NOTES.

In the poetical introduction to his allegory, Bunyan describes the origin of the work, his doubts as to its publication, and how his difficulty was increased by the varied counsel of his friends: and then proceeds to defend at considerable length his adoption of the allegorical style for the setting forth of religious truth. The pains Bunyan takes to meet and answer the objections to the character of his work evidences the distaste felt by the stricter Puritans for a form of composition so unusual in religious writing and savouring too much, it might be thought, of human ingenuity and the wisdom of this world. Bunyan evidently expected his book to be received with disfavour by his co-religionists, and can have been little prepared for the popularity it so speedily attained.

We have in this introduction-the origin of the work, spontaneous, not premeditated, vv. 1-18; when the author first began writing he did not purpose printing, vv. 19-34; when showed to his friends, some counselled its being published, some not, vv. 35-40; he determined on giving it to the world, vv. 41-60; the author defends, by sundry illustrations, the adoption of varied forms of composition to attain a good end, vv. 61-98; rebuts the charges of want of solidity, vv. 101-126; and of obscurity, vv. 127–158; he asserts his right to use metaphors, vv. 165–176; to adopt the form of dialogue, vv. 177-186; the correspondence of his style with that of Holy Scripture, vv. 187-192; and concludes by drawing out the profitableness of his book under sundry heads, vv. 193-236.

Line 2. Thus for to write. This reduplication of prepositions with the infinitive is now sunk into a vulgarism, e. g. ' I am going for to do it ;' 'He came for to see me', but it is really a survival of an ancient form of speech found in the Bible and Shakespeare as well as in our earlier writers, e. g.

'He bigan to schake ys axe for to smyte anon.'

Robert of Gloucester, p. 25.

And led hir unto France spoused for to be.'

Robert of Brunne, p. 30.

For he was late come fro his viage,
And wente for to don his pilgrimage.'

Chaucer, Prologue, v. 78.

In the Authorised Version of the Bible it is of not unfrequent occurrence; e. g. Gen. xxxi. 18, ‘And he (Jacob) carried away all his cattle, and all his goods which he had gotten...for to go to Isaac his father.' Exod. xvi. 27, Then went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.' Luke vii. 24, 'What went ye out into the wilderness for to see?' The explanation of this idiom is that the preposition to was regarded as an essential part of the infinitive of a verb, an inseparable inflection involving no sense of purpose. To express this the preposition for was prefixed, the reduplication being therefore only apparent, not real. Latham, English Language, ii. p. 419.

11. 7-18. We learn from this and the following lines that the Pilgrim's Progress in its first idea was no more than an illustrative episode in some other work of Bunyan's, which did not assume a separate form until the allegory, followed out for the gratification of his fancy, had grown to such an extent as to threaten to eat out' the book on which he was engaged.

1. 28. worser. We have here an example of excess of expression in a double comparative. This is no real vulgarism but an antiquated form very frequent in our early writers. It occurs repeatedly in Shakespeare; e. g.

'Your grandam had a worser match.'

Richard III, i. 3.

O throw away the worser part of it.'

Hamlet, iii. 4.

And is used even as late as Dryden, e. g.

A dreadful quiet felt and worser far
Than arms, a sullen interval of war.'

Worser is not found in the Authorised Version, but we have the double comparative lesser: Gen. i. 16, ‘The lesser light to rule the night.'

11. 31-32. The metaphor here is derived from spinning. In this the spinner having the wool or flax on the distaff takes hold of an end and draws it towards her, and twisting it between her finger and thumb to give it coherence,' still as pulls it comes,' in the form of a continuous thread.

1. 59. palliate, employed in an unusual sense, for to mitigate, to soothe. Its true sense is to cloke or cover. Lat. pallium, a cloke.

1. 76. angles. A fishing rod with a line and hook, from the AngloSaxon angel, a fish-hook. We find it in this sense in the Authorised Version, Isaiah xix. 8, The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast the angle shall lament; Hab. i. 15, They take all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net.' So too Shakespeare makes Cleopatra say,

'Give me mine angle; we'll to the river.'

And Hamlet upbraids his uncle for having

Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 5.

Thrown out his angle for my proper life.'

Hamlet, v. 2.

