12. THE TABLE

First, the prologue, with the expoyon and enterpretacyon of the name of their myd reuerent father in God.

Item how man was made of vij partyes. Capitulo primo.

Item how almyghty god put adam into paradys, and of his first age. Ca.

Item the secunde age of mankynd, and howe yt sonnes of noe Byldeii the Toure of Babylon. Cap.

Item how man procedyd his thirde age, and of the synkyage of cyties. Ca.

Item howe Moyses recryugd ij tables of the lawe in the iij age of man. Ca.

Item howe byeg Salamon byllyd the temple of god in the Cytie of Jerusalem. Ca.

Item howe the ij age eudaryd telle che cosanyage of oure seutore. Ca.

Item how mankynd eudared and of the nombre of yeres from the begyanyage of the world to the byrhe of criste. Ca.

Item howe almyghty God was pylzrym for iij causes and howe he gnoe mankynd ensemble to do his pylgrymage. Ca.

Item which iij syngder poynty apperteyne to a pylzyne. Ca.

Item howe mankynd entereth the londe of Jane at the age of ix. Ca.

Item an exposition autorysed by Scripture of yt conception of seynt J. th bapyr. Ca.

Item howe mankynd entereth into a kyngdome namyd the londe of July and parte of the marterdome of seynt Thomas of coontorhury. Ca.

Item a parable of auctorytie of the hooly order of seynt Beret. Ca.

Item how mankynd entereth the empyre of august and of the abundante welle that there is. Ca.

Item howe mankynd entereth and goeth thorowe the d'And me of September. Ca.

Item howe mankynd entereth into the londe of October at the age of a C. yere. Ca.

Item how mankynd entereth the berury of Nonombre. Ca. Item howe mankynd entereth the lordship of December. Ca.

Item howe mankynd goth thorowe the londe of January and of the strastye that coste. Ca.

Item howe mankynd entereth the londe of February. Ca. Item howe man procedyth his pylgrimage in and thorowe the londe of Marche. Ca.

Item howe Batayle was mayntaynd byreene sol Justice and pleto duke o tenebris. Ca.

Item howe vyse toke the fowarde on his party, and howe sol Justice fed. Ca.

Item howe sol justicie turned agayne and dyscumlyte vyse and wanne the feld. Ca.

Item the concluyon of this boke. Ca. Here eudeth the table.

'We hym folowyage a full good spede.

Shortly arose the skry, some humane.

And so sure for matter in dide.

voured to trace its prototype in earlier works, it was a perfectly spontaneous and original effort of the genius of its unlettered author.' See Annals of Common Typography, p. 265.

THE PILGRAM'S PROGRESS.

Uyee with his felyshyp faste layed on

That voce mea was agast scone.

Theane oure capfryne Sol iustirie.

With In manus tins aw-y dyd flye.

In to a darke vale that was nygh hy.

But yet at the dreyre and specyall request.

Of a gracyouse man rallyd domine exaudi.

He came agayze and shortly in kaste.

To ayde us there came one hyeng faste.

Whiche is rallyd with all and some.

Benedictus qui veult ad prelium.

So he sets out with Beatus vir for a guide, and enters the land of June—a royal land, full of pleasures and fruits, of which he eat plentiously in every lane; then came to a place held by the 'Pope of June,' where was the cleanest castell in

Xtendom, called, 'castell of corpus xii.'

'Of whiche indulgence by suctorytye

The founder is called by natural sect

Of the romaynes romanus pontifex,' where man could be healed from worldly wretchedness and sinful sore.

His guide then led him to dominus illuminatio for a safeconduct in all the lands they should visit:—

'So for to purchas a perfyte wryte.

To soule justicie we toke our way.

Sealed to hane oure safe condyte.

And he shortly sayde not nay.

But also hane us of his lymery.

A feecyble garment Joyntly compyled.

With fayth and hope that we exiled.'

They then come to a monastery, &c.

Emprynted at London by me Richard Faques, dwellyng in Poulys churche yerde at the sygne of the Maydyubed.

The informacym for pilgrymes unto the holy lande,

That is to wyt to Rome, to Jherusalem and to

Many Other Holy Places. Imprinted by Wynkin de Worde. 1524.

