He recalled them from orthodox abstractions to the solid earth.  “Have you forgot,” he asked his followers, “the close, the milk-house, the stable, the barn, and the like, where God did visit your souls?” He himself could never be indifferent to the place or setting of the great tragi-comedy of salvation.  When he relates how he gave up swearing as a result of a reproof from a “loose and ungodly” woman, he begins the story:  “One day, as I was standing at a neighbour’s shop-window, and there cursing and swearing after my wonted manner, there sat within the woman of the house, who heard me.”  This passion for locality was always at his elbow.  A few pages further on in Grace Abounding, when he tells us how he abandoned not only swearing but the deeper-rooted sins of bell-ringing and dancing, and nevertheless remained self-righteous and “ignorant of Jesus Christ,” he introduces the next episode in the story of his conversion with the sentence:  “But upon a day the good providence of God called me to Bedford to work at my calling, and in one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, talking about the things of God.”  That seems to me to be one of the most beautiful sentences in English literature.  Its beauty is largely due to the hungry eyes with which Bunyan looked at the present world during his progress to the next.  If he wrote the greatest allegory in English literature, it is because he was able to give his narrative the reality of a travel-book instead of the insubstantial quality of a dream.  He leaves the reader with the feeling that he is moving among real places and real people.  As for the people, Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue—­still more, an abstract vice—­the skin and bones of a man.  A recent critic has said disparagingly that Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr. Facing-both-ways.  As a matter of fact, Bunyan’s secret is the direct opposite of this.  His great and singular gift was the power to create an atmosphere in which a character with a name like Mr. Facing-both-ways is accepted on the same plane of reality as Hamlet.

If Bunyan was a realist, however, as regards place and character, his conception of life was none the less romantic.  Life to him was a story of hairbreadth escapes—­of a quest beset with a thousand perils.  Not only was there that great dragon the Devil lying in wait for the traveller, but there was Doubting Castle to pass, and Giant Despair, and the lions.  We have in The Pilgrim’s Progress almost every property of romantic adventure and terror.  We want only a map in order to bring home to us the fact that it belongs to the same school of fiction as Treasure Island.  There may be theological contentions here and there that interrupt the action of the story as they interrupt the interest of Grace Abounding.  But the tedious passages are extraordinarily few, considering that the author had the passions of a preacher.  No doubt the fact