Accepting Puritanism, the easiest course
for him would have been that of fanaticism, and had he taken that course
he would certainly have had no lack of companions. It was far more
difficult to remain a Puritan and yet to keep his heart open to the
beauty and fascination of human life. Yet he was interested in what men
were writing or had written. All manner of songs and stories, heard in
early days in pot-houses, or in later times in prison, kept sounding in
his ears, and he wove them into his work. The thing that he meant to
say, and did say, was indeed one about which controversy and persecution
were raging, but, except in a very few general references, his writing
shows no sign of this. His eye is upon far-off things, the things of the
soul of man and the life of God, but the way in which he tells these
things shows innumerable signs of the bright world of English books.
It is worth while to consider this large and human Bunyan, who has been
very erroneously supposed to be a mere literary freak, detached from all
such influences as go to the making of other writers. He tells us,
indeed, that "when I pulled it came," and that is delightfully true.
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