Unconverted," and merit their popularity not so much because of any great charm of style as because they express in homely language the thoughts of a most sincere, heavenly minded, and excellent man. The other, John Bunyan, is one of our greatest authors, and may be taken as the typical prose writer of Puritanism, as Milton is its typical poet. The story of his early years, as related by himself in his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," is a very touching one. The son of a tinker, he was born at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628. More fortunate than most children born in so low a rank, he was sent to school and taught to read and write. He must have been a thoughtful and imaginative child, for when only about nine years old he began to be tormented with those fearful thoughts which caused him such agony for several years. “I would," he says, "be greatly troubled with the thoughts of the fearful torments of hell-fire; still fearing that it would be my lot to be found at last among those devils and hellish fiends who are there bound down with the chains and bonds of darkness unto the judgment of the great day." As he grew older these terrible impressions wore nearly off; he became, according to his own account, "a very ringleader in all manner of vice and ungodliness." A very exaggerated statement, it would seem, for the only sins he specifically mentions are Sabbath-breaking and swearing: there is no reason to believe that his conduct was worse than that of other young men belonging to the same class. When about eighteen he married. His wife's relations were pious, and she brought with her as her only portion some religious books. Influenced by them and by his wife's conversation, Bunyan soon became a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He went to church twice a day, and did "there very devoutly both say and sing as others did," and regarded all connected with the church with the utmost reverence. But Bunyan was not the sort of man to find peace of mind in the observation of forms and ceremonies. One by one he gave up the sports and sins in which he had indulged, -swearing, Sabbath-breaking, dancing, bell-ringing, and so on. Still, while his neighbours were praising him for his spot less morality, he felt that he was but a whited sepulchre. In vain he tried to obtain inward peace of mind. At one time he was overwhelmed by doubts whether he was one of the elect, at another he suffered unspeakable agonies from the thought that he had committed the unpardonable sin. length peace dawned upon his troubled soul; but it was several years before his shattered nerves recovered their tone. Five or six years after his conversion, Bunyan, who had joined a Baptist society at Bedford, "was desired, and that with much earnestness, that he would be willing at some times to take in hand at one of the meetings to speak a word of exhortation unto them." Very reluctantly he assented, and his ministrations soon became so popular that he "was more particularly called forth, and appointed to a more ordinary and public preaching of the word." For five years he continued to preach with increasing popularity, when, in 1660, "I was," to use his own words, "indicted for a maintainer of unlawful assemblies and conventicles, and for not conforming to the Church of England; and after some conference there with the justices, they taking my plain dealing with them for a confession, as they termed it, of the indictment, did sentence me to a perpetual banishment because I refused to conform. So, being again delivered up to the gaoler's hands, I was had to prison, and there laid a complete twelve years, waiting to see what God would suffer these men to do with me." In vain his persecutors told him that if he promised to abstain from preaching he would at once be liberated. "If you let me out to-day," was his reply, "I will preach again to-morrow." His trials and privations sat lightly on him; no agony that man could inflict was equal to the mental tortures he had come through. While in prison he supported himself by making tagged thread laces; he gave religious instructions to his fellowcaptives; he studied over and over again his two favourite books, the Bible and Foxe's "Book of Martyrs;" and he engaged in religious controversy, writing against the Quakers and the Liturgy of the Church of England. During the last six years of his imprisonment, when he was treated with great The "Pilgrim's Progress." 