self-condemnation were the very venial crimes of dancing, bell-ringing, ballad-reading, and an eagerness for all kinds of sports and pastimes. True they were practised on the Sunday. According to the standard of the Book of Sports, however, that was a merit rather than a crime. But while to the ordinary observer Bunyan would only be known as a gay, daring young fellow, the ringleader at wake or merrymaking, ready, in Coleridge's words, 'to curse his own or his companions' eyes on slight or no provocation, and fond of a row,' from his earliest years his inner life, known only to himself, had been of a very different complexion. While still a child, but nine or ten years old,' he was racked with convictions of sin and haunted with religious terrors. He specially mentions 'the fearful dreams and dreadful visions' which scared and affrighted him in his childhood, and 'the apprehension of devils and wicked spirits' coming to carry him off which made his bed a place of terrors. The thought of the Day of Judgement and the doom of the ungodly crushed his spirit. In the midst of his games and pastimes with other boys-'vain companions' his morbid feelings led him to call them the recollection of these nightly horrors threw a cloud over his merriment. But it was only a passing shadow. After a while his feverish dreams left him, and the youthful pleasures to which he gave himself up unrestrainedly quickly cut off all remembrance of them as if they had never been. They, however, left their mark, and helped to shape his mind, which was naturally one of powerful imagination and vivid susceptibility, for the task which has made him famous.

The preservation of his life more than once under circumstances of imminent danger-‘judgements mixed with mercy' as he afterwards termed them-deepened the undercurrent of religious feeling. Twice he fell into the water and hardly escaped drowning. At another time his reckless daring brought him, as he mistakenly thought, near being stung to death by an adder1. But that which made the greatest impression upon him-' which,' says his anonymous biographer, 'Mr. Bunyan would often mention, but never without thanksgiving to God'— was the one incident preserved to us from his life as a soldier.

1 G. A. § 12 and note.

It is best told in his own words- -When I was a soldier I with others were drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it. But when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which when I consented he took my place, and coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a musket bullet and died' (G. A. § 13). We wish he had told us more. The name of the besieged place, and even the cause for which he took up arms, are left in complete obscurity. In the absence of definite information fancy has taken the place of fact, and a historical fabric has been built on a very sandy foundation. Leicester being the only town of the siege of which we have any certain evidence at this time suggested that it might have been the place referred to by Bunyan. An examination of the military history of the campaign, as has been shown by Dr. Brown1, leads to a very different conclusion, and proves that it is most improbable that a levy from Bedford should have served at Leicester, especially on the Royalist side 2.

Book of the Bunyan Festival, pp. 4-7.

2 In 1896 Mr. E. G. Atkinson, of the Public Record Office, discovered there a volume containing the muster-rolls of the parliamentary garrison of Newport Pagnell. John Bunyan's name appears in these lists. On November 30, 1644, he was a private, or, as it was then termed, a 'centinel,' in the company commanded by Colonel Richard Cockayne. On March 22, 1645, he appears in the list of Major Boulton's company; and he was regularly mustered in Major Boulton's company up to May 27, 1645. His presence at Newport on May 27, 1645, renders the theory that he was at the siege of Leicester impossible. According to Mr. Atkinson, Bunyan was still a member of one of the companies belonging to the Newport garrison as late as June 17, 1647. His military service, therefore, lasted about three years.

Facsimiles of the muster-rolls containing Bunyan's name are given in The Presbyterian for March 3, 1898.

Colonel Richard Cockayne, under whom Bunyan served, appears to have been a Bedfordshire man of some note. See Ed. Husband, A Collection of Orders, Ordinances, and Declarations, 1646 (vol. ii), p. 193; Whitelock, Memorials, ed. 1732, p. 168; ed. 1853, vol. i. p. 501. A book entitled Cockayne Memoranda, printed for private circulation in 1869 at Congleton, contains an account of the various branches of the Cockayne family. A second volume of the work by the same author, A. E. Cockayne, appeared in 1873.

