their neckcloths in imitation of their great leader. For some years, the Minerva press sent forth no novel without a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The number of hopeful undergraduates and medical students who became things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart ceased to fall like dew, whose passions had consumed themselves to dust, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all calculation. This was not the worst. There was created in the minds of many of these enthusiasts, a pernicious and absurd association between intellectual power and moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness; a system in which the two great commandments

were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife.

This affectation has passed away; and a few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron. To us he is still a man, young, noble, and unhappy. To our children he will be merely a writer; and their impartial judgment will appoint his place among writers, without regard to his rank or to his private history. That his poetry will undergo a severe sifting; that much of what has been admired by his contemporaries will be reject ed as worthless, we have little doubt. But we have as little doubt, that, after the closest scrutiny, there will still remain much that can only perish with the English language.

SOUTHEY'S EDITION OF THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.]

have attempted to illustrate the Paradise Lost. There can be no two manners more directly opposed to each other, than the manner of his painting and the manner of Milton's poetry. Those things which are mere accessaries in the descriptions, become the principal objects in the pictures; and those figures which are most prominent in the descriptions can be detected in the pictures only by a very close scrutiny. Mr. Martin has succeeded perfectly

THIS is an eminently beautiful and splendid | in his choice of subjects. He should never edition of a book which well deserves all that the printer and the engraver can do for it. The life of Bunyan is, of course, not a performance which can add much to the literary reputation of such a writer as Mr. Southey. But it is written in excellent English, and, for the most part, in an excellent spirit. Mr. Southey propounds, we need not say, many opinions from which we altogether dissent; and his attempts to excuse the odious persecution to which Bunyan was subjected, have some-in representing the pillars and candelabras of times moved our indignation. But we will avoid this topic. We are at present much more inclined to join in paying homage to the genius of a great man, than to engage in a controversy concerning church government and toleration.

Pandemonium. But he has forgotten that Milton's Pandemonium is merely the background to Satan. In the picture, the Archangel is scarcely visible amidst the endless colonnades of his infernal palace. Milton's Paradise, again, is merely the background to his We must not pass without notice the en- Adam and Eve. But in Mr. Martin's picture gravings with which this beautiful volume is the landscape is every thing. Adam, Eve, decorated. Some of Mr. Heath's woodcuts are and Raphael attract much less notice than the admirably designed and executed. Mr. Mar- lake and the mountains, the gigantic flowers, tin's illustrations do not please us quite so and the giraffes which feed upon them. We well. His Valley of the Shadow of Death is have read, we forget where, that James the not that Valley of the Shadow of Death which Second sat to Verelst, the great flower-painter. Bunyan imagined. At all events, it is not that When the performance was finished, his madark and horrible glen which has from child-jesty appeared in the midst of sunflowers and hood been in our mind's eye. The valley is a cavern: the quagmire is a lake: the straight path runs zigzag: and Christian appears like a speck in the darkness of the immense vault. We miss, too, those hideous forms which make so striking a part of the description of Bunyan, and which Salvator Rosa would have loved to draw. It is with unfeigned diffidence that we pronounce judgment on any question relating to the art of painting. But it appears to us that Mr. Martin has not of late been fortunate

The Pilgrim's Progress, with a life of John Bunyan. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq., LL.D., Poet Laureate. IlJastrated with Engravings. 8vo. London. 1830.

tulips, which completely drew away all atten. tion from the central figure. All who looked at the portrait took it for a flower-piece. Mr. Martin, we think, introduces his immeasurable spaces, his innumerable multitudes, his gorgeous prodigies of architecture and landscape, almost as unseasonably as Verelst introduced his flower-pots and nosegays. If Mr. Martin were to paint Lear in the storm, the blazing sky, the sheets of rain, the swollen torrents, and the tossing forest, would draw away all attention from the agonies of the insulted king and father. If he were to paint the death of Lear, the old man, asking the bystanders to

