he had had no experience of the
higher types of beauty and grandeur in nature, and his pen moves in
fetters when he attempts to describe them. When his pilgrims come to the
Hill Difficulty and the Delectable Mountains, the difference is at once
seen. All his nobler imagery is drawn from Scripture. As Hallam has
remarked, "There is scarcely a circumstance or metaphor in the Old
Testament which does not find a place bodily and literally in 'The
Pilgrim's Progress,' and this has made his imagination appear more
creative than it really is."

It would but weary the reader to follow the details of a narrative which
is so universally known. Who needs to be told that in the pilgrimage
here described is represented in allegorical dress the course of a human
soul convinced of sin, struggling onwards to salvation through the trials
and temptations that beset its path to its eternal home? The book is so
completely wrought into the mind and memory, that most of us can at once
recall the incidents which chequer the pilgrim's way, and realize their
meaning; the Slough of Despond, in which the man convinced of his guilt
and fleeing from the wrath to come, in his agonizing self-consciousness
is in danger of being swallowed up in despair; the Wicket Gate, by which
he enters on the strait and narrow way of holiness; the Interpreter's
House, with his visions and acted parables; the Wayside Cross, at the
sight of which the burden of guilt falls from the pilgrim's back, and he
is clothed with change of raiment; the Hill Difficulty, which stands
right in his way, and which he must surmount, not circumvent; the lions
which he has to pass, not knowing that they are chained; the Palace
Beautiful, where he is admitted to the communion of the faithful, and
sits down to meat with them; the Valley of Humiliation, the scene of his
desperate but victorious encounter with Apollyon; the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, with its evil sights and doleful sounds, where one of
the wicked ones whispers into his ear thoughts of blasphemy which he
cannot distinguish from the suggestions of his own mind; the cave at the
valley's mouth, in which, Giant Pagan having been dead this many a day,
his brother, Giant Pope, now sits alone, grinning at pilgrims as they
pass by, and biting his nails because he cannot get at them; Vanity Fair,
the picture of the world, as St. John describes it, hating the light that
puts to shame its own self-chosen darkness, and putting