400 Subscribers to the first Volume: but failed, I believe, to bring out the second. His mantle and spirit fell, however, upon Bunyan's successor, Chandler ; and on Wilson of Hitchin. If I have caught any portion of the STRUGGLER'S spirit in preserving Bunyan's Remains, I owe it to the enthusiasm of my venerable friend the Rev. Samuel Hillyard of Bedford-now, alas, unable to represent his great predecessor in the pulpit, but still glowing with the sacred fire which warmed my heart for this Work twenty-five years ago. I wrote some of the last pages of Bunyan's Life, at Mr. Hillyard's side; and made him smile, notwithstanding his weakness, by charging him with introducing Bunyan into every speech he had made during this century. Before we parted he made me one of the witnesses to his transfer of Bunyan's Will into the ancient Book of Bunyan's Church.

One

I ascertained at Bedford, during my visit, that Bunyan, although not arrested again after he entered upon his pastorate, was yet often pursued, and had some narrow escapes. tradition is current in Bedford, which I do not like; but I cannot disprove it. It is said, that a constable who was about to seize him in Castle-Lane on a dark night, desisted on hearing him say,—" The devil's in the fellow: what does he want with me!" The constable let him go, under the conviction that John Bunyan would not have used such profane language. There is another version of this story, which is more probable. He was once overtaken when disguised as a waggoner, by a constable, who asked him if he knew that devil of a fellow, Bunyan? "Know him!" he replied, "you would be warranted to call him a devil, if you knew him as well as I once did." Neither of these stories, although both are current, seems characteristic. The evasion is not like the man, even if the profanity were justifiable. Not, however, that he was very squeamish about rough words. There are some strange words, in the early editions of the first part of the Pilgrim's Progress. He said once to a Cambridge Scholar, who interrupted him with some logical subtilties, whilst he was preaching in a barn, "Away with your hellish logic, and speak Scripture.' The Cantab replid, "It is blasphemy to call logic hellish ; for it is our reason, and thus the gift of God, which distinguisheth man from a beast." Bunyan's answer was like himself; "SIN distinguisheth a man from a beast. Is sin, therefore, the gift of God?"-Doe's Circular.

But in whatever way Bunyan escaped from his pursuers,

during the last years of Charles II., he did escape. Doe says, "It pleased the Lord to preserve him out of the hands of his enemies, in the severe persecution at the latter end of King Charles II.'s reign, though they often searched and laid wait for him, and sometimes narrowly missed him." Ibid.

About this time he published "The Life and Death of Mr. Badman;"" A Holy Life, the Beauty of Christianity;" "The Pharisee and Publican;" with some smaller Treatises. I say, published; because Doe's list is no clue to the date of their composition. He, unfortunately, did not inquire of Bunyan how many of his Books were written in prison: or if he did he paid but little attention to the answer. Hence his account is, "Whilst Bunyan was in prison he wrote several of his published Books, as by many of their Epistles appears, as, "Pray by the Spirit; Holy City; Resurrection; Grace Abounding, and others; also the Pilgrim's Progress, as himself and many others have said."-Doe's Circular. This is very unsatisfactory. The Work out of which the Pilgrim sprang, whichever it may be, was written in prison. The Heavenly Footman is generally (but unwarrantably) supposed to be the germ of that Allegory: but that Work was still in manuscript when Doe wrote his list. I have had, therefore, to judge chiefly by internal evidence, when I have assigned other Books, or passages of them, to the prison. I may thus be occasionally wrong in the case of mere passages: and yet, I can hardly be very far wrong; for the smell of a prison is even more distinguishable than "the smell of the lamp." in theology. No one, however, will be so much pleased as myself by the detection of any anachronisms, if such there be, in this volume. I have had no purpose, which errors can help; and, therefore, have no feelings, which their exposure can hurt. Besides, it is worth while to obtain just views of both the process and progress of the development of Bunyan's mind; for as it waxed, but never waned, all its places are improvements, and thus lessons which Philosophy should study, and Theology commend.

I cannot conclude my brief account of his Pastorship, better than in the words of an old Elegy on his death:

"He in the Pulpit preached Truth first, and then,
He in his Practice preached it o'er again."

Kilpin's and White's Notes.

CHAPTER XLIV.

BUNYAN'S BIBLIOGRAPHY.

In a work which is designed to illustrate the compositions of Bunyan from every source capable of affording either interest or information,-some bibliographical notices respecting his most famous production appear to be equally natural and appropriate for though it is certain that little original matter can be communicated respecting the supposed literary prototype of the Pilgrim's Progress, it may be useful to recapitulate, from a variety of sources not commonly consulted, the very strange notions which have been brought forward respecting it; which will be preceded by a few particulars relative to the more remarkable editions of the book.