undo his button, would be thrown into the are not should be as though they were, that the
shade by a vast blaze of pavilions, standards, imaginations of one mind should become the
armour, and herald's coats. He would illus- personal recollections of another. And this
trate the Orlando Furioso well, the Orlando miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no
Innamorato still better, the Arabian Nights ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turn
best of all. Fairy palaces and gardens, porti- stile, with which we are not perfectly acquaint-
coes of agate, and groves flowering with eme- ed. The wicket gate, and the desolate swamp
ralds and rubies, inhabited by people for whom which separates it from the City of Destruc-
nobody cares, these are his proper domain. tion; the long line of road, as straight as a rule
He would succeed admirably in the enchanted can make it; the Interpreter's house, and all
ground of Alcina, or the mansion of Aladdin. its fair shows; the prisoner in the iron cage;
But he should avoid Milton and Bunyan. the palace, at the doors of which armed men
The characteristic peculiarity of the Pil- kept guard, and on the battlements of which
grim's Progress is, that it is the only work of walked persons clothed all in gold; the cross
its kind which possesses a strong human in- and the sepulchre; the steep hill and the plea-
terest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. sant arbour; the stately front of the House
The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many | Beautiful by the wayside; the low green valley
thousands with tears. There are some good of Humiliation, rich with grass and covered
allegories in Johnson's works, and some of with flocks, all are as well known to us as the
still higher merit by Addison. In these per-sights of our own street. Then we come to the
formances there is, perhaps, as much wit and
ingenuity as in the Pilgrim's Progress. But
the pleasure which is produced by the Vision
of Mirza, or the Vision of Theodore, the gene-
alogy of Wit, or the contest between Rest and
Labour, is exactly similar to the pleasure
which we derive from one of Cowley's Odes,
or from a Canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure
which belongs wholly to the understanding,
and in which the feelings have no part what-
ever. Nay, even Spenser himself, though
assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever
lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make
allegory interesting. It was in vain that he
lavished the riches of his mind on the House
of Pride, and the House of Temperance. One
unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness,
pervades the whole of the Faerie Queen. We
become sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly
Sins, and long for the society of plain men and
women. Of the persons who read the first
Cato, not one in ten reaches the end of the Then the road passes straight on through a
First Book, and not one in a hundred perse- waste moor, till at length the towers of a dis-
veres to the end of the poem. Very few and tant city appear before the traveller; and soon
very weary are those who are in at the death he is in the midst of the innumerable multi-
of the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, tudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers
which are said to have been destroyed in Ire-and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows.
land, had been preserved, we doubt whether
any heart less stout than that of a commentator
would have held out to the end.

narrow place where Apollyon strode right
across the whole breadth of the way, to stop
the journey of Christian, and where afterwards
the pillar was set up to testify how bravely the
pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we ad-
vance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper.
The shade of the precipices on both sides falls
blacker and blacker. The clouds gather over-
head. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains,
and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are
heard through the darkness. The way, hardly
discernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth
of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames,
its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes, to
terrify the adventurer.
Thence he goes on,
amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled
bodies of those who have perished lying in the
ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark
valley, he passes the dens in which the old
giants dwelt, amidst the bones and ashes of
those whom they had slain.

There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and Britain Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth.

It is not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That wonderful book, while it obtains admira- Thence we go on by the little hill of the siltion from the most fastidious critics, is loved ver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, by those who are too simple to admire it. along the bank of that pleasant river which is Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were desul-bordered on both sides by fruit trees. On the tory, and who hated, as he said, to read books left side, branches off the path leading to that through, made an exception in favour of the horrible castle, the court-yard of which is Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was paved with the skulls of pilgrims; and right one of the two or three works which he wished onward are the sheepfolds and orchards of the longer. It was by no common merit that the Delectable Mountains. illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the Giant-Killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path, as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius-that things which VOL. L-17

From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of sot cushions spread under a green arbour. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, on the other side of that black and cold river over which there is no bridge.

