Is there another single stroke in all
sacred literature better fitted at once to teach the gayest and to make
the gravest smile than just John Bunyan's sketch of By-ends'
great-grandfather, the founder of the egoistical family of Fairspeech,
who was, to begin with, but a waterman who always looked one way and
rowed another? By-ends' wife also is a true helpmate to her husband. She
was my Lady Feigning's favourite daughter, under whose nurture and
example the young lady had early come to a quite extraordinary pitch of
good breeding; and now that she was a married woman, she and her husband
had, so their biographer tells us, two firm points of family religion in
which they were always agreed and according to which they brought up all
their children, namely, never to strive too much against wind and tide,
and always to watch when Religion was walking on the sunny side of the
street in his silver slippers, and then at once to cross over and take
his arm. But abundantly amusing and entertaining as John Bunyan is at
the expense of By-ends and his family and friends, he has far other aims
in view than the amusement and entertainment of his readers.
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