of the way; and then, though they run as swift as the eagle can fly, they are benefited nothing at all!-Here is one run a Quaking, another a Ranting; one again runs after the Baptism, and another after the Independency. Here's one for Free-will, and another for Presbytery; and yet possibly most of these sects run quite the wrong way; and yet every one is for his life, his souleither for heaven or hell!-Mistrust thy own strength, and throw it away! Down on thy knees in prayer to the Lord, for the spirit of truth! Keep company with the soundest Christians that have most experience of Christ and be sure thou have a care of Quakers, Ranters, Free-willers: also do not have too much company with some Anabaptists, though I go under that name myself."

Little has been recorded of Bunyan during the sixteen years between his enlargement and his death. It appears that besides his yearly visit to London, he made stated circuits into other parts of England; that he exerted himself to relieve the temporal wants of those who were suffering as nonconformists under oppressive laws; that he administered diligently to the sick and afflicted, and successfully employed his influence in reconciling differences among "professors of the gospel," and thus prevented "many disgraceful and burdensome litigations." One of his biographers thinks it highly probable that he did not escape trouble in the latter part of Charles the second's reign "as the justices of Bedford were so zealous in the cause of persecution;" but it is much more probable that in a place where so much indulgence had been shown him during the latter years of his imprisonment, he was let alone; and there can be little doubt but that if he had undergone any farther vexation for the same causes, a full account of it would have been preserved. At Bedford where he was liked as well as known, he was evidently favoured in other places he would be exposed to the same risk as other nonconforming preachers; and there is a tradition among the Baptists at Reading that he sometimes went through that town dressed like a carter, and with a long whip in his hand, to avoid detection. Reading was a place where he was well known: the house in which the Baptists .et for worship was in a lane there, and from the back door they had a bridge over a branch of the river Kennett, whereby in case of alarm they might escape. In a visit to that place he contracted the disease which brought him to the grave. A friend of his who resided there had resolved to disinherit his son; the young man requested Bunyan to interfere in his behalf; he did so with good success, and it was his last labour of love; for returning to London on horseback through heavy rain, a fever ensued which, after ten days, proved fatal.

He died at the house of his friend Mr. Stradwick, a grocer, at the sign of the star on Snow Hill, and was buried in that friend's vault in Bunhill Fields' burial-ground, which the Dissenters regard as their Campo Santo-and espe cially for his sake. It is said that many have made it their desire to be interred as near as possible to the spot where his remains are deposited. His age and the date of his decease are thus recorded in his epitaph: Mr. JOHN BUNYAN, Author of the Pilgrim's Progress, ob. 12 Aug. 1688, at. 60.

The Pilgrim's Progress now is finished,

And death has laid him in his earthly bed.

It appears that at the time of his death, the Lord Mayor, Sir John Shorter,* vas one of his London flock. But though he had obtained favour among the magistracy, he was not one of those nonconformists who were duped by the insidious liberality of the government at that time, and lent their aid to measures which were intended for the destruction of the Protestant faith. "It is said, that he clearly saw through the designs of the court in favour of popery," (blind indeed must they have been who did not!) when James granted his indulgence to the Dissenters; and that "he advised his brethren to avail themselves of the sunshine by diligent endeavours to spread the gospel, and to prepare for an approaching storm by fasting and prayer.” "He foresaw," says the Baptist minister who added a supplement to his account of his own life, "all the advantages that could redound to the Dissenters would have been no more than what Polyphemus, the monstrous giant of Sicily would have allowed Ulysses-to wit, "that he would cat his men first, and do him the favour of being eaten last.”—“When regulators went into all the cities and towns corporate to new model the magistracy, by turning out some and putting in others," Bunyan laboured zealously with his congregation "to prevent their being imposed on in that kind. And when a great man in those days, coming to Bedford upon some such errand, sent for him, (as was supposed) to give him a place of public trust, he would by no means come at him, but sent

His earliest biographer says also, that "though by reason of the many losses he sustained by imprisonment and spoil, his chargeable sickness, &c., his earthly treasure swelled not to excess, yet he always had sufficient to live decently and creditably." But all that Bunyan had to lose by "spoil," was his occupation as a tinker, which fortunately for him and the world was put an end to earlier than in the course of his preacher's progress he could otherwise have cast it off. That progress raised him to a station of respectability and comfort; and he was too wise and too religious a man to desire riches either for himself or his children. When a wealthy London citizen offered to take one of his sons as an apprentice without a premium, he declined the friendly and advantageous offer, saying, "God did not send me to advance my family, but to preach the gospel." No doubt he saw something in the business itself, or in the way of life to which it led, unfavourable to the moral aracter.