All the stages of the journey, all the But we must return to Bunyan. The Pilforms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, grim's Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect -giants and hobgoblins, ill-favoured ones allegory. The types are often inconsistent and shining ones; the tall, comely, swarthy with each other; and sometimes the allegori Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her cal disguise is altogether thrown off. The side, and her fingers playing with the money; river, for example, is emblematic of death, the black man in the bright vesture; Mr. and we are told that every human being must Worldly-Wiseman, and my Lord Hategood; pass through the river. But Faithful does not Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous-are all pass through it. He is martyred, not in shaactually existing beings to us. We follow the dow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful travellers through their allegorical progress talks to Christian about Esau's birthright, and with interest not inferior to that with which about his own convictions of sin, as Bunyan we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, might have talked with one of his own conor Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. gregation., The damsels at the House BeautiBunyan is almost the only writer that ever ful catechise Christiana's boys, as any good gave to the abstract the interest of the con- ladies might catechise any boys at a Sundaycrete. In the works of many celebrated au- school. But we do not believe that any man, thors, men are mere personifications. We whatever might be his genius, and whatever have not an Othello, but jealousy; not an Iago, his good luck, could long continue a figurative but perfidy; not a Brutus, but patriotism. history without falling into many inconsist The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so encies. We are sure that inconsistencies, imaginative, that personifications, when he scarcely less gross than the worst into which dealt with them, became men. A dialogue Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the shortbetween two qualities in his dream, has more est and most elaborate allegories of the Specdramatic effect than a dialogue between two tator and the Rambler. The Tale of a Tub and human beings in most plays. In this respect the History of John Bull swarm with similar the genius of Bunyan bore a great resem- errors, if the name of error can be properly blance to that of a man who had very little applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not else in common with him, Percy Bysshe Shel- easy to make a simile go on all-fours. But ley. The strong imagination of Shelley made we believe that no human ingenuity could him an idolater in his own despite. Out of produce such a centipede as a long allegory, the most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, in which the correspondence between the outmetaphysical system, he made a gorgeous ward sign and the thing signified should be Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and life- exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, anlike forms. He turned atheism itself into a cient or modern, has yet achieved the advenmythology, rich with visions as glorious as the ture. The best thing, on the whole, that an gods that live in the marble of Phidias, or the allegorist can do, is to present to his readers a virgin saints that smile on us from the canvass succession of analogies, each of which may of Murillo. The Spirit of Beauty, the Prin- separately be striking and happy, without look ciple of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he ing very nicely to see whether they harmonize treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. with each other. This Bunyan has done; and, They took shape and colour. They were no though a minute scrutiny may detect inconlonger mere words; but "intelligible forms;" sistencies in every page of his tale, the general "fair humanities;" objects of love, of adora-effect which the tale produces on all persons, tion, or of fear. As there can be no stronger learned and unlearned, proves that he has done signs of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty well. The passages which it is most difficult than that tendency which was so common to defend, are those in which he altogether among the writers of the French school to turn drops the allegory, and puts into the mouth of images into abstractions-Venus, for example, his pilgrims religious ejaculations and disquiinto Love, Minerva into Wisdom, Mars into sitions, better suited to his own pulpit at BedWar, and Bacchus into Festivity-so there can ford or Reading, than to the Enchanted Ground be no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical, of the Interpreter's Garden. Yet even these than a disposition to reverse this abstracting passages, though we will not undertake to deprocess, and to make individuals out of gene-fend them against the objections of critics, ralities. Some of the metaphysical and ethical theories of Shelley were certainly most absurd and pernicious. But we doubt whether any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree the highest qualities of the great ancient mas

ters.

The words bard and inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when applied to other modern writers, have a perfect propriety when applied to him. He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art, but an inspiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he might not improbably have given to the world some great work of the very highest rank in design and execution. But, alas!

ο Δαφν ς εβα ροον εκλυσε δικα

του Μώσαις φίλον ανδρα, τον ου Νυμφαισιν απέχθη

we feel that we could ill spare. We feel that the story owes much of its charm to these occasional glimpses of solemn and affecting subjects, which will not be hidden, which force themselves through the veil, and appear before us in their native aspect. The effect is not unlike that which is said to have been produced on the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen flaming through his mask, and giving life and expression to what would else have been inanimate and uninteresting disguise.

It is very amusing and very instructive to compare the Pilgrim's Progress with the Grace Abounding. The latter work is indeed one of the most remarkable pieces of autobiography in the world. It is a full and open confession

was every creature over I! for they stood fast, and kept their station. But I was gone and lost." Scarcely any madhouse could produce an instance of delusion so strong, or of misery

so acute.

