ccepted the precious boon of freedom will not appear to require any
apology.

Before he left his prison he had begun the book which has made his name
immortal. The history of that book is remarkable. The author was, as he
tells us, writing a treatise, in which he had occasion to speak of the
stages of the Christian progress. He compared that progress, as many
others had compared it, to a pilgrimage. Soon his quick wit discovered
innumerable points of similarity which had escaped his predecessors.
Images came crowding on his mind faster than he could put them into
words: quagmires and pits, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft
vales, sunny pastures; a gloomy castle, of which the courtyard was
strewn with the skulls and bones of murdered prisoners; a town all
bustle and splendor, like London on the Lord Mayor's Day; and the narrow
path, straight as a rule could make it, running on uphill and down hill,
through city and through wilderness, to the Black River and the Shining
Gate. He had found out--as most people would have said, by accident; as
he would doubtless have said, by the guidance of Providence--where his
powers lay. He had no suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a
masterpiece. He could not guess what place his allegory would occupy in
English literature, for of English literature he knew nothing. Those who
suppose him to have studied the "Fairy Queen," might easily be confuted,
if this were the proper place for a detailed examination of the passages
in which the two allegories have been thought to resemble each other.
The only work of fiction, in all probability, with which he could
compare his pilgrim, was his old favorite, 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
mig