His widow put forth an advertisement stating her inability to print the wings which he left unpublished. They are probably included in the folio edition of his works which was published in 1692, the year of her decease, by Bunyan's successor at Bedford, Ebenezer Chandler, and John Wilson, a brother minister of the same sect, who went in Bunyan's life time from the Bedford congregation to be the first pastor of a Baptist flock at Hitchin.

Three children survived him; there were none by the second marriage; *September 6, 1668. "Few days before, died Bunyan, his Lordship's teacher, or chaplain; a man said to be gifted in that way, though once a cobbler." Ellis's Corre. spondence, vol. ii., p. 161.

and the blind daughter, the only one whom it might have troubled him to leave with a scanty provision, happily died before him. He is said to have kept up "a very strict discipline in his family, in prayer and exhortations." Such a discipline did not in this case produce its usual ill effect; for according to what little is known of his children, they went on in the way they had been trained. His eldest son was forty-five years a member of the Bedford meeting; he preached there occasionally, and was employed in visiting the disorderly members; he was therefore in good repute for discretion, as well as for his religious character. The names of other descendants are in the book, of the same meeting; in the burial ground belonging to it his great-granddaughter Hannah Bunyan was interred in 1770 at the age of 76; and with her all that is related of his posterity ends.

A description of his character and person was drawn by his first biographer. "He appeared in countenance," says that friend, "to be of a stern and rough temper; but in his conversation, mild and affable, rot given to loquacity or much discourse in company, unless some urgent occasion required it; observing never to boast of himself, or his parts, but rather seem low in his own eyes, and submit himself to the judgment of others; abhorring lying and swearing; being just in all that lay in his power to his word; not seeming to revenge injuries; loving to reconcile differences, and make friendship with all. He had a sharp quick eye, accomplished with an excellent discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit. As for his person he was tall of stature, strong boned, though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes; wearing his hair on his upper lip, after the old British fashion his hair reddish, but in his later days time had sprinkled it with gray; his nose well set but not declining or bending, and his mouth moderately large; his forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest. And thus have we impartially described the internal and external parts of a person, who had tried the smiles and frowns of time, not puffed up in prosperity, nor shaken in adversity, always holding the golden mean."

Mr. Whitbread, father to the distinguished member of that name, was so great an admirer of Bunyan, that he left by will £500 to the meeting at Bedford, expressly as a token of respect for his memory; the interest to be distributed annually in bread to the poor of that meeting, between Michaelmas and Christmas. When Bunyan's pulpit bible was to be sold among the library of the Rev. Samuel Palmer of Hackney, Mr. Whitbread the member gave a commission to bid as much for it, as the bidder thought his father, had he been living, would have given for a relic which he would have valued so Lighly. It was bought accordingly for twenty guineas.

It remains now to speak of that work which has made the name of Bunyan famous.

It is not known in what year the Pilgrim's Progress was first published, no copy of the first edition having as yet been discovered: the second is in the British Museum; it is "with additions," and its date is 1678: but as the book is known to have been written durin Bunvan's imprisonment, which term

nated in 1672, it was probably published before his release, or at latest immediately after it. The earliest with which Mr. Major has been able to supply me, either by means of his own diligent inquiries, or the kindness of his friends, is that "eighth e-di-ti-on," so humorously introduced by Gay, and printed-not for Nicholas* Bod-ding-ton, but for Nathaniel Ponder, at the Peacock in the Poultrey, near the Church, 1682; for whom also the ninth was published in 1684, and the tenth in 1685. All these no doubt were large impressions.

This noted eighth edition is "with additions ;" but there is no reason to suppose that they were "new ones, never made before," for the ninth and tenth bear the same promise and contain no alteration whatever. One passage of considerable length was added after the second edition-the whole scene between Mr By-Ends and his three friends, and their subsequent discourse with Christian and Faithful. It appears to have been written with reference to some particular case; and in Bunyan's circle, the name of the person intended was probably well known. Perhaps it was first inserted in the fourth impression, "which had many additions more than any preceding :" this is stated in an advertisement on the back of the frontispiece to the eighth : where it is also said, "the publisher observing that many persons desired to have it illustrated with pictures, hath endeavoured to gratify them therein and besides those that are ordinarily printed to the fifth impression, hath provided thirteen copper cuts curiously engraven for such as desire them." This notice is repeated in the next edition, with this alteration, that the seventh instead of the fourth is named as having the additions, and the eighth as that which had the ordinary prints. I can only say with certainty that no additions have been made subsequently to the eighth, and no other alterations than such verbal ones as an editor has sometimes thought proper to make, or as creep into all books which are reprinted without a careful collation of the text.

