THE PILGRIM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12063, 19 July 1917, Page 8

THE PILGRIM.

BUNYAN'S ALLEGORY. "Much has been written of the literary antecedents of the Pilgrim. 'Some say tho "Pilgrim's Progress" is not mine,' Bunyan wroto in a metrical advertisement to tho reader, at. the end of the Holy War ; but, ho says 'lt ranie from mine own heart.' ' Manner and matter too was all mine own.' Many allegories of pilgrimage existed long before his day, hut it is supremely unlikely that he could have heard of many of them. And, if lie did? Who hears of them, now, unless some curious antiquary hero or there asks T. R. Glover, in his ''Poets and Puritans."

" Shakespeare borrowed nearly all of his plots. ... No allegory known to Europo has any hi at of such life as those of Bunya.n. There was in tho Lfystle to the Hebrews—an epistle much in Bunyan's mind, as the Esau text shows—a passage, in which the Christian life is compared to a pilgrimage in search of a heavenly couni ry. This once granted, and the idea, of allegory, no wonder thoughts camo iiko sparks to such a mind, so full of life, and humour, so rich in experience. And tho mode enabled him to give tho fullest expression to thc-i whole of himself. gayety and seriousness at once. Some people will not rea.liso that highest humour is serious—that Shakespeare was serious when ho drew tho Fool in Lear; that, as Plato said, tragedy and comedy come from the same hand, or that, in Bunyan's own words, "'Some things are. of that na/ture as to make One's fancies checklo while his heart doth ake.' "Allegory is tho hardest of all literary modes, harder than tragedy, with less range and mom pitfalls. There are inconsistencies and improbabilities in Robinson Crusoe.' Some of those ar« in tho ' Odyssey.' and still moro in 'Don Quixote' —perhaps oven in 1 Robinson Crusoe.' Some of these are accidents; others are inherent in the scheme. Of these, some are ' outside tlie tragedy,' as Aristotle put it in criticising Sophocles' ' (Edipus ' ; but, the improbabilities once thus admitted, the iest follows. Others are. lost sight of in tho general impression; tho charm of tho wlmlo is too great. From the moment when wo see 'a, Man clothed with Rags, standing in a certain place, with his Faco from his own House, a. Book in his hand, and a. great Burden upon his Back,' we accept, everything, wo believe every thing, uilli all the emotion that attends such belief—just .')« wo lyvicve the 'Ancient Mariner/ an even more improbable story."