1. 79. The allusion here is to the way in which fish, especially trout and chub, are sometimes caught with the hand, by groping for them beneath banks, or under stones, or adroitly tickling them with the fingers. We have references to both modes in Shakespeare. In Twelfth Night, ii. 5, Maria says of Malvolio,

Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.' And in Measure for Measure, i. 2, we have

'Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.'

We find also in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Act. iii, ‘Be a baron and a bold one: leave off tickling of young heirs like trouts.'

1. 83. His Gun, his Nets, his Limetwigs, light, and bell. These references to the various artifices used by bird-catchers to take their game are best illustrated by the following passage from Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 34. 'Fowling,' says Burton (Jewel for Gentrie, London, 1614), 'may be performed with guns, limetwigs, nets, glades, gins, strings, baits, pit-falls, pipe-calls, stalking-horses, setting-dogs, and decoy-ducks. There is also another method of fowling which is performed with nets, and in the night time, and the darker the night the better. This sport,' writes Burton, 'we call in England most commonly bird-baiting, and some call it lowbelling; and the use of it is to go with a great light of cressets or rags dipped in tailow, which will make a good light, and you must have a pan or plate made like a lanthorn to carry your light in, which must have a great socket to hold the light, and carry it before you on your breast, with a bell in your other hand, and of a great bigness, made in the manner of a cowbell but still larger; and you must ring it always after one order,-if you carry the bell you must have two companions with nets, one on each side of you; and what with the bell, and what with the light, the birds will be so amazed that when you come near them they will turn up their white bellies: your companions shall then lay their nets quietly upon them, and take them. But you must continue to ring the bell: for if the sound shall cease, the other birds, if there be any more near at hand, will rise up and fly away.' 'Limetwigs' are twigs coated with birdlime, a viscid substance prepared from the inner coat of the bark of the holly, the berries of the mistletoe, &c., used for catching birds. The best twigs for the purpose are those of the willow and birch. These when trimmed and coated with the birdlime are fixed among other bushes, and birds are attracted to them by imitating the notes of call of their companions. When a bird has once settled on the lime twig its feet are held Ff

tenaciously by the viscid birdlime, and becomes the prey of the fowler. References to this mode of catching birds are frequent in Shakespeare ;

e. g.

"They are limed with the twigs that threaten them.'
All's Well that Ends Well, iii. 5.
'Like limetwigs set to catch my winged soul.'

And especially Suffolk's words to Queen Margaret:

2 Henry VI, iii. 3.

Madam, myself have limed a bush for her,
And placed a quire of such enticing birds,
That she will light to listen to the lays,
And never mount to trouble you again.'

2 Henry VI, i. 3. The pipe-call is thus

1.87. Yea, he must pipe and whistle to catch this. alluded to by Chaucer, 'So the bride is begyled with the merry voice of the fowler's whistel when it is closed in your nette;' Testament of Love, bk. ii. 1. 89. If that a Pearl may in a Toads-head dwell. The toad, writes Pennant, Zoology, iii. p. 15, was believed by some old writers to have a stone in its head, fraught with great virtues medical and magical. It was distinguished by the name of the reptile, and called the Toadstone, Bufonites, &c., but all its fancied powers vanished on the discovery of its being nothing but the fossil tooth of the sea wolf, or some other flat toothed fish not unfrequent in our island.' The beautiful allusion made by Shakespeare to this vulgar error is well known :

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in its head.'

As You like It, ii. Î.

The value of these toad-stones, most commonly found, we are told, in the head of a he-toad,' lay in the fact that they were not only specifics against poison taken internally, but being used in rings gave forewarning against poison by changing colour. Being of such great worth, many counterfeits were naturally palmed upon the credulous. To distinguish these from the true a very sure and easy method was prescribed: 'Hold the stone,' writes Lupton (Notable Things, Bk. vii.)' before a toad, that he may see it; and if it be a right and true stone the toad will leap toward it and make as though he would snatch it. He envieth so much that man should have that stone.'

1. 102. What of that I tro? I have adhered to Bunyan's spelling in preference to the more usual trow. This word, which has now dropt out of use, is found in one place in the Authorised Version in the sense of to think, believe, suppose: 'Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that