Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Bunyan, John, 1628-1688; Puritans -- England -- Clergy -- Biography
Lingerafterlust, and Sleepyhead, we know them all. "The young woman
whose name was Dull" taxes our patience every day. Where is the town
which does not contain Mrs. Timorous and her coterie of gossips, Mrs.
Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Lightmind, and Mrs. Knownothing, "all
as merry as the maids," with that pretty fellow Mr. Lechery at the house
of Madam Wanton, that "admirably well-bred gentlewoman"? Where shall we
find more lifelike portraits than those of Madam Bubble, a "tall, comely
dame, somewhat of a swarthy complexion, speaking very smoothly with a
smile at the end of each sentence, wearing a great purse by her side,
with her hand often in it, fingering her money as if that was her chief
delight;" of poor Feeblemind of the town of Uncertain, with his "whitely
look, the cast in his eye, and his trembling speech;" of Littlefaith, as
"white as a clout," neither able to fight nor fly when the thieves from
Dead Man's Lane were on him; of Ready-to-halt, at first coming along on
his crutches, and then when Giant Despair had been slain and Doubting
Castle demolished, taking Despondency's daughter Much-afraid by the hand
and dancing with her 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 commanded, for she answered the musick handsomely." In
Bunyan's pictures there is never a superfluous detail. Every stroke
tells, and helps to the completeness of the portraiture.
The same reality characterizes the descriptive part of "The Pilgrim's
Progress." As his characters are such as he must meet with every day in
his native town, so also the scenery and surroundings of his allegory are
part of his own everyday life, and reproduce what he had been brought up
amidst in his native county, or had noticed in his tinker's wanderings.
"Born and bred," writes Kingsley, "in the monotonous Midland, he had no
natural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country
houses, he saw about him." The Slough of Despond, with its treacherous
quagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a wayfarer might
heedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half drowned in mire;
Byepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile and footpath on the
other side of the fence; the pleasant river fringed with meadows, green
all the year long and overshadowed with trees; the thicket all overgrown
with briars and thorns, where one tumbled over a bush, another stuck fast
in the dirt, some lost their shoes in the mire, and others were fastened
from behind with the brambles; the high wall by the roadside over which
the fruit trees shot their boughs and tempted the boys with their unripe
plums; the arbour with its settle tempting the footsore traveller to
drowsiness; the refreshing spring at the bottom of Hill Difficulty; all
are evidently drawn from his own experience. Bunyan, in his long tramps,
had seen them all. He had known what it was to be in danger of falling
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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