all bustle and splendour, like London on the Lord Mayor's Day,
and the narrow path, straight as a rule could make it, running on
up hill and down hill, through city and through wilderness, to
the Black River and the Shining Gate. He had found out, as most
people would have said, by accident, as he would doubtless have
said, by the guidance of Providence, where his powers lay. He
had no suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a masterpiece.
He could not guess what place his allegory would occupy in
English literature; for of English literature he knew nothing.
Those who suppose him to have studied the Fairy Queen might
easily be confuted, if this were the proper place for a detailed
examination of the passages in which the two allegories have been
thought to resemble each other. The only work of fiction, in all
probability, with which he could compare his Pilgrim, was his old
favourite, the legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would have
thought it a sin to borrow any time from the serious business of
his life, from his expositions, his controversies, and his lace
tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with what he considered
merely as a trifle. It was only, he assures us, at spare moments
that he returned to the House Beautiful, the Delectable
Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground. He had no assistance.
Nobody but himself saw a line, till the whole was complete. He
then consulted his pious friends. Some were pleased. Others
were much scandalised. It was a vain story, a mere romance,
about giants, and lions, and goblins, and warriors, sometimes
fighting with monsters and sometimes regaled by fair ladies in
stately palaces. The loose atheistical wits at Will's might
write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the court:
but did it become a minister of the gospel to copy the evil
fashions of the world? There had been a time when the cant of