works, and some of still higher merit by Addison. In these performances
there is, perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as in the Pilgrim's Progress.
But the pleasure which is produced by the Vision of Mirza, or the Vision
of Theodore, the genealogy of Wit, or the contest between Rest and Labour,
is exactly similar to the pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's
Odes, or from a Canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure which belongs wholly
to the understanding, and in which the feelings have no part whatever. Nay,
even Spencer himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever
lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory interesting. It
was in vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House of Pride,
and the House of Temperance. One unpardonable fault, the fault of
tediousness, pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We become sick of
Cardinal Virtues and Deadly Sins, and long for the society of plain men
and women. Of the persons who read the first Canto, not one in ten reaches
the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end
of the poem. Very few and very weary are those who are in at the death of
the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, which are said to have been
destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less
stout than that of a commentator would have held out to the end.

It is not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That wonderful book, while it
obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who
are too simple to admire it. Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were
desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an
exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was one
of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common
merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most
pedantic of critics, and the most bigoted of tories. In the wildest parts
of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In
every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the