Vanity Fair is one of John Bunyan's universally-admitted masterpieces.
The very name of the fair is one of his happiest strokes. Thackeray's
famous book owes half its popularity to the happy name he borrowed from
John Bunyan. Thackeray's author's heart must have leaped in his bosom
when Vanity Fair struck him as a title for his great satire. 'Then I saw
in my dream that when they were got out of the wilderness they presently
saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity, and at that
town there is a fair kept called Vanity Fair. The fair is kept all the
year long, and it beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where
it is kept is lighter than Vanity. And, also, because all that is sold
there is vanity. As is the saying of the wise, All that cometh is
vanity. The fair is no new erected business, but a thing of ancient
standing: I will show you the original of it. About five thousand years
ago there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two
honest persons now are, and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their
companions, perceiving that by the path that the pilgrims made, that
their way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived
there to set up a fair: a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of
vanity, and that it should last all the year long.
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