While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes
Through brain and spirit darts delicious
fire;

The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem,
With their corroded figures,rayless glance,
And death-like struggle of decaying age,
Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp
Set forth to satirize the human kind!-
How fine a prospect for demoniac view!
'Creatures whose souls out balance worlds
awake!'

Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry."

Here we conclude. If our remarks

comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it." And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told us that "the prince of darkness is a gentleman;" but we had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery, is that he is something of a twaddle we are sorry for it. But, at whatever and far too liberal of his good advice. cost of pain to individuals, literature That happy change in his character must be purified from this taint. And, which Origen anticipated, and of which to show that we are not actuated by Tillotson did not despair, seems to be any feeling of personal enmity towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated in a moment. It is not as any book shall, by means of puffing, strange, therefore, that so old an of- reach a second edition, our intention is fender should now and then relapse to do unto the writer of it as we have for a short time into wrong disposi-done unto Mr. Robert Montgomery. tions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of "Gabriel." The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel.

JOHN BUNYAN. (DECEMBER, 1830.)

The Pilgrim's Progress, with a Life of John
Bunyan. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq.
LL. D. Poet Laureate. Illustrated with
Engravings. 8vo. London: 1830.

THIS is an eminently beautiful and
splendid edition of a book which well
deserves all that the printer and the
engraver can do for it. The Life of
Bunyan is, of course, not a perform-
ance which can add much to the lite-
rary reputation of such a writer as
Mr. Southey. But it is written in ex-
cellent English, and, for the most part,
in an excellent spirit. Mr. Southey

We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and mora-propounds, we need not say, many lises thereon as follows:

A

robes

Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed
Around me: beauties in their cloud-like
Shine forth,-a scenic paradise, it glares
Intoxication through the reeling sense
Of flush'd enjoyment. In the motley host
Three prime gradations may be rank'd:
the first,

To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare's
mind,

And win a flash of his Promethean
thought,-

To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve
A round of passionate onnipotence,
Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe,
Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,
On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze,

opinions from which we altogether dissent; and his attempts to excuse the odious persecution to which Bunyan was subjected have sometimes moved our indignation. But we will avoid this topic. We are at present much more inclined to join in paying homage to the genius of a great man than to engage in a controversy concerning church-government and toleration.

We must not pass without notice the engravings with which this volume is decorated. Some of Mr. Heath's woodcuts are admirably designed and exccuted. Mr. Martin's illustrations do

not please us quite so well. His Valley | immeasurable spaces, his innumerable of the Shadow of Death is not that multitudes, his gorgeous prodigies of Valley of the Shadow of Death which architecture and landscape, almost as Bunyan imagined. At all events, it is unseasonably as Varelst introduced his not that dark and horrible glen which flower-pots and nosegays. If Mr. has from childhood been in our mind's Martin were to paint Lear in the storm, eye. The valley is a cavern: the quag- we suspect that the blazing sky, the mire is a lake: the straight path runs sheets of rain, the swollen torrents, zigzag and Christian appears like a and the tossing forest, would draw speck in the darkness of the immense away all attention from the agonies of vault. We miss, too, those hideous the insulted king and father. If he forms which make so striking a part were to paint the death of Lear, the of the description of Bunyan, and old man, asking the by-standers to which Salvator Rosa would have loved undo his button, would be thrown into to draw. It is with unfeigned diffidence the shade by a vast blaze of pavilions, that we pronounce judgment on any standards, armour, and heralds' coats. question relating to the art of paint- Mr. Martin would illustrate the Oring. But it appears to us that Mr. lando Furioso well, the Orlando InnaMartin has not of late been fortunate morato still better, the Arabian Nights in his choice of subjects. He should best of all. Fairy palaces and gardens, never have attempted to illustrate the porticoes of agate, and groves flowering Paradise Lost. There can be no two with emeralds and rubies, inhabited by manners more directly opposed to each people for whom nobody cares, these other than the manner of his painting are his proper domain. He would and the manner of Milton's poetry. succeed admirably in the enchanted Those things which are mere acces- ground of Alcina, or the mansion of sories in the descriptions become the Aladdin. But he should avoid Milton principal objects in the pictures; and and Bunyan. those figures which are most prominent in the descriptions can be detected in the pictures only by a very close scrutiny. Mr. Martin has succeeded perfectly in representing the pillars and candelabras of Pandamonium. But he has forgotten that Milton's Pandemonium is merely the background to Satan. In the picture, the Archangel is scarcely visible amidst the endless colonnades of his infernal palace. Milton's Paradise, again, is merely the background to his Adam and Eve. But in Mr. Martin's picture the landscape is every thing. Adam, Eve, and Raphael attract much less notice than the lake and the mountains, the gigantic flowers, and the giraffes which feed upon them. We read that James the Second sat to Varelst, the great flower-painter. When the performance was finished, his Majesty appeared in the midst of a bower of sun-flowers and tulips, which completely drew away all attention from the central figure. All who looked at the portrait took it for a flower-piece. Mr. Martin we think, introduces his