This rare volume is a band-book for pilgrims; gives the routes, coin, conveyances, fees, and other instructions to those who were going on any distant pilgrimage. It also contains the narrative of a pilgrim in his journey to the Holy Land.

Sixty-six pilgrims sailed from Venice in one ship; they visit

Jerusalem and other places in the Holy Land. He gives the pronunciation of useful words to enable future visitors to ask for bread, wine, &c. It is a very rare tract, but there is nothing allegorical about the narrative, which is simply of the facts as they took place.

The next allegorical work in chronological order, representing life as a pilgrimage, is

The Historie of Graunde Amoure and la bell Pucel;

called the Pastime of Pleasure, containing the

Knowledge of the Seven Sciences, and the Course of Man's Life in this World. Invented by

Stephen Hawes, Grome of King Henry the

Seventh his Chamber. Printed by John Waylande, 1554. Small 4to.

Such is the rarity of this volume, that, although it wants six leaves, it bears this inscription on the fly-leaf, 'I bought this Volume at Mr. Bindley's sale, January 21st, 1813, for the inordinate sum of forty guineas. James Boswell' (Author of the

Life of Dr. Johnson).

Mr. Hallam, in his Literature of Europe, gives a good account of this poem:—'From the title we might hardly expect a learned allegory, in which the seven sciences of the trivium and quadrivium, besides a host of abstract virtues and qualities, play their parts in living personality. It is rude, obscure, full of pedantic Latinisms, but learned and philosophical. The best, though probably an unexpected, parallel for Hawes, is John Bunyan;

their inventions are of the same class, various and novel; their characters, though abstract in name, have a personal truth about them; they render the general allegory subservient to inculcating a system, the one of philosophy, the other of religion.

I do not mean that the Pastime of Pleasure is equal in merit, as it certainly has not been in success, to the "Pilgrim's Progress." Bunyan is powerful and picturesque, from his concise simplicity; Hawes has the common failings of our old writers—a tedious and languid diffuseness, an expatiating on themes of pedantry in which the reader takes no interest, a weakening of every feature and every reflection, by ignorance of the touches that give effect. Hawes was educated at Oxford, and travelled much on the Continent, and held an office in the Court of

Henry VII. He was the earliest of our learned and accomplished gentlemen.'

Hawes's work was the result of a learned education, great connections, an extensive knowledge of the world, and singular ability; still Mr. Hallam justly admits that the 'Pilgrim's Progress' is greatly superior as a work of genius, although

Bunyan was not blessed even with the rudiments of education, no literary connections, and his travels extended not beyond his neighbouring villages.

How extensive and prolific must have been the natural powers of Bunyan's mind! But compare the moral tendency of those two allegories: Hawes's inspiration is from beneath, strongly tinged with the smoke of the infernal pit; Bunyan is inspired by heaven, his whole course is illuminated from the celestial city. His pilgrims breathe a heavenly atmosphere; every line of his narrative has a holy, and, consequently, a happy tendency. Hawes derived his knowledge from worldly philosophers,

Bunyan from the Bible.

The Pastime of Pleasure is a narrative of the adventures of a love-sick knight, in search of a lady named La Bell Pucel.

He is directed to the Tower of Doctrina, where he is told that

1 Retrospective Review, vol. ii. p. 327.

he must become proficient in the seven liberal sciences, in order to win his lady.

Walking in a gay meadow, he finds a statue, whose hands point to two paths, one of contemplative life. —

'And in the other hande, rycht fayre wrytten was

This is the waye, of worldly dignitye

Of the actine lyfe, who wyll in it passe

Unto the tower, of fayre dame beautye

Faine shall tell him, of the way in certaintye

Unto la bell pucell, the fayre lady excellent

Above all other, in cleare beauty splendent.'

In pursuit of this beautiful virgin he chooses the path of active life, and sets out:—

'Thus all alone, I began to transyle

Forthe on my waye, by long continuance

But often times, I had great marsyle

Of the by pathes, so full of pleasance

Whiche for to take, I had great doubtance

But euermore, as nere as I myght

I toke the waye, whiche went before me right.'

