work.  Christian’s sins take an actual form in the burden on his back.  Every personage whom he meets on his journey, and every place through which he passes appears to the mind of the reader with the vividness of actual experience.  The child or the laborer reads the “Pilgrim’s Progress” as a record of adventures undergone by a living man; the scholar forgets the art which has raised the picture before his mind, in a sense of contact with the subject portrayed.  This is the triumph of a great genius, and it is a triumph to which no other writer has attained to the same degree.  Other allegorists have pleased the fancy or gratified the understanding, but Bunyan occupies at once the imagination, the reason and the heart of his reader.  Defoe’s power of giving life to fictitious scenes and personages has not been surpassed by that of any other novelist.  But Defoe’s scenes and characters were of a nature familiar to his readers, and therefore easily realized.  In the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” strange and unreal regions become well-known places, and moral qualities distinct human beings.  Evangelist, who puts Christian on the way to the Wicked Gate; Pliable, who deserts him at the first difficulty; Help, who pulls him out of the Slough of Despond; Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who shows him an easy way to be rid of his burden, are all life-like individuals.  Timorous, Talkative, Vain Confidence, Giant Despair, are not mere personifications, but distinct human beings with whom every reader of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” feels an intimate acquaintance.  Not less real is the impression produced by the various scenes through which the journey of Christian conducts him.  The Slough of Despond, the Wicket Gate, the House of the Interpreter, the Hill Difficulty, have been familiar localities to many generations of men, who have watched Christian’s struggle with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation, and followed his footsteps as they trod the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as they passed through the dangers of Vanity Fair, and brought him at last to the Celestial City, and the welcome of the Shining Ones.

The “Pilgrim’s Progress” and the “Holy War” are not as allegories entirely perfect, but they probably gain in religious effect, as much as they lose from a literary point of view, in those passages where the allegorical disguise is not sustained.  The simplicity and power of their language are alone sufficient to give them an important place in English literature.  Throughout the “Pilgrim’s Progress” are evidences of a strong human sympathy, and a kindly indulgence on the part of the author for the weak and erring among his fellow-men.  Ignorance, to be sure, is cast into the bottomless pit; but as the work taught a spiritual perfection, it could not afford to encourage the willingly ignorant by bestowing a pardon on their representative.  Bunyan himself was distinguished for a general sympathy with his fellow-men which the narrowness of Puritanism had failed to impair.  The sad words in which