The rapidity with which these editions succeeded one another, and the demand for pictures to illustrate them, are not the only proofs of the popularity which the Pilgrim's Progress obtained, before the second part was published. In the verses prefixed to that part Bunyan complains of dishonest imitators.

some have of late to counterfeit

My Pilgrim, to their own, my title set;
Yea others, half my name and title too,

Have stitched to their book, to make them do.

Only one of these has fallen in my way-for it is by accident only that books of this perishable kind, which have no merit of their own to preserve them, are to be met with: and this though entitled the Second part of the Pilgrim's Progress,"t has no other relation to the first than its title, which was

'This immortal name appears to the sixth edition of the second part, "printed for Robert Pouder, and sold by Nicholas Boddington in Duck-Lane, 1693."

"From this present world of wickedness and misery, to an eternity of holiness and felicity, exactly described under the similitude of a dream, relating the manner and occasion of his setting out from, and difficult and dangerous journey through the world, and safe arrival at last to eternal happiness.

It

probably a trick of the publishers. These interlopers may very likely have given Bunyan, an additional inducement to prepare a second part himself. appeared in 1684 with this notice on the back of the title page: "I appoint Mr. Nathaniel Ponder, out no other to print this book, John Bunyan, January 1, 1684." No additions or alterations were made in this part, though the author lived more than four years after its publication.

A collation of the first part with the earliest attainable copies has enabled me in many places to restore good old vernacular English which had been injudiciously altered, or carelessly corrupted. This has also been done in the second part; but there I had the first edition before me, and this it is evident had not been inspected either in manuscript or while passing through the press, by any person capable of correcting it. It is plain that Bunyan had willingly availed himself of such corrections in the first part; and therefore it would have been improper to have restored a certain vulgarism* of diction in the second, which the editor of the folio edition had amended. Had it not been for this consideration, I should perhaps have restored his own text. For Bunyan was confident in his own powers of expression; he says:

thine only way

Before them all, is to say out thy say

"They were strangers and Pilgrims on earth, but they desired a better country, that is a heavenly. Hebrews xi. 13, 16.

"Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us. Hebrews xii. 1.

"London, printed for Thomas Malthus, at the Sun, in the Poultrey. 1683."

The Author who signs himself T. S. dedicates this book "to Him that is higher than the Highest; the Almighty and everlasting Jehovah, who is the terror and confusion of the hardened and impenitent world, and the hope and happiness of all converted and returning sinners." At the conclusion is an apology for his book, wherein he says that the hope of delivering plain truth in a familiar manner, which should at the same tine satisfy the judicious and yet be understood by the meanest capacities and the most illiterate persons, was the motive "which put the author of the First Part of the Pilgrim's Progress upon composing and publishing that necessary and useful tract, which hath deservedly obtained such a universal estecin and commendation. And this consideration likewise, together with the importunity of others, was the motive that prevailed with me to compose and publish the following meditations in such a method as night serve as a supplement, or a second part to it: wherein I have endeavoured to supply a fourfold defect, which, I observe. the brevity of that discourse necessitated the author into first. there is nothing said of the state of man in his first creation; nor secondly, of the misery of inan in his lapsed estate, before conversion: thirdly, a too brief passing over the methods of divine goodness in the convincing, converting and reconciling of sinners to himself: and fourthly, I have endeavoured to deliver the whole in such serious and spiritual phrases that may prevent that lightness and laughter, which the reading some passages therein occasions in some vain and frothy minds. And now that it may answer my design, and be universally useful. I commend both it and thee to the blessing of Him, whose wisdom and power, grace and goodness, it is that is only able to make it And withal I heartily wish, that what hath been formally proposed by some wellminded persons, might be more generally and universally practised, viz., the giving of books of this nature at funerals, instead of rings, gloves, wine, or biscuit: assuring myself that reading, meditation, and several holy and heavenly discourses which may probably be raised upon the occasion of such presents as these, would mightily tend to the making people serious; and furnish not only the person who discourses, but the rest who are present. and who would otherwise be employing their thoughts and tongues too, in such foolish. vain and frothy discourse, as is too commonly used at such times, with such frames of spirits as may be suitable to the greatness and solemnity of that occasion which then calls them together. Amongst those few who have practised this, abundance of good hath been observed to have been done by that means; and who knows, were it more generally used and become a custom amongst us at our burials what good might be effected thereby ?"

80.

• The vulgarisin alluded to consists in the almost uniform use of a for have,-never marked as a contraction, as, night a made me take heed-like to a been smothered.