inners in one word, He saith, Let them alone! Let
them, alone--that is, disturb them not. Let them go on without
control: Let the devil enjoy them peaceably. Let him carry them out of
the world unconverted quietly. This is the sorest of judgments. I do
not say that all wicked men that are molested at their death with a
sense of sin and fear of hell do therefore go to heaven; for some are
made to see and are left to despair. But I say there is no surer sign
of a man's damnation than to die quietly after a sinful life, than to
sin and die with a heart that cannot repent. The opinion, therefore,
of the common people of this kind of death is frivolous and vain.'

So ends this very remarkable story. It is extremely interesting,
merely as a picture of vulgar English life in a provincial town such
as Bedford was when Bunyan lived there. The drawing is so good, the
details so minute, the conception so unexaggerated, that we are
disposed to believe that we must have a real history before us. But
such a supposition is only a compliment to the skill of the composer.
Bunyan's inventive faculty was a spring that never ran dry. He had a
manner, as I said, like De Foe's, of creating the illusion that we are
reading realities, by little touches such as 'I do not know,' 'He did
not tell me this,' or the needless introduction of particulars
irrelevant to the general plot such as we always stumble on in life,
and writers of fiction usually omit. Bunyan was never prosecuted for
libel by 'Badman's' relations, and the character is the corresponding
contrast to Christian in the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the pilgrim's
journey being in the opposite direction to the other place. Throughout
we are on the solid earth, amidst real experiences. No demand is made
on our credulity by Providential interpositions, except in the
intercalated anecdotes which do not touch the story itself. The wicked
man's career is not brought to the abrupt or sensational issues so
much in favour with ordinary didactic tale-writers. Such issues are
the exception, not the rule, and the edifying story loses its effect
when the reader turns from it to actual life, and perceives that the
majority are not punished in any such way. Bunyan conceals nothing,
assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp
and shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the
rewards which such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful, he
is powerful; he enjoys al