Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic prime
and the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywise
dramatic evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for
any subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons
individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety of
traits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being,
and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new man
or woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to go
round among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital,
though less real. Bunyan's characters being traits, the other's are
moods. Yet both groups seem to have been cast in a large, elemental
mould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than either Milton or
Bunyan in keeping the creatures of his spirit separate, while
maintaining amongst them the bond of a common nature; but besides this
bond they are joined by another, by something which continually brings
us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between
widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters
the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These
characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those
of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and
elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied
moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and
made to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, as
we shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius,
Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled
strength,--who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fill
them, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minute
intricacies of the theme,--there is still a sort of underground
connection between all three. It is curious to note, further, the
relation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the