On his journey he falls asleep, and is awaked by the sound of a horn. A lovely lady, on horseback, rides swiftly up to him, accompanied by two greyhounds, with their names set in diamonds upon their collars—Grace and Governaunce. The lady proves to be Faine; she presents to him the two greyhounds, praises La Bell Pucell, and instructs him how to attain her in the Tower of Music, and she informs him that he will have great labour, and must pass through hard adventures before he will attain his object:— 'For by the waye, there lye in waite

Gyantes great, disfigured of nature

That all desoureth, by their euil conseite

Against whose strength, there may no man endure

They are so huge, and strong out of measure

With many serpentes, foule and odious

In sundry likenesse, blacke and tedious

But beyond them, a great sea there is

Beyonde whiche sea, there is a goodly land

Most fall of fruite, replete with ioye and bliss

Of right fine golde, appeareth all the sande

In this faire realme, where the tower doth stand

Made all of golde, enameled about

With noble stories, whiche do appeare without.'

He at length arrives at the castle, when the portresse thus questions him:—

'Tyll that I came to a royall gate

Where I sawe standyng the goodly portres

Whiche axed me, from whence I came alate

To whom I gan, in euery thing expresse

All myne adventure, chnunce and busines

And eke my name, I table her euery dell

When she hearde thys, she liked me rycht well.'

The portress, whose name was Conutenance, introduced him into the castle, and in the Fair Hall, upon the arms, is portrayed the perils he will have to encounter; that Folly will beset his path, but that Correction will follow:—

'And in her hande, a strong knotted whippe

At every carte she made him for to skippe.'

He finds that he will have to destroy a giant with three heads, another more fierce with four heads, and a third still more terrible with seven heads, and at length he will win and wed La Bell Pucell. The principal officers in the castle are thus named:—

'The marshall, ychipped was dame Reason

And the yeures, also observance

The punter Pleasance, at euery season

The good Butler, curtys continuance

And the chiefe coke, was eulled temperance

The lady chamberlayne, named fidelitye

And the bye stewarde, Liberalitye.'

He is then sent in succession to Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and at length to Music. In the Temple of Music, he sees and falls deeply in love with La Bell Pucell. She returns his love, but informs him that he will have to brave many desperate adventures before they can be united. He promises to fit himself for all that may happen, and goes to Clivary—he is taught by Minerva—harnessed and knighted:— 'For first good hope, his legge harneys should be

His habergion, of perfect righteousness

Gyrde fast, wyth the girdle of chastitie

His rich placarde,¹ should be good busines

Brodered with almes, so full of larges²

The helmet mekenes, and the shekle good fayeth,

His swerde Gods worde, as S. Paule sayeth.'

Postitude, Consuetude,³ Justice, Misericorde, Sapience, Curtesye, Concord, and dame Minerva see him on his road, and bid him farewell. His first adventure is with a Kentish man, Godfrey Gobillon, who gives an account of his parentage in these lines:—

'Ich am a gentilman, of much noble kynne

Though Iche be ciadde, in a knaues skynne

For there was one, called Peter Pratefest

That in all his life, spake no worde in waste

He weddid a wife, that was called Maude

I trow quod I, she was a gorgious boude

Thou liest, quod he, she was gentle and good

She gaue her hubande, many a furde hode

And at his meales, without any misse

She would him serue, in elenly wise iwys

God loue her soule, as she loued cleulines

And kept her dishes, from all foulene

When she lacked clowtes, without any fayle

She wyped her dishes, with her dogges tayle.'

The conversation that ensues between these worthies, on the misfortunes of lovers, exceeds for gross indelicacy the tales of Chaucer. Grand Amour continues his journey, and becomes a regular Jack the Giant-killer. His first adventure was with a monster twelve feet high, with three heads. These he decapitated; and is then attacked by a second and more formidable giant, fifteen feet high, with seven heads, named, Dissimulation, Delay, Discomfort, Varnaunce, Fury, Detraction, and Doubleness; all these he cuts off, and is then received and entertained by seven fine ladies. His next fierce encounter is with demons. Pallas instructs him how to fight with them. He attacks and slays the great dragon—wine La Bell Pucell, and is married to her, and enjoys great happiness, until he is quietly removed by death to purgatory, where, having been purified, he goes to heaven. ¹ 'Placarde,' a stomacher or breastplate, frequently ornamented with jewels.

