egories in fact as well as in
name, which all Bunyan's genius can only occasionally substantiate
into persons. The plot of 'The Pilgrim's Progress' is simple. 'The
Holy War' is prolonged through endless vicissitudes, with a doubtful
issue after all, and the incomprehensibility of the Being who allows
Satan to defy him so long and so successfully is unpleasantly and
harshly brought home to us. True it is so in life. Evil remains after
all that has been done for us. But life is confessedly a mystery. 'The
Holy War' professes to interpret the mystery, and only restates the
problem in a more elaborate form. Man Friday on reading it would have
asked even more emphatically, 'Why God not kill the Devil?' and
Robinson Crusoe would have found no assistance in answering him. For
these reasons, I cannot agree with Macaulay in thinking that if there
had been no 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'The Holy War' would have been the
first of religious allegories. We may admire the workmanship, but the
same undefined sense of unreality which pursues us through Milton's
epic would have interfered equally with the acceptance of this. The
question to us is if the facts are true. If true they require no
allegories to touch either our hearts or our intellects.

'The Holy War' would have entitled Bunyan to a place among the masters
of English literature. It would never have made his name a household
word in every English-speaking family on the globe.

The story which I shall try to tell in an abridged form is introduced
by a short prefatory poem. Works of fancy, Bunyan tells us, are of
many sorts, according to the author's humour. For himself he says to
his reader:

I have something else to do
Than write vain stories thus to trouble you.
What here I say some men do know too well;
They can with tears and joy the story tell.
The town of Mansoul is well known to many,
Nor are her troubles doubted of by any
That are acquainted with those histories
That Mansoul and her wars anatomize.

Then lend thine ears to what I do relate
Touching the town of Mansoul and her state,
How she was lost, took captive, made a slave,
And how against him set that should her save,
Yea, how by hostile ways she did oppose
Her Lord and with his enemy did close,
For they are true; he that will them deny
Must needs the best of records vilify.

For my part, I myself was in the town
Both when '