The characteristic peculiarity of the Pilgrim's Progress is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many thousands with tears. There are some good allegories in Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit by Addison. In these performances there is, perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as in the Pilgrim's Progress. But the pleasure which is produced by the Vision of Mirza, the Vision of Theodore, the genealogy of Wit, or the contest between Rest and Labour, is exactly similar to the pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's odes or from a canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure which belongs wholly to the understanding, and in which the feelings have no part whatever. Nay, even Spenser himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory interesting. It was in vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House of Pride and the

House of Temperance. One unpar- the iron cage, the palace, at the doors donable fault, the fault of tediousness, of which armed men kept guard, and pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. on the battlements of which walked We become sick of cardinal virtues persons clothed all in gold, the cross and deadly sins, and long for the and the sepulchre, the steep hill and society of plain men and women. Of the pleasant arbour, the stately front the persons who read the first canto, of the House Beautiful by the wayside, not one in ten reaches the end of the the chained lions crouching in the first book, and not one in a hundred porch, the low green valley of Huperseveres to the end of the poem. miliation, rich with grass and covered Very few and very weary are those with flocks, all are as well known to who are in at the death of the Blatant us as the sights of our own street. Beast. If the last six books, which are Then we come to the narrow place said to have been destroyed in Ireland, where Apollyon strode right across the had been preserved, we doubt whether whole breadth of the way, to stop the any heart less stout than that of a com- journey of Christian, and where aftermentator would have held out to the wards the pillar was set up to testify end. how bravely the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of the precipices on both sides falls blacker and blacker. The clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard through the darkness. The way, hardly discernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes to terrify the adventurer. Thence he goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark valley he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones of those whom they had slain.

It is not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the Giant-killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turn-stile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket gate, and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction, the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it, the Interpreter's house and all its fair shows, the prisoner in

Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, till at length the towers of a distant city appear before the traveller; and soon he is in the midst of the innumerable multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and British Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth.

Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant river which is bordered on both sides by fruit-trees. On the left branches off the path leading to the

horrible castle, the court-yard of which | geous Pantheon, full of beautiful, mais paved with the skulls of pilgrims ;jestic, and life-like forms. He turned and right onward are the sheepfolds atheism itself into a mythology, rich and orchards of the Delectable Mountains.

with visions as glorious as the gods
that live in the marble of Phidias, or
the virgin saints that smile on us from
the canvass of Murillo.
The Spirit
of Beauty, the Principle of Good, the
Principle of Evil, when he treated of
them, ceased to be abstractions. They
took shape and colour. They were no
longer mere words; but "intelligible
forms;" "fair humanities;" objects of
love, of adoration, or of fear. As there
can be no stronger sign of a mind des-
titute of the poetical faculty than that
tendency which was so common among
the writers of the French school to turn
images into abstractions, Venus, for
example, into Love, Minerva into Wis-
dom, Mars into War, and Bacchus into
Festivity, so there can be no stronger
sign of a mind truly poetical than a
disposition to reverse this abstracting
process, and to make individuals out of
generalities. Some of the metaphysical
and ethical theories of Shelley were
certainly most absurd and pernicious.
But we doubt whether any modern poet
has possessed in an equal degree some
of the highest qualities of the great an-
cient masters. The words bard and
inspiration, which seem so cold and
affected when applied to other modern
writers, have a perfect propriety when
applied to him. He was not an author,
but a bard. His poetry seems not to
have been an art, but an inspiration.
Had he lived to the full age of man,
he might not improbably have given to
the world some great work of the very
highest rank in design and execution.
But, alas!