² 'Larges,' a bounty bestowed, a large gift.—Imp. Decr

³ 'Conusetude,' custom, common law or equity, as distinguished from statute law or justice.

In vain have I endeavoured to discover the intention of the author in this allegory. His editor says, that it was to stimulate young men to study the seven liberal sciences! Its natural effect would be to stimulate them to licentiousness. These were the class of books given to the people by the church, in preference to the Bible.

We now come to a very rare pilgrimage, written in Italian, and entitled Libro del Peregrino, by J. Cauice, dedicated to Lucresse Borgie.

The edition in my library is 'El nouamente stampato et hystoriato, small 8vo, with woodcuts, Venice, 1524.' I have also a translation into French, by T. Dassy, Secretary of State to the King of Navarre; it is called Le Peregrin: traictant de L'honneste et pudique amour, par pure et sincère Vertu. It is elegantly printed in black letter, with woodcuts, small 4to, Lyons, 1528, and from it the following analysis was made:— The pilgrim, a native of Ferrara, at the age of twenty-two years on May-day, attended to hear a Dominican Friar preach. Divine love lay in ambush, and the eloquence of the preacher pierced his heart. He passed a restless night—speaks in silence, and at length cries out, O life more miserable than death: his thoughts wound him and he is wretched. Under the character of a lady named Geneure, the daughter of Anguilo (the Virgin Mary, queen of angels), to that time unknown to him, is personated that which alone can cure his wounded spirit. This lady is very wise and modest, young, but ancient in prudence, and very difficult to obtain. He becomes very desirous of obtaining her, and his pilgrimage is made with this object. Through the aid of Geneure's nurse, Violante, he corresponded with her, and sought an interview. He is directed to a subterrancous passage, by which he hopes secretly to reach her house in the night, but mistakes the chamber, and enters that of another young lady, named Lyonore (the hennes), the daughter of Petruccio (the thirty), and mistook her for Geneure. This sad adventure with Lyonore involves him in great trouble. It came to the knowledge of Geneure, and she weeps for her pilgrim's treason; but is comforted by her mother (the blessed Virgin), who tells her that it is natural to man to go astray. Geneure threatens to enter a nunnery, and submits to her mother that the vows of obedience and poverty are of sovereign virtue. The pilgrim, before Geneure entered upon her noviciate, met her accidentally at church, and proposes marriage, his faults are forgiven, they become united, and pass their time in great happiness, until death separated them. If Bunyan had been able to have read this quaint old Italian or French story, he would never have devoted his valuable time to such a mass of rubbish; and if he had, not the slightest idea could have suggested itself to have assisted him in composing the adventures of his Pilgrim. In fact, he dared not to have spent an hour over a book, which, under the title of The Pilgrim, contains all the looseness of an Italian love-story. This book was for some time very popular. I have two Venice editions, in 8vo, printed in italics,

