Unlike the _Faerie Queene_, the story of _Pilgrim's Progress_ has no
reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is
so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and
Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same
belief with which they read of Crusoe's cave or Aladdin's palace.
It is a long step from the Bedford tinker to the cultivated poet of
_Paradise Lost_. They represent the poles of the Puritan party. Yet it
may admit of a doubt whether the Puritan epic is, in essentials, as
vital and original a work as the Puritan allegory. They both came out
quietly and made little noise at first. But the _Pilgrim's Progress_ got
at once into circulation, and hardly a single copy of the first edition
remains. Milton, too--who received ten pounds for the copyright of
_Paradise Lost_--seemingly found that "fit audience though few" for
which he prayed, as his poem reached its second impression in five years
(1672). Dryden visited him in his retirement and asked leave to turn it
into rime and put it on the stage as an opera. "Ay," said Milton, good
humoredly, "you may tag my verses." And accordingly they appeared, duly
tagged, in Dryden's operatic masque, the _State of Innocence_.
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