sickly, melancholy pilgrim, at whose door death did usually knock once a day, betaking himself to a pilgrim's life because he was never well at home, resolved to run when he could, and go when he could not run, and creep when he could not go, an enemy to laughter and to gay attire, bringing up the rear of the company with Mr. Readytohalt hobbling along on his crutches; Giant Despair's prisoners, Mr. Despondency, whom he had all but starved to death—and Mistress Much-afraid his daughter, who went through the river singing, though none could understand what she said? Each of these characters has a distinct individuality which lifts them from shadowy abstractions into living men and women. But with all its excellencies, and they are many, the general inferiority of the history of Christiana and her children's pilgrimage to that of her husband's must be acknowledged. The story is less skilfully constructed; the interest is sometimes allowed to flag; the dialogues that interrupt the narrative are in places dry and wearisome—too much of sermons in disguise. There is also a want of keeping between the two parts of the allegory. The Wicket Gate of the First Part has become a considerable building with a summer parlour in the Second; the shepherds' tents on the Delectable Mountains have risen into a palace, with a dining-room, and a looking- glass, and a store of jewels; while Vanity Fair has lost its former bad character, and has become a respectable country town, where Christiana and her family, seeming altogether to forget their pilgrimage, settled down comfortably, enjoy the society of the good people of the place, and the sons marry and have children. These same children also cause the reader no little perplexity, when he finds them in the course of the supposed journey transformed from sweet babes who are terrified with the Mastiffs barking at the Wicket Gate, who catch at the boughs for the unripe plums and cry at having to climb the hill; whose faces are stroked by the Interpreter; who are catechised and called "good boys" by Prudence; who sup on bread crumbled into basins of milk, and are put to bed by Mercy—into strong young men, able to go out and fight with a giant, and lend a hand to the pulling down of Doubting Castle, and becoming husbands and fathers. We cannot but feel the want of vraisemblance which brings the whole company of pilgrims to the banks of the dark river at one time, and sends them over in succession, following one another rapidly through the Golden Gate of the City. The four boys with their wives and children, it is true, stay behind awhile, but there is an evident incongruity in their doing so when the allegory has brought them all to what stands for the close of their earthly pilgrimage. Bunyan's mistake was in gratifying his inventive genius and making his band of pilgrims so large. He could get them together and make them travel in company without any sacrifice of dramatic truth, which, however, he was forced to disregard when the time came for their dismissal. The exquisite pathos of the description of the passage of the river by Christian and Hopeful blinds us to what may be almost termed the impossibility of two persons passing through the final struggle together, and dying at the same moment, but this charm is wanting in the prosaic picture of the company of fellow-travellers coming down to the water's edge, and waiting till the postman blows his horn and bids them cross. Much as the Second Part contains of what is admirable, and what no one but Bunyan could have written, we feel after reading it that, in Mr. Froude's words, the rough simplicity is gone, and has been replaced by a tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish. "Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious fairyland where the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair ladies and love-matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the soul and sin." With the acknowledged shortcomings of the Second Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress," we may be well content that Bunyan never carried out the idea hinted at in the closing words of his allegory: "Shall it be my lot to go that way again, I may give those that desire it an account of what I am here silent about; in the meantime I bid my reader—Adieu."

Bunyan's second great allegorical work, "The Holy War," need not detain us long. Being an attempt, and in the nature of things an unsuccessful attempt, to clothe what writers on divinity call "the plan of salvation" in a figurative dress, the narrative, with all its vividness of description in parts, its clearly drawn characters with their picturesque nomenclature, and the stirring vicissitudes of the drama, is necessarily wanting in the personal interest which attaches to an individual man, like Christian, and those who are linked with or follow his career. In fact, the tremendous realities of the spiritual history of the human race are entirely unfit for allegorical treatment as a whole. Sin, its origin, its consequences, its remedy, and the apparent failure of that remedy though administered by Almighty hands, must remain a mystery for all time. The attempts made by Bunyan, and by one of much higher intellectual power and greater poetic gifts than Bunyan—John Milton—to bring that mystery within the grasp of the finite intellect, only render it more perplexing. The proverbial line tells us that—

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Bunyan and Milton were as far as possible from 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 should be snapped up by Emmanuel's men. If Unbelief or any of his crew venture to show themselves in the streets, the whole town is up in arms against them; the very children raise a hue and cry against them and seek to stone them. But all in vain. Mansoul, it is true, enjoys some good degree of peace and quiet. Her Prince takes up his residence in her borders. Her captains and soldiers do their duties. She minds her trade with the heavenly land afar off; also she is busy in her manufacture. But with the remnants of the Diabolonians still within her walls, ready to show their heads on the least relaxation of strict watchfulness, keeping up constant communication with Diabolus and the other lords of the pit, and prepared to open the gates to them when opportunity offers, this peace can not be lasting. The old battle will have to be fought over again, only to end in the same undecisive result. And so it must be to the end. If untrue to art, Bunyan is true to fact. Whether we regard Mansoul as the soul of a single individual or as the whole human race, no final victory can be looked for so long as it abides in "the country of Universe." The flesh will lust against the spirit, the regenerated man will be in danger of being brought into captivity to the law of sin and death unless he keeps up his watchfulness and maintains the struggle to the end.

