ust himself comprehend it first
to its inmost fibre. He cannot comprehend his own Creator. Admire as
we may 'Paradise Lost;' try as we may to admire 'Paradise Regained;'
acknowledge as we must the splendour of the imagery and the stately
march of the verse; there comes upon us irresistibly a sense of the
unfitness of the subject for Milton's treatment of it. If the story
which he tells us is true, it is too momentous to be played with in
poetry. We prefer to hear it in plain prose, with a minimum of
ornament and the utmost possible precision of statement. Milton
himself had not arrived at thinking it to be a legend, a picture like
a Greek Mythology. His poem falls between two modes of treatment and
two conceptions of truth; we wonder, we recite, we applaud, but
something comes in between our minds and a full enjoyment, and it will
not satisfy us better as time goes on.

The same objection applies to 'The Holy War' of Bunyan. It is as I
said, a people's version of the same series of subjects--the creation
of man, the fall of man, his redemption, his ingratitude, his lapse,
and again his restoration. The chief figures are the same, the action
is the same, though more varied and complicated, and the general
effect is unsatisfactory from the same cause. Prose is less ambitious
than poetry. There is an absence of attempts at grand effects. There
is no effort after sublimity, and there is consequently a lighter
sense of incongruity in the failure to reach it. On the other hand,
there is the greater fulness of detail so characteristic of Bunyan's
manner; and fulness of detail on a theme so far beyond our
understanding is as dangerous as vague grandiloquence. In 'The
Pilgrim's Progress' we are among genuine human beings. The reader
knows the road too well which Christian follows. He has struggled
with him in the Slough of Despond. He has shuddered with him in the
Valley of the Shadow of Death. He has groaned with him in the dungeons
of Doubting Castle. He has encountered on his journey the same
fellow-travellers. Who does not know Mr. Pliable, Mr. Obstinate, Mr.
Facing-both-ways, Mr. Feeble Mind, and all the rest? They are
representative realities, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. 'If
we prick them they bleed, if we tickle them they laugh,' or they make
us laugh. 'They are warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer'
as we are. The human actors in 'The Holy War' are parts of
men--special virtues, special vices: all