the place or setting of the great tragi-comedy of salvation. When he
relates how he gave up swearing as a result of a reproof from a "loose and
ungodly" woman, he begins the story: "One day, as I was standing at a
neighbour's shop-window, and there cursing and swearing after my wonted
manner, there sat within the woman of the house, who heard me." This
passion for locality was always at his elbow. A few pages further on in
_Grace Abounding_, when he tells us how he abandoned not only swearing but
the deeper-rooted sins of bell-ringing and dancing, and nevertheless
remained self-righteous and "ignorant of Jesus Christ," he introduces the
next episode in the story of his conversion with the sentence: "But upon a
day the good providence of God called me to Bedford to work at my calling,
and in one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or
four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, talking about the things of
God." That seems to me to be one of the most beautiful sentences in
English literature. Its beauty is largely due to the hungry eyes with
which Bunyan looked at the present world during his progress to the next.
If he wrote the greatest allegory in English literature, it is because he
was able to give his narrative the reality of a travel-book instead of the
insubstantial quality of a dream. He leaves the reader with the feeling
that he is moving among real places and real people. As for the people,
Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue--still more, an abstract vice--the
skin and bones of a man. A recent critic has said disparagingly that
Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr. Facing-both-ways. As a matter of fact,
Bunyan's secret is the direct opposite of this. His great and singular
gift was the power to create an atmosphere in which a character with a
name like Mr. Facing-both-ways is accepted on the same plane of reality as
Hamlet.

If Bunyan was a realist, however, as regards place and character, his
conception of life was none the less romantic. Life to him was a story of