Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
In one point only do these pictures seem to be
unworthy of the text, and that point is one rather
of the difference of arts than the difference of artists.
Throughout his best and worst, in his highest and
most divine imaginations as in the narrowest sallies
of his sectarianism, the human-hearted piety of
Bunyan touches and ennobles, convinces, accuses
the reader. Through no art beside the art of words
can the kindness of a man's affections be expressed.
In the cuts you shall find faithfully parodied the
quaintness and the power, the triviality and the
surprising freshness of the author's fancy ; there you
shall find him outstripped in ready symbolism and
the art of bringing things essentially invisible before
the eyes : but to feel the contact of essential good-
ness, to be made in love with piety, the book must
be read and not the prints examined.
Farewell should not be taken with a grudge ; nor
can I dismiss in any other words than those of grati-
tude a series of pictures which have, to one at least,
been the visible embodiment of Bunyan from child-
hood up, and shown him, through all his years,
Great-heart lungeing at Giant Maul, and Apollyon
breathing fire at Christian, and every turn and town
along the road to the Celestial City, and that bright
place itself, seen as to a stave of music, shining afar
off upon the hill- top, the candle of the world.
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