1524 and 1527. I have seen also a similar edition not dated, and one of 1538. There is also a very handsome one of the French translation, printed by Gallist, Du Pres, Paris, 1528, and another in 1540. Niceron thus accounts for its popularity, 'Ce livre faisait en France, au commencement du règne de François I., les délices de la jeunesse, et donnait lieu aux prédicateurs d'on blamer fortement la lecture comme dangereuse.' It is a matter of great regret that those who write and publish for the millions, too frequently circulate opinions and supposed facts without personal investigation. Mr. Chambers, the popular publisher at Edinburgh, whose works find readers as far as the English language is known, has joined those who appear to detract from Bunyan, by charging him with plagiarism. In his Encyclopedia of Literature, speaking of Gawin Douglas, the Bishop of Dunkirk, a celebrated Scottish poet, he observes, 'The principal original composition of Douglas is a long poem, entitled, The Palace of Honour. It was designed as an epilogue for the conduct of a king, and therefore addressed to James IV. The poet represents himself as seeing, in a vision, a large company travelling towards the Palace of Honour. He joins them, and narrates the particulars of the pilgrimage. The well-known "Pilgrim's Progress" bears so strong a resemblance to this poem, that Bunyan could scarcely have been ignorant of it.' With some trouble I found a copy of this very rare tract by Douglas. It is a short poem, but being in the ancient Scottish dialect, it is quite long enough to weary an Englishman's patience. Had it been Douglas's long poem, a translation of Virgil, it would have defied any attempt of mine to read it; but, by the aid of a good modern glossary, I read it through, and, to my extreme surprise, found that it has not, either in the plot or detail, the slightest similarity whatever to the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and that it is written in terms that a poor unlettered minister could not have understood. The principal character in the story is represented as being in a desert, when, hearing the noise of an approaching cavalcade, he gets into a stock [a hollow tree], and sees them pass. He then follows them to the Palace of Honour, and gives a description of what took place. Had Bunyan seen and read the following stanza, and understood it, how indignant would he have felt at the author's notion of baptismal regeneration:— 'Ze bene all' borne the sonnis of Ira I ges

Sine thro' Baptisme getts grace and faithfulness.

Than in zone Carwell surely ze remane,

Oft stormeated with this warl his bruichices

Quhill that ze fall in sin and wretchitness

Than schip brokin sali ze drown in endles pane

Except be faith ze find the plank agane

Be Christ, wirking gude warkis I understand

Remaiue thairwith, thir sali zow bring to laud.'

1 Hist. des Hommes illustres, 44 tom. Paris, 1725.

2 Vol. i. p. 44. 6 Ibid.

Surely Mr. Chambers could not have imagined that the representation of a large party going up a hill of polished marble, and on the summit seeing the infernal regions as narrated in the following verses, could have aided Bunyani in his solemn account of the Christian's feeling in the Valley of the Shadow of Death:—

'As we approach near the hills head

Ane terribill seweh birnand in flammis reid

Abbommbill, and how as hell to se

All full of brunstone, Pick and bulling Loud,

Quhair mony wretchit creature lay deid.

And miserabil cations zelland loude on hic

I saw, quaille den micht weill compaunt be

Till Xanthus the flude of Troy as schill

Birnand at Venus best contrair Achill.

Amid our passage lay this vielle sicht

Nocht braid bot as horribill to eueroi wicht

That all the warkd to pas it suid haue dreid.

Weill I consuiderit na vppermair I micht

And to discend as hiddcous was the hicht

I durst not suenture for this eird on dreid.

Trimbland I atude wt teith chatterand gude speid

My Nymphe beheld my chirr and said let be

Thow sail nocht aill, and lo the cans (quod ache)

To me thou art commit, &c.'

There may be as much poetic beauty in these lines as there is melody in the drone of the barpipe, but there is not the slightest similarity, nor even any idea in the whole poem, that could by possibility have aided the author of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

The Pryke of Conscience.¹

A very curious old English poem; it is theological and descriptive, but not allegorical.

The Myrrour of Lyfe, by William of Nassington, 1418.²

An ancient English poetical treatise on religion; excepting the title, it has no pretence to allegory.

Castellum Amoris. Le Chateau D'Amour, by Robert Grosteste.

A fine copy of this curious poem, in Norman French, is in the British Museum.³ It narrates the creation and fall of man, the four daughters of God, Mercy, Truth, Patience, and Peace, unite to devise the means of man's restoration. The divisions are—I. The Prophets predict. II. The Saviour is born in the great Palace of Love. III. The Palace is described with its keepers. IV. Satan attempts to overcome the keepers. It is a very curious poem, and is called at the end, Scala Caris. I venture to give a specimen of this singular composition, and have selected the following, because it treats upon the subject of baptismal regeneration, which at present occupies so much of the public attention. The author was evidently of that party who pretend to believe that the God of love will send a pour babe to everlasting misery, if its parents neglect or refuse to have it christened!! As the French is old and contracted, a translation is added:— 'O baptize trestour fussent 'They were then baptized

Et nomi Deo pater et In the names of God the Father

Deo da. and of the Son

¹ Brit. Mus. Bib. Egert. 846. B.

