He had no thought of producing a work of literary excellence; but on the other hand he had not, in writing this book, his customary purpose of spiritual edification. Indeed, he put his multiplying thoughts and fancies aside, lest they should interfere with a more _serious_ and _important_ book which he had in hand! "I only thought to make I knew not what: nor did I undertake Thereby to please my neighbor; no, not I: I did it mine own self to gratify. . . . . . . . Thus I set pen to paper with delight, And quickly had my thoughts in black and white." The words are exceedingly suggestive. In writing so aimlessly--"I knew not what"--to gratify himself by permitting the allegory into which he had suddenly fallen to take possession of him and carry him whithersoever it would, while he wrote out with delight his teeming fancies, was not Bunyan for the first time exercising his genius in a freedom from all theological and other restraint, and so in a surpassing range and power? The dreamer and poet supplanted the preacher and teacher. He yielded to the simple impulse of his genius, gave his imagination full sweep, and so, as never before or elsewhere, soared and sang in what seemed to many of his Puritan friends a questionable freedom and profane inspiration. And yet his song, or story, was not a creation of mere fancy,-- "It came from my own heart, so to my head, And thence into my fingers tricklèd;"-- and therefore, we add, it finds its way to the heart of mankind.