There is probably no one that truly appreciates the charac ter of the Author of the wonderful allegory of the Pilgrim's Progress, who will either require or believe in any other original for that work, than the scripture metaphor that human life, and especially a life of Christian holiness, is a pilgrimage "from this world to that which is to come. The image itself was practically introduced when "the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee," (Gen. xii. 1:) concerning which call the Apostle adds to the historian, that he obeyed and "went out not knowing whither he went." (Heb. xi. 8.) Hence Jacob described both his own life and the lives of his progenitors, by the very name of a pilgrim's progress, when he said, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." (Gen. xlvii. 9.) Such were the simple facts; but even in the times of the patriarchs, this wandering and occasional sojourning in various places was regarded as purely typical; which is proved by the testimony of St. Paul when he is writing to the Hebrews of the

ancient faithful deceased, who "confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon the earth," that "they sought a country," and that Abraham really "looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," Heb. xi. 13, 14,) as opposed to a temporary encampment of wandering tribes. A connecting link in the employment of the metaphor between the very ancient period to which the Apostle refers and his own times, is furnished by David; and the passage also proves that the expression "pilgrimage" was really allegorical, since it was written long after the children of Israel were in full possession of "the land of their pilgrimage," and a permanent temple to the Almighty was about to be erected therein. At the time that the king blessed the Lord, when the people offered willingly towards the erection of the temple, even in the midst of his prosperity and honour, he says, “ We are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." (1 Chron. xxix. 15. Psalm xxxix. 12.)

These particulars are not only well known to all the religious readers of Bunyan, but probably also to his readers in general; and they are now adduced only to show that to a mind so filled with divine literature as his, without regarding the extraordinary talent which he possessed, there is no sort of reason for looking any farther than the Scriptures for the original of his immortal allegory: since, in the very first of the inspired books is discovered, to employ his own expres. sion," the manner of the pilgrim's setting-out," whilst in the last is contained the inexpressibly splendid description of that glorious "Celestial City," which it was the sole effort and aim of the spiritual traveller to arrive at. From these remarks in favour of Bunyan having derived his ideas and inspiration from the Scriptures alone, it will be proper in the next place to consult his own account of the origin of this very remarkable composition, which, in human language, ap. pears to have been purely accidental: it occurs in some of his most characteristic lines in the commencement of "The Author's Apology for his Book."

"When at the first I took my pen in hand
Thus for to write,-I did not understand
That I at all should make a little Book,
In such a mode: nay, I had undertook
To make another; which when almost done,
Before I was aware, I this begun.

And thus it was: I, writing of the way
And race of saints in this our gospel-day,
Fell suddenly into an allegory

About their journey and their way to glory."

If the date of the first impression of the Pilgrim's Progress were accurately known, there would probably be neither doubt nor difficulty in stating what was the work upon which the Author was employed when the thought of this allegory occurred to him. The tract was formerly considered to have been, very possibly, "The Heavenly Footman, or description of the man that gets to heaven, together with the way he runs in, the marks he goes by; and also some directions how to run so as to obtain." The epithet "Footman" is here used in the sense which it bore down to the end of the seventeenth century, namely, that of a domestic who runs before a carriage, or of a traveller on foot,-on account of the similarity between such a person and one who

66 runs and runs

Till he unto the Gate of Glory comes."

The following passage in that tract indicates some features of the Pilgrim's Progress, though it is now more probably ascertained, from unquestionable authority, to be noticed presently, that the work was written nearly twenty years before its supposed prototype. "Though the way to heaven," says Bunyan, "be but one, yet there are many crooked lanes and byepaths shoot down upon it, as I may say. And notwithstanding the kingdom of Heaven be the biggest city, yet usually those bye-paths are the most beaten : most travellers go those ways; and therefore the way to heaven is hard to be found, and as hard to be kept in, because of these." Dr. Southey rightly remarks that the works of Bunyan amount to about sixty books, which "have been collected into two folio volumes, but indiscriminately arranged, and without any notice of their respective dates; and this is a great fault; for, by a proper arrangement, or such notices, the progress of his mind might more satisfactorily be traced." The information which is here so much desired, has been almost completely supplied to the Author of the present work, in an original impression of a prospectus for printing the whole of the writings of Bunyan in two volumes folio, issued in 1691, only three years after his death, and one year before the edition which was published by