Illustrations of the Pilgrim's Progress: Accompanied With Extracts From the Work and Descriptions of the Plates (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from Illustrations of the Pilgrim's Progress: Accompanied With Extracts From the Work and Descriptions of the Plates

While the text of this most ingenious and instructive Vision has afforded ample scope for the commentaries of theologians, its pages are not less rich in materials for pictorial embellishment. The characters, scenes, and incidents, recorded in them, are given with such graphic effect in the narrative, and are in themselves so picturesque, that we need not wonder at their having afforded study for the Artist as well as for the Divine. No efforts, perhaps, of. The mimic powers of a sister art, can hope to rival, in vivid force of delineation, the creative powers of the Author, or give to the eye the visible image of that which the imagination of every reader has previously pictured for itself: still, every such attempt may hope to be received with indulgence by all who truly love the pilgrim's progress, and cordially cherish the memory of bunyan.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Illustrations of the Pilgrim's Progress: Accompanied With Extracts From the Work and Descriptions of the Plates

The Publishers of the accompanying Plates, illustrative of different scenes and subjects embodied in Bunyan's celebrated Allegory, being desirous to print with them a brief description of each, consisting chiefly of such extracts from the Pilgrim's Progress as the artist may be supposed to have had immediately in his eye; I undertake the task of their selection with the cheerful gratitude due to a Work, which, from early childhood to riper manhood, I have never opened without interest, or closed without feelings of love and admiration for its Author.

While the text of this most ingenious and instructive Vision has afforded ample scope for the commentaries of theologians, its pages are not less rich in materials for pictorial embellishment. The characters, scenes, and incidents, recorded in them, are given with such graphic effect in the narrative, and are in themselves so picturesque, that we need not wonder at their having afforded study for the Artist as well as for the Divine. No efforts, perhaps, of the mimic powers of a sister art, can hope to rival, in vivid force of delineation, the creative powers of the Author, or give to the eye the visible image of that which the imagination of every reader has previously pictured for itself: still, every such attempt may hope to be received with indulgence by all who truly love the Pilgrim's Progress, and cordially cherish the memory of Bunyan.

For myself, I may frankly confess, that though, probably, not one of these plates may have perfectly realized the ideal picture which the eye of my own mind, and the exercise of my own fancy, might have called up in the perusal of the narrative, they have, as a whole, afforded me no slight interest and gratification. Without reference to their own beauty as works of art, or as imaginative delineations of what is lovely, pure, and of good report, they have recalled day-dreams and fancied visions of my own, when in boyhood I pored over the tale of the Glorious Dreamer, and pictured at every page the scene described in forms and colours which copper or canvass can but feebly represent.

It is worth something to have such early creations of the fancy, bright with the lustre of by-gone years, brought back to the eye and heart with somewhat of their original force and feeling, by the delineations of any one who may be led, from similar feelings of love and admiration, to depict his own: and he who can quarrel with minor anomalies of costume or character, or petty incongruities of a like nature, though he may be critically right by the rules of art, is rather to be pitied for being shut out, by his own rigid exclusiveness, from sympathy with the gratification which the Work has afforded to a fellow-admirer. Bunyan wrote for all: and those who best appreciate the universality of his genius will be the most tolerant of every attempt, whether of the pen or the pencil, to pay it the homage it has so nobly won.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.