string! And is it not clear that both poets exulted so in the
_beauty_ born among dark, earthy depths of fear, that they would
have rejected any and every horror which failed to contribute something
to the beautiful? Indeed, it may easily be that such high spirits accept
awful traditions and cruel theologies, merely because they possess a
transmuting touch which gives these things a secret and relative value
not intrinsically theirs; because they find here something to satisfy an
inward demand for immense expansions of thought, a desire for all sorts
of proportioned and balanced extremes. This is no superficial
suggestion, though it may seem so. But in such cases it is not the
positive horror and its direct effect which attract the poet: a deeper
symbolism and an effect both aesthetic and moral recommend the element
to him. With Milton, however, there follows a curious result. He
produces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his ludicrous Limbo
of Vanity with a gravity and earnestness as convincing as those which
urge home any part of his theme; yet we are aware that he is only making
poetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his sincerity
throughout creeps in, as we read. How much, we ask, is allegory in the
poet's own estimation, and how much real belief? Now in Bunyan there is
nothing of this doubt. Though the author declares his narrative to be
the relation of a dream, the figment becomes absolute fact to us; and
the homely realism of Giant Despair gives him a firmer hold upon me as
an actual existence, than all the splendid characterization of Milton's
Beelzebub can gain. Even Apollyon is more real. Milton assumes the
historic air of the epic poet, Bunyan admits that he is giving an
allegory; yet of the two the humble recorder of Christian's progress
seems the more worthy of credit. Something of this effect is doubtless
due to art: the "Pilgrim's Progress" is more adequately couched in a
single and consistent strain than the "Paradise Lost." Milton, by
implying veracity and then vaporing off into allegory, challenges