as his history shows, sometimes could not distinguish ideal
impressions from actual ones, occasioned this. He saw the
things of which he was writing as distinctly with his mind's
eye as if they were indeed passing before him in a dream. And
the reader perhaps sees them more satisfactorily to himself,
because the outline only of the picture is presented to him;
and the author having made no attempt to fill up the details,
every reader supplies them according to the measure and scope
of his own intellectual and imaginative powers."

Mr. Southey, observing with what general accuracy this apostle of the
people writes the English language, notwithstanding all the
disadvantages under which his youth must have been passed, pauses to
notice one gross and repeated error. 'The vulgarism alluded to,' says
the laureate, 'consists in the almost uniform use of _a_ for
_have_--never marked as a contraction, e.g. might _a_ made me take
heed--like to _a_ been smothered.' Under favour, however, this is a
sin against orthography rather than grammar: the tinker of Elstow only
spelt according to the pronunciation of the verb _to have_, then
common in his class; and the same form appears a hundred times in
Shakspeare. We must not here omit to mention the skill with which Mr.
Southey has restored much of Bunyan's masculine and idiomatic English,
which had been gradually dropped out of successive impressions by
careless, or unfaithful, or what is as bad, conceited correctors of
the press.

The speedy popularity of the Pilgrim's Progress had the natural effect
of inducing Bunyan again to indulge the vein of allegory in which his
warm imagination and clear and forcible expression had procured him
such success. Under this impression, he produced the second part of