meet any day. This lifelike power of characterization belongs in the
highest degree to "The Pilgrim's Progress." It is hardly inferior in
"The Holy War," though with some exceptions the people of "Mansoul" have
failed to engrave themselves on the popular memory as the characters of
the earlier allegory have done. The secret of this graphic power, which
gives "The Pilgrim's Progress" its universal popularity, is that Bunyan
describes men and women of his own day, such as he had known and seen
them. They are not fancy pictures, but literal portraits. Though the
features may be exaggerated, and the colours laid on with an unsparing
brush, the outlines of his bold personifications are truthfully drawn
from his own experience. He had had to do with every one of them. He
could have given a personal name to most of them, and we could do the
same to many. We are not unacquainted with Mr Byends of the town of Fair
Speech, who "always has the luck to jump in his judgment with the way of
the times, and to get thereby," who is zealous for Religion "when he goes
in his silver slippers," and "loves to walk with him in the streets when
the sun shines and the people applaud him." All his kindred and
surroundings are only too familiar to us--his wife, that very virtuous
woman my Lady Feigning's daughter, my Lord Fair-speech, my Lord
Time-server, Mr. Facingbothways, Mr. Anything, and the Parson of the
Parish, his mother's own brother by the father's side, Mr. Twotongues.
Nor is his schoolmaster, one Mr. Gripeman, of the market town of
Lovegain, in the county of Coveting, a stranger to us. Obstinate, with
his dogged determination and stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his
shallow impressionableness, are among our acquaintances. We have, before
now, come across "the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of Conceit," and
have made acquaintance with Mercy's would-be suitor, Mr. Brisk, "a man of
some breeding and that pretended to religion, but who stuck very close to
the world." The man Temporary who lived in a town two miles off from
Honesty, and next door to Mr. Turnback; Formalist and Hypocrisy, who were