It was through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, overhung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blasphemy and lamentation, and passing amidst quagmires, snares, and pitfalls, close by the very mouth of hell, that Bunyan journeyed to that bright and fruitful land of Beulah, in which he sojourned during the latter days of his pilgrimage. The only trace which his cruel sufferings and temptations seem to have left behind them, was an affectionate compassion for those who were still in the state in which he had once been. Religion has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in his allegory. The feeling which predominates through the whole book is a feeling of tenderness for weak, timid, and harassed minds. The character of Mr. Fearing, of Mr. Feeble-Mind, of Mr. Despondency and his daughter Miss Muchafraid; the account of poor Littlefaith, who was robbed by the three thieves of his spending-money; the description of Christian's terror in the dungeons of Giant Despair, and in his passage through the river, all clearly show how strong a sympathy Bunyan felt, after his own mind had become clear and cheerful, for persons afflicted with religious melancholy.

of Isaiah to the household and guests of Gaius; and then sallies out to attack Slaygood, who was of the nature of flesh-eaters, in his den These are inconsistencies; but they are inconsistencies which add, we think, to the interest of the narrative. We have not the least doubt that Bunyan had in view some stout old Greatheart of Naseby and Worcester, who prayed with his men before he drilled them; who knew the spiritual state of every dragoon in his troop; and who, with the praises of God in his mouth, and a two-edged sword in his hand, had turned to flight, on many fields of battle, the swearing, drunken bravoes of Rupert and Lunsford.

Every age produces such men as By-ends. But the middle of the seventeenth century was eminently prolific of such men. Mr. Southey thinks that the satire was aimed at some particular individual; and this seems by no means improbable. At all events, Bunyan must have known many of those hypocrites who followed religion only when religion walked in silver slippers, when the sun shone, and when the people applauded. Indeed, he might have easily found all the kindred of By-ends among the public men of his time. He might have found among the peers, my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, and my Lord Fairspeech; in the House of Commons, Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Anything, and Mr. Facingboth-ways; nor would "the parson of the Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Cal parish, Mr. Two-tongues," have been wanting. vinists, admits that, if Calvinism had never The town of Bedford probably contained more worn a blacker appearance than in Bunyan's than one politician, who, after contriving to works, it would never have become a term of raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reproach. In fact, those works of Bunyan reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he with which we are acquainted, are by no had got by persecuting the saints during the means more Calvinistic than the homilies of reign of the strumpets; and more than one the Church of England. The moderation of priest who, during repeated changes in the his opinions on the subject of predestination, discipline and doctrines of the church, had gave offence to some zealous persons. We remained constant to nothing but his benehave scen an absurd allegory, the heroine office. which is named Hephzibah, written by some One of the most remarkable passages in the raving supralapsarian preacher, who was dis- Pilgrim's Progress, is that in which the prosatisfied with the mild theology of the Pilgrim's ceedings against Faithful are described. It is Progress. In this foolish book, if we recollect impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to rightly, the Interpreter is called the Enlight-satirize the mode in which state trials were ener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. Mr. Southey tells us that the Catholics had also their Pilgrim's Progress without a Giant Pope, in which the Interpreter is the Director, and the House Beautiful Grace's Hall. It is surely a remarkable proof of the power of Bunyan's genius, that two religious parties, both of which regarded his opinions as heterodox, should have had recourse to him for assistance.

conducted under Charles the Second. The license given to the witnesses for the prosecution, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancour of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms prelimi nary to hanging, drawing, and quartering, Lord Hategood performs the office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs himself could have performed it.

"JUDGE. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee?

"FAITHFUL. May I speak a few words in my own defence?

There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the Pilgrim's Progress, which can be ully comprehended and enjoyed only by persons familiar with the history of the times through which Bunyan lived. The character of Mr. Greatheart, the guide, is an example. His fighting is, of course, allegorical; but the allegory is not strictly preserved. He delivers a sermon on imputed righteousness to his companions; and, soon after, he gives battle to Gian: Grim, who had taken upon him to back the lions. He expounds the fifty-third chapter! No person who knows the state trials can be

"JUDGE. Sirrah, Sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say."