His treatment of it is characteristic of the awakening talent for fiction of his time.

_The Pilgrim's Progress_ is begun as an allegory, and so continues for a little space till the story takes hold of the author.

When it does, whether he knew it or not, allegory goes to the winds.

But the autobiographical form of fiction in its highest art is the creation of Defoe.

He told stories of adventure, incidents modelled on real life as many tellers of tales had done before him, but to the form as he found it he super-added a psychological interest--the interest of the character of the narrator.