Omniana/Volume 1/Bunyan's Holy War
52. Bunyan's holy War.
A very beautiful manuscript was once put into my hands by a provincial bookseller, to whom it had been offered for publication, containing two tragedies upon the subject of John Bunyan's Holy War. It was the composition of a lady, who had fitted together scraps from Shakspeare, Milton, Young's Night Thoughts, and Erskine's Gospel Sonnets, into this form, with no other liberty than that of occasionally altering a name. The Lady Constance, I remember, was converted into the Lady Conscience, and whole speeches and scenes were thus introduced in a wholesale sort of cento. The Ghost in Hamlet also did for an Earl Conscience.