Page:The Pilgrims Progress (1890).djvu/15

Rh minds. One of those minds produced the &lsquo;Paradise Lost,&rsquo; the other, the &lsquo;Pilgrim's Progress.&rsquo;&rdquo;

But aside from its literary merit the &ldquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Progress&rdquo; is interesting for the glimpses it gives of the history of the times. &ldquo;Vanity Fair&rdquo; is said to have been suggested by the great fair at Sturbridge, near Cambridge, England, as Bunyan saw it, though of course only the dark side of it appears in the allegory.

Again, as Macaulay remarks, there can be no reasonable doubt that the proceedings against Faithful at the fair are intended to satirize &ldquo;the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence&rdquo; of the judges in the state trials conducted under Charles II.

&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; says the historian, &ldquo;the imaginary trial of Faithful before a jury of personified vices was just and merciful when compared with the real trial of Lady Alice Lisle before that tribunal where all the vices sat in the person of Jeffries.&rdquo;

We cannot close this sketch better than by quoting the last lines of Bunyan's quaint &ldquo;Apology for his Book&rdquo;:&mdash;

D. H. M.