² Brit. Mus. Eg. 657.

³ Brit. Mus. Roy. Lib. 17, c. viii.

Et du saynt expiritz

Kar qi baptize ne serra

Ca en cel ne enterz

Mes ci eresut cy baptize

Serroat mys a assuste.'

And of the Holy Ghost

For whoever is not baptized

He in heaven shall not enter

But those created in this baptism

Shall be put into salvation.'

Scala Perfeccionis Enplyshed. The Ladder of Perfeccion, written by Walter Hilton, about 1380.

This was one of the most popular of the monkish writings, and so much esteemed in the reign of James II., as to have been published by the court to promote the influence of papery in these realms; it was then very much altered, and not improved.

The only allegory in it is the Ladder, placed upon the earth to ascend by steps to heaven. It was intended for monks and nuns, to guide them in devotional exercises, so that their affections might be gradually raised from earthly things. It is the most scriptural of all the monkish manuscripts, but the evangelical truths are omitted in the more modern printed editions. Thus he says, if we were only infected by original sin, and had escaped the pollution of actual transgression, we must have perished but for the sufferings of Christ.⁴ To speak for thy profit and my own, 'say I thus that thou neuer so moche a wreche, hadest thou done neuer so moche syn, for sake thi self and al thi werkes gode and bail, cry mercy and sake oneli saluation be vertue of the precious passion mekelt and trusteli and with outyen doute thou schait bane it, and fro this original syn and al other that thou have done thou sal be saf.'⁵ Dr. Dibdin considers this a wild and dangerous exposition of the consoling doctrines of the Christian religion made by an enthusiastic writer.⁶ Hilton gives a faithful warning against placing dependence upon happy feelings, unless they arise from a living faith. 'I had rather feel, and have a stelfast desire and a pure spiritual union with my Lord Jesus, though I cannot see him with my ghostly eye, than to have without this desire the fruit of all the bodily penance of all living men, or all the visions and revelations of angels' songs and sounds.' 'Jesus leadeth the soul into itself. The secret voice of Jesus is fully true,' 'My sheep heat my voice, and I know them, and they know me.' There is no feigning in it, nor fantasy, nor pride, nor hypocrisy; but softness, meekness, peace, love, and charity. And it is full of life, love, and grace; and, therefore, when it soundeth in the soul, it is sometime of so great might, that the soul suddenly layeth off hand all that there is, praying, speaking, reading, or thinking, and all manner of bodily work, and luteeth thereto, fully hearing and perceiving, in rest and in love, the sweet steues of this spiritual voice, as it were ravished from the mind of all earthly things. Sometimes Jesus showeth himself as a master, sometimes as a father, and sometimes as a lore'y spouse; and it keepeth the soul in a wondering reverence, and a lovely beholding of him, that the soul liketh never so well as then.'⁷ It is delightful to meet with such beams of the Sun of righteousness in a dark age, like the day-spring from on high, breaking through a dismal night with its cheering rays.⁸

⁴ Copied from a fine and perfect MS. in the Editor's library, chap. xlv.

⁵ Typographical Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 37.

⁶ Melody, from 'streuen,' or strain.

⁷ Cap. xlv. part 2.

⁸ It is very surprising that so little appears to be known of this good man; he was a Carthusian monk of Sion, or Sheun, and author of about twelve different works.

*The Pilgrimage of Perfection*; supposed to be written by William Bond. 4to, printed by Pynson, 1526.

A fine copy of this rare book is in the extensive and valuable library of my kind friend, the Rev. J. H. M. Luxmoore, rector of Marcweil, near Wrexham, by whose permission the following analysis was made:—

This work is more particularly intended for the monastic orders, to promote what, in those days, were called pious feelings; by which it was intended to treat the gifts of providence, the comforts, and even necessities of life, with contempt; to obtain from reasonable engagements; to retire into solitudes where no relative duties could be performed; lacerating the body; submitting the soul, with blind obedience, to the will of men; a looking forward with dread to the future; contemplating the God of love, not as the forgiver, but as the avenger of sin; and to which may be added, that climax of pride, fanaticism, and folly, in which Jews, Mahometans, and all antichrist glory—that there is no salvation out of the pale of their own sect. The volume commences with the tree of grace and the tree of vice; under the branch of avarice, a man is told to Note pt a pen or a rubell kept contrary to pe tommaunbement of their sourcame it is bamphable.