And it is here, that, for purposes of art, not for purposes of truth, the real failing of "The Holy War" lies. The drama of Mansoul is incomplete, and whether individually or collectively, must remain incomplete till man puts on a new nature, and the victory, once for all gained on Calvary, is consummated, in the fulness of time, at the restitution of all things. There is no uncertainty what the end will be. Evil must be put down, and good must triumph at last. But the end is not yet, and it seems as far off as ever. The army of Doubters, under their several captains, Election Doubters, Vocation Doubters, Salvation Doubters, Grace Doubters, with their general the great Lord Incredulity at their head, reinforced by many fresh regiments under novel standards, unknown and unthought of in Bunyan's days, taking the place of those whose power is past, is ever making new attacks upon poor Mansoul, and terrifying feeble souls with their threatenings. Whichever way we look there is much to puzzle, much to grieve over, much that to our present limited view is entirely inexplicable. But the mind that accepts the loving will and wisdom of God as the law of the Universe, can rest in the calm assurance that all, however mysteriously, is fulfilling His eternal designs, and that though He seems to permit "His work to be spoilt, His power defied, and even His victories when won made useless," it is but seeming,—that the triumph of evil is but temporary, and that these apparent failures and contradictions, are slowly but surely working out and helping forward

"The one unseen divine event To which the whole creation moves."

"The mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation leaves unsolved are made tolerable by Hope." To adopt Bunyan's figurative language in the closing paragraph of his allegory, the day is certainly coming when the famous town of Mansoul shall be taken down and transported "every stick and stone" to Emmanuel's land, and there set up for the Father's habitation in such strength and glory as it never saw before. No Diabolonian shall be able to creep into its streets, burrow in its walls, or be seen in its borders. No evil tidings shall trouble its inhabitants, nor sound of Diabolian drum be heard there. Sorrow and grief shall be ended, and life, always sweet, always new, shall last longer than they could even desire it, even all the days of eternity. Meanwhile let those who have such a glorious hope set before them keep clean and white the liveries their Lord has given them, and wash often in the open fountain. Let them believe in His love, live upon His word; watch, fight, and pray, and hold fast till He come.

One more work of Bunyan's still remains to be briefly noticed, as bearing the characteristic stamp of his genius, "The Life and Death of Mr. Badman." The original idea of this book was to furnish a contrast to "The Pilgrim's Progress." As in that work he had described the course of a man setting out on his course heavenwards, struggling onwards through temptation, trials, and difficulties, and entering at last through the golden gates into the city of God, so in this later work his purpose was to depict the career of a man whose face from the first was turned in the opposite direction, going on from bad to worse, ever becoming more and more irretrievably evil, fitter and fitter for the bottomless pit; his life full of sin and his death without repentance; reaping the fruit of his sins in hopeless sinfulness. That this was the original purpose of the work, Bunyan tells us in his preface. It came into his mind, he says, as in the former book he had written concerning the progress of the Pilgrim from this world to glory, so in this second book to write of the life and death of the ungodly, and of their travel from this world to hell. The new work, however, as in almost every respect it differs from the earlier one, so it is decidedly inferior to it. It is totally unlike "The Pilgrim's Progress" both in form and execution. The one is an allegory, the other a tale, describing without imagery or metaphor, in the plainest language, the career of a "vulgar, middle-class, unprincipled scoundrel." While "The Pilgrim's Progress" pursues the narrative form throughout, only interrupted by dialogues between the leading characters, "Mr. Badman's career" is presented to the world in a dialogue between a certain Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive. Mr. Wiseman tells the story, and Mr. Attentive supplies appropriate reflections on it. The narrative is needlessly burdened with a succession of short sermons, in the form of didactic discourses on lying, stealing, impurity, and the other vices of which the hero of the story was guilty, and which brought him to his miserable end. The plainness of speech with which some of these evil doings are enlarged upon, and Mr. Badman's indulgence in them described, makes portions of the book very disagreeable, and indeed hardly profitable reading. With omissions, however, the book well deserves perusal, as a picture such as only Bunyan or his rival in lifelike portraiture, Defoe, could have drawn of vulgar English life in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in a commonplace country town such as Bedford. It is not at all a pleasant picture. The life described, when not gross, is sordid and foul, is mean and commonplace. But as a description of English middle-class life at the epoch of the Restoration and Revolution, it is invaluable for those who wish to put themselves in touch with that period. The anecdotes introduced to illustrate Bunyan's positions of God's judgment upon swearers and sinners, convicting him of a credulity and a harshness of feeling one is sorry to think him capable of, are very interesting for the side-lights they throw upon the times and the people who lived in them. It would take too long to give a sketch of the story, even if a summary could give any real estimate of its picturesque and vivid power. It is certainly a remarkable, if an offensive book. As with "Robinson Crusoe" and Defoe's other tales, we can hardly believe that we have not a real history before us. We feel that there is no reason why the events recorded should not have happened. There are no surprises; no unlooked-for catastrophes; no providential interpositions to punish the sinner or rescue the good man. Badman's pious wife is made to pay the penalty of allowing herself to be deceived by a tall, good-looking, hypocritical scoundrel. He himself pursues his evil way to the end, and "dies like a lamb, or as men call it, like a Chrisom child sweetly and without fear," but the selfsame Mr. Badman still, not only in name, but in condition; sinning onto the last, and dying with a heart that cannot repent.

Mr. Froude's summing up of this book is so masterly that we make no apology for presenting it to our readers. "Bunyan conceals nothing, assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp and shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the reward which such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful; is powerful; he enjoys all the pleasures which money can bring; his bad wife helps him to ruin, but otherwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace. Bunyan has made him a brute, because such men do become brutes. It is the real punishment of brutal and selfish habits. There the figure stands—a picture of a man in the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most familiar; travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire, as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Pleasures are to be found among the primroses, such pleasures as a brute can be gratified by. Yet the reader feels that even if there was no bonfire, he would still prefer to be with Christian."



FOOTNOTES

{1} A small enclosure behind a cottage.

THE END