clouded by the fanaticism which a long persecution had engendered. A
phrase in our description of the London housewife unconsciously tells
the story: "Loving all that were godly, much misliking the wicked and
profane." The godly were the sharers of her own faith, the "wicked and
profane" were all those without its pale. Here lay the weakness of
Puritanism: its narrowness, its lack of sympathy with the world at
large, its indifference to the sufferings of those who had no place in
the ranks of the elect.

Among such men we must look in vain for literary productions having the
aim of entertainment. The literature of the time was chiefly polemical,
and commentaries crowded on the book-shelves the volumes of classical
and Italian writers. To Puritanism, fiction was the invention of the
Evil One, but still to Puritanism we owe, what is now, and seems
destined ever to remain, the finest allegory in the English language.


[Footnote 82: See Green's "Short History of the English People," chap.
viii, sec. 1.]

[Footnote 83: John Wallington's description of his mother. Green's
"Short History of the English People," p. 451.]



II.

That John Bunyan, a poor, illiterate tinker, was able to take the first
place among writers of allegory, and to accomplish the extraordinary
intellectual feat of producing a work which charmed alike the ignorant,