It is divided into two parts: first, 'sheweth howe the lyfe of every cristian is as a pilgrimage: second, the journey of religion—man is never contented in the cage of this world, wherfore it appereth that ther is an byer cage and another place for his full contentation.'—'As the icwes spayled Egipt of their richesse, so the christians have spayled both icwes and philosophers of the noble veriters of philosophy.' 'In heuen every man and woman shalbe as an emperor and empesse.'

The journey begins with the sacrament of baptism, professing by it to be pilgrims; openly forsaking the devil, pomps, mortal sins, honours, riches, and pleasures; for daily sustenance, is given the blessed body of our Lord in the sacrament, by which these pilgrims are raised above nature to immortal glory. Jn. vi. 53 is thus translated:—'Except ye eat the flesh of the son of the virgin, and drink his blood, ye cannot have life in you,' but it is silent as to the cup being denied to the laity. 1 Pe. ii. 2, 3, is thus translated:—'As infants and young children: whom our mother, holy church, hath brought forth, by the regeneration of baptism in the faith of Christ Jesus.' Then follow very extensive instructions to the pilgrims, without any attempt at allegory. Many portions of Scripture are given, but they are strangely translated. The Lord's prayer:—'O father in heuen delyuer vs frd all euyll of peyne and syne. Suffre vs nat to be onerthrown in temptacion. Forgyue vs our offences as we forgyue them that hath offended vs. Gyne vs our dayly sustenance and necessities. Thy wyll be fullylled in erthe, as it is in heuen. Thy kyngloone come to vs. Thy holy name be santifyed.' 1 Co. iii. 13:—'But yet (as saynt Poulæ sayth) the fyer of purgatory must prone his works.' When suffering pain from fasting, he advieth that such pain be allayed by using these words:—'Ah, caryon earian and wormes meate: what vauntage shalte thou haue, ever to stuffe and fyll the greedy guttle of thy bely with delicate meretes and drinke which damn the soule.' Praying to our blessed Lady and to the saints is ordered, because Job was commanded to 'call to some of the sayates of heuen, and they wil answers,' Job v. 1. In the ten commandments, the second is omitted, and the tenth is divided into two, to make up the number. The Virgin Mary can obtain blessings for us, because 'The mother of God, sheweth to her son her papper and brestes, with the which she gave hym suckle! therefore make supplication to her, to have mercy on this present church militant, reloue, socoure, and helpe it.' The heavenly anthem is translated:—'Glory be to god in heuen, and peace in erthe to man or woman, that hath a good wyll,' Lu. ii. 11. The pilgrimage is divided into seven days, and on the seventh the soul approaches to perfection; and here the feelings or experience of the pilgrims strongly remind us of some modern sects, such as the Irvingites—'Some in this vswott ioye haue been compelled to syng, some to wepe, some coude nothinge speke; but Jesu, Jesu, Jesu. Some coude nat saye so moche, but onely expresse suche voyces, that he nat in use to signify any thyny: one Massens in such ioye coude speke nothing but v v v.' With the Quakers, 'Some other in such jubile, tryunbled or quaked in all the ioytes of their bodyes.' Like the Ranters, 'Some were cocatrayned to leupe and daunce for ioye, and some to clappe their handes.' Some have arrived at so high a state of mortification, that if asked 'whether they coude be contested, for the love and pleasure of god, and to fullyl his wyll, to lye for euermore in the paynes of hell, without remedy, thy wode answers: ye with all their bertes.' In such a state was St. Bernard, who was ravished before the cross when the body 'losed itselfe from the cross, and halesd' and kysed hym most sweetly; the holy Brigit was lifted up in the sire, and her face was made to shyne brighter than the sonne!!! The reader need not be told that Bunyan could have had no help from this impure source.

*The Pype, or Tonne of the lyfe of perfection.* 4to, 1532.

