English Literature
time a regular preacher in the Baptist church in Bedford. Occasionally he
even went about late at night, holding the proscribed meetings and
increasing his hold upon the common people. The best result of this
imprisonment was that it gave Bunyan long hours for the working of his
peculiar mind and for study of his two only books, the King James Bible and
Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_. The result of his study and meditation was _The
Pilgrim's Progress_, which was probably written in prison, but which for
some reason he did not publish till long after his release.
The years which followed are the most interesting part of Bunyan's strange
career. The publication of _Pilgrim's Progress_ in 1678 made him the most
popular writer, as he was already the most popular preacher, in England.
Books, tracts, sermons, nearly sixty works in all, came from his pen; and
when one remembers his ignorance, his painfully slow writing, and his
activity as an itinerant preacher, one can only marvel. His evangelistic
journeys carried him often as far as London, and wherever he went crowds
thronged to hear him. Scholars, bishops, statesmen went in secret to listen
among the laborers, and came away wondering and silent. At Southwark the
largest building could not contain the multitude of his hearers; and when
he preached in London, thousands would gather in the cold dusk of the
winter morning, before work began, and listen until he had made an end of
speaking. "Bishop Bunyan" he was soon called on account of his missionary
journeys and his enormous influence.
What we most admire in the midst of all this activity is his perfect mental
balance, his charity and humor in the strife of many sects. He was badgered
for years by petty enemies, and he arouses our enthusiasm by his tolerance,
his self-control, and especially by his sincerity. To the very end he
retained that simple modesty which no success could spoil. Once when he had
preached with unusual power some of his friends waited after the service to
congratulate him, telling him what a "sweet sermon" he had delivered.
"Aye," said Bunyan, "you need not remind me; the devil told me that before
I was out of the pulpit."
For sixteen years this wonderful activity continued without interruption.
Then, one day when riding through a cold storm on a labor of love, to
reconcile a stubborn man with his own stubborn son, he caught a severe cold
and appeared, ill and suffering but rejoicing in his success, at the house
of a friend in Reading. He died there a few days later, and was laid away
in Bunhill Fields burial ground, London, which has been ever since a _campo
santo_ to the faithful.
WORKS OF BUNYAN. The world's literature has three great
allegories,--Spenser's _Faery Queen_, Dante's _Divina Commedia_, and
Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. The first appeals to poets, the second to
scholars, the third to people of every age and condition. Here is a brief
outline of the famous work:
"As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a certain
place where was a den [Bedford jail] and laid me down in that place to
sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream." So the story begins. He sees a
man called Christian setting out with a book in his hand and a great load
on his back from the city of Destruction. Christian has two objects,--to
get rid of his burden, which holds the sins and fears of his life, and to
make his way to the Holy City. At the outset Evangelist finds him weeping
because he knows not where to go, and points him to a wicket gate on a hill
far away. As Christian goes forward his neighbors, friends, wife and
children call to him to come back; but he puts his fingers in his ears,
crying out, "Life, life, eternal life," and so rushes across the plain.
Then begins a journey in ten stages, which is a vivid picture of the
difficulties and triumphs of the Christian life. Every trial, every
difficulty, every experience of joy or sorrow, of peace or temptation, is
put into the form and discourse of a living character. Other allegorists
write in poetry and their characters are shadowy and unreal; but Bunyan
speaks in terse, idiomatic prose, and his characters are living men and
women. There are Mr. Worldly Wiseman, a self-satisfied and dogmatic kind of
man, youthful Ignorance, sweet Piety, courteous Demas, garrulous Talkative,
honest Faithful, and a score of others, who are not at all the bloodless
creatures of the _Romance of the Rose_, but men real enough to stop you on
the road and to hold your attention. Scene after scene follows, in which
are pictured many of our own spiritual experiences. There is the Slough of
Despond, into which we all have fallen, out of which Pliable scrambles on
the hither side and goes back grumbling, but through which Christian
struggles mightily till Helpful stretches him a hand and drags him out on
solid ground and bids him go on his way. Then come Interpreter's house, the
Palace Beautiful, the Lions in the way, the Valley of Humiliation, the hard
fight with the demon Apollyon, the more terrible Valley of the Shadow,
Vanity Fair, and the trial of Faithful. The latter is condemned to death by
a jury made up of Mr. Blindman, Mr. Nogood, Mr. Heady, Mr. Liveloose, Mr.
Hatelight, and others of their kind to whom questions of justice are
committed by the jury system. Most famous is Doubting Castle, where
Christian and Hopeful are thrown into a dungeon by Giant Despair. And then
at last the Delectable Mountains of Youth, the deep river that Christian
must cross, and the city of All Delight and the glorious company of angels
that come singing down the streets. At the very end, when in sight of the
city and while he can hear the welcome with which Christian is greeted,
Ignorance is snatched away to go to his own place; and Bunyan quaintly
observes, "Then I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of
heaven as well as from the city of Destruction. So I awoke, and behold it
was a dream!"
