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 books 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, not 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 grey; his nose well set, but not declining or bending, and his mouth moderate 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 highly. 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 during Bunyan's imprisonment, which terminated 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 Ni-cholas Bod-ding-ton, but for Nathanael Ponder, at the Peacock in the Poultry, 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.

*

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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

*This immortal name appears to the sixth edition of the Second Part, "printed for Robert Ponder, and sold by Nicholas Boddington in Duck Lane, 1693."

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 books, 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," " has no

*"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.

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They were Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth, but they desired a better Country, that is an 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 Poultry. 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

other relation to the First than in its title, which was probably a trick of the publishers. These interlopers may very likely have given Bunyan an additional inducement to prepare a Second Part himself. It appeared in 1684, with this notice on the

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 de livering plain truth in a familiar manner, which should at the same time 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 esteem 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 might 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 Man 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 so. And withal I heartily wish, that what hath been formally proposed by some well-minded 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?"

back of the title page: "I appoint Mr. Nathaniel Ponder, but 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

In thine own native language, which no man
Now useth, nor with ease dissemble can.

And he might well be confident in it. His is a homespun style, not a manufactured one: and what a difference is there between its homeliness, and the flippant vulgarity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom Brown school! If it is not a well of English undefiled, to which the poet as well as the philologist must repair, if they would drink of the living waters, it is a clear stream of current English,—the vernacular speech of his

* The vulgarism alluded to consists in the almost uniform use of a for have,―never marked as a contraction, e. g. might a made me take heed,-like to a been smothered.

+ Let me not be understood as passing an indiscriminate censure upon Sir Roger L'Estrange's style. No better specimens of idiomatic English are to be found than in some of his writings; but no baser corruptions and vilifications than in some of his translations. I suspect that he was led into this fault by the desire of avoiding the opposite one into which his father had been betrayed.