He was the son of a tinker, and a tinker himself, and saw his visions as clearly as he saw his tin pans. His book is never opalescent with the shifting colours of a vague mysticism. It is painted in tints as sharp and bright and simple as Anglo-Saxon words. Bunyan had to throw himself into no trance in order to watch the pilgrim's arrival at the New Jerusalem. The Celestial City was as real to him as London, and there seemed to him no need to describe it in a whisper. His eyes were as childlike as those of the early painters, who clothed the builders of the Tower of Babel in fifteenth-century Italian costume, put a little bonnet on the head and a flying cloak about the shoulders of Tobias, and set soft leather boots on the feet of the angel. The whole of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ is contemporary with Mr. Pepys. 'Now Christiana, if need was, could play upon the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute; so, since they were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson, and Ready-to-halt would dance. So he took Despondency's daughter, named Much-afraid, by the hand, and to dancing they went in the road. True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand; but, I promise you, he footed it well. Also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the music handsomely.' It might be Mr. Pepys himself describing the frolic of some friends. And yet it was the most natural, righteous thing in the world, since Great Heart had killed Giant Despair, and Despondency and Much-afraid had just been freed from the dungeons of Doubting Castle. [The Fear of Life.] It is characteristic of the English spirit that the greatest national classic of piety should be written by a man whose relish for life was in no way blunted by his thoughts of immortality. Bunyan had a fear of life no less real than his fear of God, and loved both God and life the better for fearing them. Men set capital letters to the Fear of God, and there is a Fear of Life no less different from cowardice. Bunyan, a brave man, imprisoned again and again for his beliefs, and more than once in imminent danger of hanging, shows in a passage of his _Grace Abounding_ this Fear of Life in a very glare of light. Bunyan had loved bell-ringing, and, after he had come to consider it not the occupation of a man whose profession was so perilous and serious as a Christian's, he could not help going to the belfry to watch those whose scruples still allowed them his favourite pastime.