It should be much
larger, and on sixpenny coarse paper.
The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without
slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy
the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in
very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more
necessary it is to be plain.
This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read over
repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different
pleasure. I read it once as a theologian--and let me assure you, that there
is great theological acumen in the work--once with devotional feelings--and
once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could
be painted in such exquisitely delightful colours.[3]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of Mr. Martin's
two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Celestial City,
published in the beautiful edition of the Pilgrim's Progress by Messrs.
Murray and Major, in 1830. I wish Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's
lecture: he would have been flattered, and at the same time, I believe,
instructed; for in the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master.
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