When Bunyan's military career was over he soon returned o his native village, and presently afterwards changed his condition into a married state.' The date of this, his first marriage, is not known, but it seems to have been at the end of 1648 or the beginning of 1649, when he was not much more than twenty years of age. His marriage was a most imprudent one in all respects but one. He had nothing, and his wife was as illprovided with worldly goods as himself—' as poor as poor might be,' 'as poor as owlets,' to adopt his own image—without 'so much household stuff as a dish or spoon between them.' But though not seeking it he had the good fortune to light on a wife whose 'father while he lived was counted godly,' and who brought to her new home two pious books, as well as the fruits of a religious training. Such books would be entirely new reading to John Bunyan. Like most young fellows of his temperament, before his wife's loving influence had won him to more serious thoughts, he had found religious books distasteful. 'The Scriptures,' thought I, 'what are they? a dead letter, a little ink and paper of three or four shillings price. Give me a ballad, a news book, George on horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables. These books which Bunyan and his young wife read together over the fireside awoke the slumbering sense of religion in his heart, and produced some external reformation. A sermon on the sin of Sabbath-breaking, aimed, as he imagined, expressly at him, sent him home conscience stricken, 'sermon smitten,' and 'sermon sick,' as he expresses it elsewhere. But his Sunday's dinner, and perhaps a good glass of ale, soon dispelled his gloom, and he went out as before to play with the young men of Elstow on the village green. Yet in the midst of his game of tipcat or 'sly' he seemed to hear a voice from heaven asking him whether he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell; and thought he saw a threatening Face frowning down on him from the clouds. But, like his own Hopeful, he 'shut his eyes against the light' and smothered the reproaching voice, and concluding that his condemnation was already sealed, and that if he was to be eternally lost, he might as well have his fill of pleasure first, he returned desperately

1 Sighs from Hell; Works, vol. i. p. 501, ed. 1767

to his sport again (G. A. §§ 20–24). This despair and recklessness lasted with him about a month or more, till one day as he was standing at a neighbour's shop window, cursing and swearing, and playing the madman after his wonted manner, the woman of the house, though 'a very loose and ungodly wretch,' rebuked him so severely as 'the ugliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard,' that he hung down his head with shame, and though he still thought himself beyond hope of salvation, he then and there gave up the evil habit (G. A. §§ 26–28).

Soon after this the company of a poor godly neighbour led him to the study of the Bible, the historical parts of which he perused with much interest. St. Paul's Epistles and 'such like scriptures' he 'could not away with.' This Bible reading forwarded the reformation of life already begun. In outward things,' writes Lord Macaulay, he soon became a strict Pharisee;' 'a poor painted hypocrite' he calls himself. He was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons, and joined devoutly in the service, looking with the utmost reverence on the Church and all belonging to it, 'priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else.' His favourite amusements were one after another given up, though not without severe struggles. Bell-ringing was one of the hardest to relinquish, and after he had renounced it, he still went to look on at the ringers until the fear that if he persisted in sanctioning what his conscience condemned, a bell or the tower itself would fall on his head, compelled him to forego even that compromise. Dancing was still harder to give up. It was a full year before he could quite leave that (G. A. §§ 33-35).

But with all his sacrifices, which gained him great peace of conscience and supreme self-satisfaction, the conversation of a few poor women whom he overheard one day at Bedford when engaged in his tinker's craft, sitting at a door in the sun and talking of the things of God, showed him that he was still a stranger to vital religion. They were members of the congregation of Mr. John Gifford, who, from being one of the most debauched of the Royalist officers, had become minister of a Nonconformist Church at Bedford1. He himself had been 'a brisk talker' in the matters of religion, such as he afterwards drew

1 G. A. § 77 and note.

from the life in his own 'Talkative.' Their words, spoken with 'such pleasantness, and such appearance of grace,' opened 'a new world' to him to which he had been altogether a stranger. He went again and again into their company, and could not stay away (G. A. § 37). Religion became all in all to him. His mind 'lay fixed on eternity like a Horse-leech at the vein.' The Bible became 'precious' to him, and was read with new eyes; but through his ignorance, and the want of wise spiritual guidance, he was led by a misinterpretation of its words into strange fantasies, the wild coinage of his own brain, which went near to unsettle his intellect. He became the victim of his own ingenuity in self-torment. At one time the stress laid on faith as the essential requisite for salvation awoke a restless longing to determine whether he had faith or no. The test would be his ability to work miracles, and the temptation came strong upon him as he was going along the muddy road between Elstow and Bedford, to say to the puddles 'Be dry,' and to the dry places 'Be ye puddles,' and to stake his hope of salvation on the issue (§ 51). At another time he was harassed with the insoluble questions about predestination and election. How could he tell if he was elected? and if not, what then?' He might as well leave off and strive no further (§ 59).

Few of his religious experiences were the cause of more lasting trouble to him than a dream which he describes with much vividness, and which gives us a kind of prevision of the Pilgrim's Progress. In this he saw some enjoying themselves in the sunshine on one side of a high mountain, while he was shivering in the dark and cold on the other, and shut out from them by a high wall, with only a small gap in it which he had the greatest difficulty in struggling through (§ 53). Stranger fantasies still assailed him. 'All thought their own religion true. Might not the Turks have as good ground for thinking Mahomet their Saviour as the Christians had for Jesus Christ? What if all we believed in should be but "a think-so too?"' (§ 97). He had hard work to hinder himself from praying to everything about him, to the bushes, to a broom, to a bull, or even to Satan himself (§ 108). He wished himself a dog or a toad which had no soul to perish (§ 104), and when he would have given a thousand pounds for a tear could not shed one (§ 105). He was pursued by a hideous temptation to