Dr. Johnson, all whose studies were
desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an
exception in favor of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said,
was one of the two or three which he wished longer. In every nursery
the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favorite than Jack the
Giant-killer. Every reader knows the strait 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.
Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John
Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. We live in better
times; and we are not afraid to say, that though there were many
clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth
century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those
minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as
a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the
English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common
people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical
terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant.
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