NOTES. THE FIRST PART. line 2. Where was a Den.—As explaining what he meant by this den, Page 9, Bunyan added the words "The Gaol" to the margin of the third edition of 1679. It is now tolerably certain that the Pilgrim's Progress was written in the small town gaol on Bedford Bridge, during a brief imprisonment of six months in 1675-76, and not during Bunyan's twelve years' confinement in the county gaol from 1660 to 1672. There were two gatehouses on the bridge; the one to the north, which was not far from the centre of the bridge, was the one used as a prison. There were steps under the prison chamber leading down to a small island in the river Ouse. The gatehouses were taken down in 1765 and the old bridge itself in 1811. line 9. He brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do? Page 9, -Bunyan describes his own feeling of despair as one day he sat down upon a settle in Bedford streets and fell into a deep pause about the state to which his sin had brought him: "After long musing I lifted up my head, but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give light, and as if the very stones in the street and tiles upon the houses did bend themselves against me."-Grace Abounding, § 188. Page 9, line 11. Page 10, line 19. Page 14, line 23. Page 15, line 2. Page 18, et seq. Page 19, line 22. Page 21, line 32. Page 29, line 7. Page 29, line 9. The passage beginning "In this plight," and ending with the words "What shall I do to be saved?" on p. 10, was first added to the second edition. Harsh and surly carriages. — Carriage formerly meant that which was carried, the baggage. "The carriages of an army are termed impedimenta."-Thos. Fuller. It came thus to be applied to the manner in which one person carried himself, as we say, towards another. Elsewhere Bunyan speaks of "Some carriages of the Adversaries of God's Truth with me." An endless Kingdom.—Similar descriptions of heaven to this given by Christian to Pliable are to be found in Bunyan's other works, Saved by Grace and Israel's Hope Encouraged. Seraphims and Cherubins.-In common with the Authorised Version Bunyan adds the English plural to the Hebrew plural -im and the Chaldee plural -in.-Gen. iii. 24; Isa. vi. 6. The whole passage relating to Worldly Wiseman was first added to the second edition. I beshrow him for his counsel.-To beshrew (Middle English bischrewen) means to imprecate a curse on, but it is generally a mild form of imprecation. Florio derives the term from the shrew mouse, to which deadly qualities were once ascribed. = Wot not what to do knew not, from A.S. witan, to know. Cf. Gen. xxi. 26; Phil. i. 22. Truly, said Christian.-The whole of this passage, to p. 30, line 2, ending in no wise are cast out, is first found in the second edition. Betterment.-Christian means that Pliable was no worse than himself. The word having a Latin termination is improperly formed. Cf. jumblement, rabblement. |