In name and fame by the worth of another,
Like some made rich by robbing of their brother;
Or that so fond I am of being Sire,
I'll father bastards; or if need require,
I'll tell a lye in print, to get applause.
I scorn it; John such dirt-heap never was
Since God converted him. Let this suffice
To shew why I my Pilgrim patronize.

It came from mine own heart, so to my head,
And thence into my fingers trickled:
Then to my pen, from whence immediately
On paper I did dribble it daintily.'--p. lxxxix."

Mr. Southey has carefully examined this charge of supposed imitation,
in which so much rests upon the very simplicity of the conception of
the story, and has successfully shown that the tinker of Elstow could
not have profited by one or two allegories in the French and Flemish
languages--works which he could have had hardly a chance to meet with;
which, if thrown in his way, he could not have read; and, finally,
which, if he had read them, could scarcely have supplied him with a
single hint. Mr. Southey, however, has not mentioned a work in
English, of Bunyan's own time, and from which, certainly, the general
notion of his allegory might have been taken. The work we allude to is
now before us, entitled, 'The Parable of the Pilgrim, written to a
friend by Symon Patrick, D.D., Dean of Peterborough;' the same learned
person, well known by his theological writings, and successively
Bishop of Chichester and Ely. This worthy man's inscription is dated
the 14th of December, 1672; and Mr. Southey's widest conjecture will
hardly allow an earlier date for Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 1672