A
ὁ Δάφνις ἔβα ρόον ἔκλυσε δίνα
τὸν Μώσαις φίλον ἄνδρα, τὸν οὐ Νύμφαισιν
ἀπεχθῆ.

From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green arbour. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, on the other side of that black and cold river over which there is no bridge. All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, giants, and hobgoblins, illfavoured ones, and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money, the black man in the bright vesture, Mr. Worldly Wiseman and my Lord Hategood, Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous, all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinbargh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. We have not a jealous man, but jealousy; not a traitor, but perfidy; not a patriot, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human beings But we must return to Bunyan. in most plays. In this respect the The Pilgrim's Progress undoubtedly genius of Bunyan bore a great resem- is not a perfect allegory. The types blance to that of a man who had very are often inconsistent with each other; little else in common with him, Percy and sometimes the allegorical disguise Bysshe Shelley. The strong imagina- is altogether thrown off. The river, tion of Shelley made him an idolater in for example, is emblematic of death; his own despite. Out of the most in- and we are told that every human definite terms of a hard, cold, dark, being must pass through the river. metaphysical system, he made a gor-But Faithful does not pass through it.

ill spare. We feel that the story owes much of its charm to these occasional glimpses of solemn and affecting subjects, which will not be hidden, which force themselves through the veil, and appear before us in their native aspect. The effect is not unlike that which is said to have been produced on the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen flaming through his mask, and giving life and expression to what would else have been an in

He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's birthright and about his own convictions of sin as Bunyan might have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels at the House Beautiful catechize Christiana's boys, as any good ladies might catechize any boys at a Sunday School. But we do not believe that any man, whatever might be his genius, and whatever his good luck, could long continue a figurative his-animate and uninteresting disguise. tory without falling into many incon- It is very amusing and very instrucsistencies. We are sure that incon- tive to compare the Pilgrim's Progress sistencies, scarcely less gross than the with the Grace Abounding. The latter worst into which Bunyan has fallen, work is indeed one of the most remarkmay be found in the shortest and able pieces of autobiography in the most elaborate allegories of the Spec- world. It is a full and open confestator and the Rambler. The Tale of sion of the fancies which passed through a Tub and the History of John Bull the mind of an illiterate man, whose swarm with similar errors, if the name affections were warm, whose nerves of error can be properly applied to were irritable, whose imagination was that which is unavoidable. It is not ungovernable, and who was under the easy to make a simile go on all fours. influence of the strongest religious exBut we believe that no human ingenu- citement. In whatever age Bunyan ity could produce such a centipede as had lived, the history of his feelings a long allegory in which the corres- would, in all probability, have been pondence between the outward sign very curious. But the time in which and the thing signified should be ex- his lot was cast was the time of a great actly preserved. Certainly no writer, stirring of the human mind. A treancient or modern, has yet achieved mendous burst of public feeling, prothe adventure. The best thing, on the duced by the tyranny of the hierarchy, whole, that an allegorist can do, is to menaced the old ecclesiastical institupresent to his readers a succession of tions with destruction. To the gloomy analogies, each of which may separately regularity of one intolerant Church had be striking and happy, without looking succeeded the license of innumerable very nicely to see whether they har-sects, drunk with the sweet and heady monize with each other. This Bunyan must of their new liberty. Fanaticism, has done; and, though a minute scru- engendered by persecution, and destiny may detect inconsistencies in tined to engender persecution in turn, every page of his tale, the general spread rapidly through society. Even eflect which the tale produces on all the strongest and most commanding persons, learned and unlearned, proves minds were not proof against this that he has done well. The pas- strange taint. Any time might have sages which it is most difficult to de- produced George Fox and James Nayten are those in which he altogether lor. But to one time alone belong drops the allegory, and puts into the the frantic delusions of such a statesouth of his pilgrims religious ejacula-man as Vane, and the hysterical tears Lions and disquisitions better suited to of such a soldier as Cromwell. his own pulpit at Bedford or Reading The history of Bunyan is the history than to the Enchanted Ground or to of a most excitable mind in an age of exthe Interpreter's Garden. Yet even citement. By most of his biographers these passages, though we will not un- he has been treated with gross injusdertake to defend them against the ob- tice. They have understood in a popujections of critics, we feel that we could | lar sense all those strong terms of self