FullReads

All allegories have a tendency to escape from the purpose of their creators; and as the characters and incidents become more and more interesting in themselves, the moral, which these were to show forth, falls more and more into neglect. An architect may command a wreath of vine-leaves round the cornice of a monument; but if, as each leaf came from the chisel, it took proper life and fluttered freely on the wall, and if the vine grew, and the building were hidden over with foliage and fruit, the architect would stand in much the same situation as the writer of allegories. The Faery Queen was an allegory, I am willing to believe; but it survives as an imaginative tale in incomparable verse. The case of Bunyan is widely different; and yet in this also Allegory, poor nymph, although never quite forgotten, is sometimes rudely thrust against the wall. Bunyan was fervently in earnest; with ‘his fingers in his ears, he ran on,’ straight for his mark. He tells us himself, in the conclusion to the first part, that he did not fear to raise a laugh; indeed, he feared nothing, and said anything; and he was greatly served in this by a certain rustic privilege of his style, which, like the talk of strong uneducated men, when it does not impress by its force, still charms by its simplicity. The mere story and the allegorical design enjoyed perhaps his equal favour. He believed in both with an energy of faith that was capable of moving mountains. And we have to remark in him, not the parts where inspiration fails and is supplied by cold and merely decorative invention, but the parts where faith has grown to be credulity, and his characters become so real to him that he forgets the end of their creation. We can follow him step by step into the trap which he lays for himself by his own entire good faith and triumphant literality of vision, till the trap closes and shuts him in an inconsistency. The allegories of the Interpreter and of the Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains are all actually performed, like stage-plays, before the pilgrims. The son of Mr. Great-grace visibly ‘tumbles hills about with his words.’ Adam the First has his condemnation written visibly on his forehead, so that Faithful reads it. At the very instant the net closes round the pilgrims, ‘the white robe falls from the black man’s body.’ Despair ‘getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel’; it was in ‘sunshiny weather’ that he had his fits; and the birds in the grove about the House Beautiful, ‘our country birds,’ only sing their little pious verses ‘at the spring, when the flowers appear and the sun shines warm.’ ‘I often,’ says Piety, ‘go out to hear them; we also ofttimes keep them tame on our house.’ The post between Beulah and the Celestial City sounds his horn, as you may yet hear in country places. Madam Bubble, that ‘tall, comely dame, something of a swarthy complexion, in very pleasant attire, but old,’ ‘gives you a smile at the end of each sentence’–a real woman she; we all know her. Christiana dying ‘gave Mr. Stand-fast a ring,’ for no possible reason in the allegory, merely because the touch was human and affecting. Look at Great-heart, with his soldierly ways, garrison ways, as I had almost called them; with his taste in weapons; his delight in any that ‘he found to be a man of his hands’; his chivalrous point of honour, letting Giant Maul get up again when he was down, a thing fairly flying in the teeth of the moral; above all, with his language in the inimitable tale of Mr. Fearing: ‘I thought I should have lost my man’–‘chicken-hearted’–‘at last he came in, and I will say that for my lord, he carried it wonderful lovingly to him.’ This is no Independent minister; this is a stout, honest, big-busted ancient, adjusting his shoulder-belts, twirling his long moustaches as he speaks. Last and most remarkable, ‘My sword,’ says the dying Valiant-for-Truth, he in whom Great-heart delighted, ‘my sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, AND MY COURAGE AND SKILL TO HIM THAT CAN GET IT.’ And after this boast, more arrogantly unorthodox than was ever dreamed of by the rejected Ignorance, we are told that ‘all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.’