“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Bunyan and Milton were as far as possible from being “fools”; but when both these great writers, on the one hand, carry us up into the Council Chamber of Heaven and introduce us to the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, debating, consulting, planning, and resolving, like a sovereign and his ministers when a revolted province has to be brought back to its allegiance; and, on the other hand, take us down to the infernal regions, and makes us privy to the plots and counterplots of the rebel leaders and hearers of their speeches, we cannot but feel that, in spite of the magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their essential mysteries.  In point of individual personal interest, “The Holy War” contrasts badly with “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”  The narrative moves in a more shadowy region.  We may admire the workmanship; but the same undefined sense of unreality pursues us through Milton’s noble epic, the outcome of a divinely-fired genius, and Bunyan’s humble narrative, drawing its scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its dramatis personae, from the writer’s own surroundings in the town and corporation of Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the great Parliamentary War.  The catastrophe also is eminently unsatisfactory.  When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been looking for all along.  But the conclusion of “The Holy War” is too much like the closing chapter of “Rasselas”—­“a conclusion in which nothing is concluded.”  After all the endless vicissitudes of the conflict, and the final and glorious victory of Emmanuel and his forces, and the execution of the ringleaders of the mutiny, the issue still remains doubtful.  The town of Mansoul is left open to fresh attacks.  Diabolus is still at large.  Carnal Sense breaks prison and continues to lurk in the town.  Unbelief, that “nimble Jack,” slips away, and can never be laid hold of.  These, therefore, and some few others of the more subtle of the Diabolonians, continue to make their home in Mansoul, and will do so until Mansoul ceases to dwell in the kingdom of Universe.  It is true they turn chicken-hearted after the other leaders of their party have been taken and executed, and keep themselves quiet and close, lurking in dens and holes lest they should be snapped up by Emmanuel’s men.  If Unbelief or any of his crew venture to show themselves in the streets, the whole town is up in arms against them; the very children raise a hue and cry against them and seek to stone them.  But all in vain.  Mansoul, it is true, enjoys some good degree of peace and quiet.  Her Prince takes up his residence in her borders.  Her captains and soldiers do their duties.