Such, in brief, is the story, the great epic of a Puritan's individual
experience in a rough world, just as _Paradise Lost_ was the epic of
mankind as dreamed by the great Puritan who had "fallen asleep over his
Bible."
The chief fact which confronts the student of literature as he pauses
before this great allegory is that it has been translated into seventy-five
languages and dialects, and has been read more than any other book save one
in the English language.
As for the secret of its popularity, Taine says, "Next to the Bible, the
book most widely read in England is the _Pilgrim's Progress_....
Protestantism is the doctrine of salvation by grace, and no writer has
equaled Bunyan in making this doctrine understood." And this opinion is
echoed by the majority of our literary historians. It is perhaps sufficient
answer to quote the simple fact that _Pilgrim's Progress_ is not
exclusively a Protestant study; it appeals to Christians of every name, and
to Mohammedans and Buddhists in precisely the same way that it appeals to
Christians. When it was translated into the languages of Catholic
countries, like France and Portugal, only one or two incidents were
omitted, and the story was almost as popular there as with English readers.
The secret of its success is probably simple. It is, first of all, not a
procession of shadows repeating the author's declamations, but a real
story, the first extended story in our language. Our Puritan fathers may
have read the story for religious instruction; but all classes of men have
read it because they found in it a true personal experience told with
strength, interest, humor,--in a word, with all the qualities that such a
story should possess. Young people have read it, first, for its intrinsic
worth, because the dramatic interest of the story lured them on to the very
end; and second, because it was their introduction to true allegory. The
child with his imaginative mind--the man also, who has preserved his
simplicity--naturally personifies objects, and takes pleasure in giving
them powers of thinking and speaking like himself. Bunyan was the first
writer to appeal to this pleasant and natural inclination in a way that all
could understand. Add to this the fact that _Pilgrim's Progress_ was the
only book having any story interest in the great majority of English and
American homes for a full century, and we have found the real reason for
its wide reading.
_The Holy War_, published in 1665, is the first important work of Bunyan.
It is a prose _Paradise Lost_, and would undoubtedly be known as a
remarkable allegory were it not overshadowed by its great rival. _Grace
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_, published in 1666, twelve years before
_Pilgrim's Progress_, is the work from which we obtain the clearest insight
into Bunyan's remarkable life, and to a man with historical or antiquarian
tastes it is still excellent reading. In 1682 appeared _The Life and Death
of Mr. Badman_, a realistic character study which is a precursor of the
modern novel; and in 1684 the second part of _Pilgrim's Progress_, showing
the journey of Christiana and her children to the city of All Delight.
Besides these Bunyan published a multitude of treatises and sermons, all in
the same style,--direct, simple, convincing, expressing every thought and
emotion perfectly in words that even a child can understand. Many of these
are masterpieces, admired by workingmen and scholars alike for their
thought and expression. Take, for instance, "The Heavenly Footman," put it
side by side with the best work of Latimer, and the resemblance in style is
startling. It is difficult to realize that one work came from an ignorant
tinker and the other from a great scholar, both engaged in the same general
work. As Bunyan's one book was the Bible, we have here a suggestion of its
influence in all our prose literature.
MINOR PROSE WRITERS
The Puritan Period is generally regarded as one destitute of literary
interest; but that was certainly not the result of any lack of books or
writers. Says Burton in his _Anatomy of Melancholy:_
I have ... new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole
catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms,
heresies, controversies in philosophy and religion. Now come tidings of
weddings, maskings, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, sports, plays;
then again, as in a new-shipped scene, treasons, cheatings, tricks,
robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, deaths, new
discoveries, expeditions; now comical, then tragical matters.....
So the record continues, till one rubs his eyes and thinks he must have
picked up by mistake the last literary magazine. And for all these
kaleidoscopic events there were waiting a multitude of writers, ready to
seize the abundant material and turn it to literary account for a tract, an
article, a volume, or an encyclopedia.
If one were to recommend certain of these books as expressive of this age
of outward storm and inward calm, there are three that deserve more than a
passing notice, namely, the _Religio Medici_, _Holy Living_, and _The
Compleat Angler_. The first was written by a busy physician, a supposedly
scientific man at that time; the second by the most learned of English
churchmen; and the third by a simple merchant and fisherman. Strangely
enough, these three great books--the reflections of nature, science, and
revelation--all interpret human life alike and tell the same story of
gentleness, charity, and noble living. If the age had produced only these
three books, we could still be profoundly grateful to it for its inspiring
message.
ROBERT BURTON (1577-1640). Burton is famous chiefly as the author of the
_Anatomy of Melancholy_, one of the most astonishing books in all
literature, which appeared in 1621. Burton was a clergyman of the