uld compare his _Pilgrim_ was his old favourite, the legend of
Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would have thought it a sin to borrow any time
from the serious business of his life, from his expositions, his
controversies and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with
what he considered merely as a trifle. It was only, he assures us, at spare
moments that he returned to the House Beautiful, the Delectable Mountains
and the Enchanted Ground. He had no assistance. Nobody but himself saw a
line till the whole was complete. He then consulted his pious friends. Some
were pleased. Others were much scandalized. It was a vain story, a mere
romance, about giants, and lions, and goblins, and warriors, sometimes
fighting with monsters, and sometimes regaled by fair ladies in stately
palaces. The loose atheistical wits at Will's might write such stuff to
divert the painted Jezebels of the court; but did it become a minister of
the gospel to copy the evil fashions of the world? There had been a time
when the cant of such fools would have made Bunyan miserable. But that time
was past; and his mind was now in a firm and healthy state. He saw that in
employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was only
following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself;
and he determined to print.

The _Pilgrim's Progress_ was published in February 1678. Soon the
irresistible charm of a book which gratified the imagination of the reader
with all the action and scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his
ingenuity by setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies,
which interested his feelings for human beings, frail like himself, and
struggling with temptations from within and from without, which every
moment drew a smile from him by some stroke of quaint yet simple
pleasantry, and nevertheless left on his mind a sentiment of reverence for
God and of sympathy for man, began to produce its effect. In puritanical
circles, from which plays and novels were strictly excluded, that effect
was such as no work of genius, though it were superior to the _Iliad_, to
_Don Quixote_ or to _Othello_, can ever produce on a mind accustomed to
indulge in literary luxury. A second edition came out in the autumn with
additions; and the demand became immense. The eighth edition, which
contains the last improvements made by the author, was published in 1682,
the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of the eng