103 leniency, he hit upon the vein of writing for which his genius was adapted. Before his release he began that allegory to which he owes his fame. "The Pilgrim's Progress,' "" writes Macaulay in his admirable "Encyclopædia Britannica" sketch of Bunyan, "stole silently into the world. Not a single copy of the first edition is known to be in existence. The year of publication has not been ascertained. It is probable that during some months the little volume circulated only among poor and obscure sectaries. But soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified the imagination of the reader with all the action and scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity by setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies, which interested his feeling for human beings, frail like himself, and struggling with temptations from within and from without, which every moment drew a smile from him by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and nevertheless left on his mind a sentiment of reverence for God and of sympathy for man, began to produce its effect. In puritanical circles, from which plays and novels were strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of genius, though it were superior to the Iliad,' to 'Don Quixote,' or to 'Othello,' can ever produce on a mind accustomed to indulgence in literary luxury. In 1678 came forth a second edition with additions, and then the demand became immense." In 1687, when the penal laws against the Dissenters were relaxed, a chapel was built for Bunyan at Bedford, where his powerful though uncultivated eloquence and his wonderful. acquaintance with the workings of conscience, won by much. hard-bought experience, attracted crowds of hearers from the districts around. In the summer of 1688 he caught cold from exposure incurred during a ride through heavy rain to visit an angry father whom he wished to reconcile to his son. A few days after he died. Bunyan is a man on whose character much might be written. Of a morbidly keen conscience and of strong imagination, his faults assumed gigantic size in his eyes, and were felt by him with proportionate intensity. Totally free from hypocrisy, he, while in his stormy youth almost worshipping good people, found no relief by en deavouring to imitate their mode of life, while feeling that he was only playing a part. His vehement, impulsive nature was a source of trouble to him long after his more terrible agonies had disappeared. He often felt an almost uncontrollable desire to utter words which he ought not to utter, just as some people cannot stand on the brink of a lofty precipice without wishing to throw themselves over. Thus at his first communion after he had joined the Baptist society at Bedford, he with difficulty refrained from imprecating destruction on his brethren while the cup was passing from hand to hand; and sometimes when he was preaching he was "violently assaulted with words of blasphemy, and strongly tempted to speak the words with his mouth before the congregation" Yet all these peculiarities did not prevent him from being a man of sound common-sense, with a clear and half-humorous insight into the ways and thoughts of the different types of humanity. The fact that he was often enployed as a mediator in family quarrels-the most difficult and dangerous diplomatic office any man can undertake-is a conclusive proof of his tact and skill in the management of men; and many of the characters in the "Pilgrim's Progress" are evidently drawn from the life, with such accuracy and spirit as show Bunyan to have been a first-rate observer of human nature. Mr. Froude is probably correct in thinking that the "Pilgrim's Progress" has affected the spiritual opinions of the English race in every part of the world more powerfully than any book or books except the Bible. The simplicity of its style, combined with the interest of its allegory, and its touches of genuine eloquence and pathos, admirably adapt it for all classes of readers-for the poor and uneducated as well as for the rich and cultivated, for the man of letters and for the humble peasant, for the child just setting out on life's journey, and for those who are nearing the gates of the Celestial City. Macaulay declares that during the century which followed his death, Bunyan's fame was entirely confined to religious families of the middle and lower classes, and that very seldom during that time was his name mentioned with respect by any writer of great literary eminence. This seems rather an overcharged statement. Johnson, it is well known, praised Bunyan highly, saying that "his 'Pilgrim's Progress' has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale." If Johnson's opinion of the "Pilgrim's Progress" had been different from that generally prevalent in literary society, we may be pretty sure that Boswell, who records the above, would have drawn attention to the fact. Bunyan's chief works besides the "Pilgrim's Progress" are the autobiographical "Grace Abounding" already mentioned and the "Holy War," an allegorical account of the fall and redemption of mankind under the figure of a war carried on by Satan ("Diabolus") for the possession of the city of Mansoul. Izaak Walton (1593-1683) is best known as the author of the "Complete Angler" (1653), a delightful book even to those who have no skill in the art with which it deals, full of sweet pictures of pastoral scenery, and having, as it were, the fresh air of the country blowing over every page. His Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, Sanderson, written at various times between 1640 and 1678, are among our first good biographies, appreciative, affectionate, and truth-telling. In a fine sonnet Wordsworth has celebrated their excellence: "There are no colours in the fairest sky So fair as these. The feather whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men In statesman, priest, and humble citizen. Oh! could we copy their mild virtues, then |