"Born and bred," writes Kingsley, "in the monotonous Midland, he had no
natural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country
houses, he saw about him." The Slough of Despond, with its treacherous
quagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a wayfarer might
heedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half drowned in mire;
Byepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile and footpath on the
other side of the fence; the pleasant river fringed with meadows, green
all the year long and overshadowed with trees; the thicket all overgrown
with briars and thorns, where one tumbled over a bush, another stuck fast
in the dirt, some lost their shoes in the mire, and others were fastened
from behind with the brambles; the high wall by the roadside over which
the fruit trees shot their boughs and tempted the boys with their unripe
plums; the arbour with its settle tempting the footsore traveller to
drowsiness; the refreshing spring at the bottom of Hill Difficulty; all
are evidently drawn from his own experience. Bunyan, in his long tramps,
had seen them all. He had known what it was to be in danger of falling
into a pit and being dashed to pieces with Vain Confidence, of being
drowned in the flooded meadows with Christian and Hopeful; of sinking in
deep water when swimming over a river, going down and rising up half
dead, and needing all his companion's strength and skill to keep his head
above the stream. Vanity Fair is evidently drawn from the life. The
great yearly fair of Stourbridge, close to Cambridge, which Bunyan had
probably often visited in his tinker days, with its streets of booths
filled with "wares of all kinds from all countries," its "shows,
jugglings, cheats games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that
of every kind," its "great one of the fair," its court of justice and
power of judgment, furnished him with the materials for his picture.
Scenes like these he draws with sharp defined outlines. When he had to
describe what he only knew by hearsay, his pictures are shadowy and cold.
Never having been very far from home, he had had no experience of the