Page:John Bunyan's Dream Story.djvu/11

Rh the stage as a beautiful and most impressive play. Notwithstanding all this, however, the original work, as first written in the dialect of the humble people of Bunyan's own time and station, remains unequaled and unharmed.

With the changed conditions of life in our own times the popularity of the Pilgrim's Progress has greatly waned. While it was formerly the first and perhaps the only story book read by thousands of children of all ages, it is now known to but few young people except by name. Its distinctively religious character has excluded it from the public schools and caused it to remain a closed book to the majority of twentieth-century readers. Tastes have changed, and long dialogues and disquisitions on faith and justification are no longer interesting or agreeable.

But suppose we divest the story of some of those qualities which may be described as old-fashioned and out of date—suppose that, retaining its essential peculiarities of style and diction, we repeat it without apparent didactic intent, simply as a pleasing narrative—and John Bunyan's dream story becomes a delightful fairy tale, poetic in form and surpassingly interesting.