Holding A Grudge

It's been weeks now since the thing was said- and I've been fuming ever since. Well, off and on. One can't fume all the time without doing oneself an internal injury. I've been thinking of writing something thunderous here- but holding off- because the damage would be incalculable- and now it's getting so I have to prod my memory to remind myself what it was that made me so cross in the first place.

Time to let the whole business drop?

Yes, High time. 

The Pilgrim's Progress

I like Bunyan. He's solid.  His people- for all that they wear placards- have a roundaboutness to them. A lot of it's in the dialogue; they may come on as personified vices and virtues, but they talk like human beings. Poor little By-ends with his resentment of the nickname he's been given and his insistence that it's not his fault if his sincerely held convictions always somehow happen to coincide with the orthodoxy of the day- why- he's almost Dickensian.

And for all that Bunyan's theology is sometimes unpleasantly vindictive there's never any doubting his essential godliness. The Pilgrim's Progress may be the first English novel but it's also the last trumpet blast of medieval Christianity.