JOINT BUNYAN AND DE GUILEVILLE'S
" PILGRIM'S PROGRESS " - [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Smi—In the literature which has been published with regard to the two hundredth anniversary of John Bunyan, I have
never seen any discussion' as to whether the Pilgrim's Progress is a conscious or unconscious plagiarism of de Guileville's " Romaunt des trials Pelerinages," of which the first is " De
l'homme durant'qu'est en vie." Of course the " Pilgrimage " in the Middle Ages was constantly used as an illustration of the Christian life, but the coincidences between that of de Guileville and Bunyan are so remarkable as to give promin- ence to the suggestion that Bunyan had this work before him at some period. De Guileville died about 1360, and his work was translated into English by John Lydgate, who died about 1440. The coincidences are too many and too long to be included in a letter, but the Pilgrim, the wicket gate, Grace Dieu (Evangelist), the Interpreter's House (the Church), the Slough of Despond (Baptism in de Guileville), the Cross and the Burden, the scrip and the staff, the House Beautiful and the armoury are found in both, and the journey is made to the Celestial City of which a description is given in both, Bunyan following the Book of Revelation more closely. Grace Dieu arms his pilgrim in the same way as Bunyan. She presents him with a gambeson or coat of mail called Patience, the helmet is Temperance. The gorgette is Sobriety, but the best weapon of all is the sword, called
`Justice' ; the scabbard is humility &c., and the adventures foll,)w a good deal on the same lines. It almost looks as if
Bunyan had read de Guileville and brought it forth again, omitting the references to the sacraments and the non- biblical characters, and Bunyan's mind may have been
stimulated by Whitney's Emblems, which represents a Christian pilgrim spurning the world. The whole comparison is drawn out from the notes of Mr. Nathaniel Hill and was printed in 1858. There are, of course, many instances of unconscious plagiarism, especially in allegorical literature, but there are also examples of deliberate plagiarism, when we consider that Quades' Emblems, a very popular work of the seventeenth century, borrowed his symbols and texts from Herman Hugo (who published his Pia Desideria 1630), and " prefixed them to much inferior sense."—I am, Sir, &c.,
J. K. FloYER.
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