"The Pilgrim's Progress" by John Bunyan

 

This quiet spot off the River Ouse in Bedford was where John Bunyan baptised people.

This classic allegory is one of the best-selling books ever. It was written in 1678 by John Bunyan, a tinker who had been a soldier with the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War,  while he was in Bedford prison for being an unlicensed preacher during the religious repressions following the restoration of the English monarchy. 

It is presented as a series of dreams. The characters are, as was the fashion of the time, named for the characteristics: thus Christian, Mr Valiant-for-Truth, Mr Standfast, Mercy and so on. In the first part Christian travels through hardships such as the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death and encounters temptations such as Vanity Fair and monsters such as Apollyon before fording the River of Death. In the second part, Christian's wife Christiana and his four sons form the nucleus of a party making a second pilgrimage in his by-now-famous footsteps. 

The prose is inevitably old-fashioned. There are no chapters but there are marginal annotations which describe which part of the story you are in. Poems, presumably hymns, are interspersed through the narrative.

Some of it is rather tedious theologising - it is, after all, a sermon - but the picaresque story, despite the inevitability of the happy ending, still has its charm.

The book has been hugely  influential, not least to other writers such as George Eliot (for example in Silas Marner). Some of the quotations below have reached the status of proverbs. And, of course, it contains 'Bunyan's hymn': 

"Who would true valour see,Let him come hither;One here will constant be,Come wind, come weather;There's no discouragementShall make him once relentHis first avowed intentTo be a pilgrim.

"Who so beset him roundWith dismal stories,Do but themselves confound—His strength the more is.No lion can him fright;He'll with a giant fight;But he will have a rightTo be a pilgrim.

"Hobgoblin nor foul fiendCan daunt his spirit;He knows he at the endShall life inherit.Then fancies fly away,He'll fear not what men say;He'll labour night and dayTo be a pilgrim."
It has been rated best in the Guardian's top 100 novels of all time.

Selected quotations:

Part One

• "As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream." (First line)
• "there is a company of these crazy-headed coxcombs, that, when they take a fancy by the end, are wiser in their own eyes than seven men that can render a reason."
• "He is, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can now do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails because he cannot come at them."
• "What you will. I will talk of things heavenly, or things earthly; things moral, or things evangelical; things sacred, or things worldly; things past, or things to come; things foreign, or things at home; things more essential, or things circumstantial, provided that all be done to our profit."
• "at this fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not."
• "to tell you the truth, I am become a gentleman of good quality, yet my great-grandfather was but a waterman, looking one way and rowing another, and I got most of my estate by the same occupation."
• "we are always most zealous when religion goes in his silver slippers; we love much to walk with him in the street, if the sun shines, and the people applaud him."
• "Sin was very sweet to my flesh, and I was loath to leave it."

Part Two

• "Now the seal was the contents and sum of the passover which the children of Israel did eat when they came out from the land of Egypt, and the mark was set between their eyes." 
• "Why doth the pelican pierce her own breast with her bill? ... To nourish her young ones with her blood, and thereby to show that Christ the blessed so loveth his young, his people, as to save them from death by his blood." 
• "the way is the way, and there's an end."
• "I know thou art a cock of the right kind, for thou hast said the truth."
• "Mr. Fearing was one that played upon this bass; he and his fellows sound the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful than the notes of other music are; though, indeed, some say the bass is the ground of music. ... The first string that the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in tune."
• "When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river-side, into which as he went he said, 'Death, where is thy sting?' And as he went down deeper, he said, 'Grave, where is thy victory?' So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."

April 2022

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God