This is an allegorical work for the instruction of nuns, written by the old wretch of Sion, and although it is not a pilgrimage or a dream, it is a guide to female pilgrims. Under the idea of wine being kept in a pipe or tun, is represented:—1. The life of perfection, as the wine. 2. Religion, the pipe; 3. Essential vows, obedience, wilful poverty, and chastity, the staves. 4. Holy rules, the hoops; 5. Ceremonies, the wickets, by which the hoops are made fast. If these wickets fail, the hoops open, the cask falls to pieces, and the wine is lost: all depends upon the ceremonies. This curious book was published to prevent the spread of heresy 'by news fangle personæ,' aided by the New Testament, which had then been about six years in circulation in England, for 'Luther, with all his disciples, deprive all maner of religyons, except onely (as they call hit) the religion of Christ. Wherefore I thought it necessary to answer the perilous poison of such blisters.' The work is divided into three parts: 'Of Obedience,' 'Wylfull Poutric,' and 'Chastite,' being the three great vows made by the nuns to whom it is addressed. 1. Of Obedience. Without implicit obedience, there is not the slightest hope of salvation. This related, not only to the obedience due by nuns to the pope, the priest, and the abbess, but also to the obedience due by a wife to her husband. If married ladies acted in the same spirit then as they do now, might not the sorrowful inquiry have been made, 'Lord, are there [even a] few that be saved?' 'Kynges as sone as they were converted and baptized, left their dyademen and were 1 'Halsed,' bowed the head, embraced, saluted.

2 Richard Whytford, a monk in the monastery of Syon, near Richmond, on the banks of the Thames.

subjects unto the clergy, and under their obedience; a peculiar kind of antinomianism reigned in the church; 'I say, that no temporal lawe maye byrde any spiritual person. This have we said vnto Tyndale that arche heretike.' Some of the rules and examples show that cuns were and women, who could 'braule and chide, eat and drynke to excess'—'they be in right great jeopardy of nawfrage' and wracke of chastite.' Obedience in ecclesiastical payments is enforced by a very odd translation of Nu. svui. 22:—'Those person's that welde not be obedient duly to pay theyr tythes, were judged by our Lord vnto deth,' and whether God, or the vicar of God, gave any manner of commandment, it is all one, and by like reverence to be performed, 'our lorde god, in maner makyng the prelates and sourreynes equall with hymsele.' The extent of obedience is thus illustrated:—'that man that in obedience to his sourreyne dyd caste his owne chylde quicke into a bole flumyge ouen has now laude, prayse, thanke, and grace, because he was obedient as he would have had indignation of god and vengeance if he had not obeyed.' 2. Of Wylful Puertrie. This vow was so strict that no monk or nun was to consider their clothes their own, but the property of the establishment; and, to terrify the poor votaries, a story is told, fol. cc., of a monk that did appear after his death to one of his companions, showing that he was in marvellous great pains, 'for bycause he gave a payre of olde aboves vnto a pere body without leane.' All the efforts and threats to prevent the monks from getting money was in vain; and our unhappy author laments that there are few monasteries in England but where the monks lend and borrow; play for money at all manner of games; dice, cards, bowls, and sometimes at worse or more inconvenient things, while the nuns enjoy their gains, make good cheer, sing and laugh, play and sport, and be as merry as lay people. We close our account of this singular volume by extracting a curious version of Ps. cxxxvii. 9:—'Blessed be that person that doth hold and restrain his children, and that doth thrust and crush their head unto the stone, that is unto Christ and his passion and death.' No one can for a moment suppose that Bunyan could have gained a hint from this volume.

Viaggio Spirituale, nel quale, facendosi passaggio da questa vita mortale, si ascende alla celeste. Del R. P. Cornelio Bellanda, di Verona, 4to, with the Aldine mark. Venetia, 1578.

This spiritual pilgrimage, from mortal life to the celestial, has nothing in it allegorical, but in ten chapters treats of penance, confession, the judgment, heavenly blessedness, &c. It is a very rare volume, elegantly printed by Aldus, jun.²

The Vision of Pierce Plowman.

'I am inclined to think,' says Mr. D'Israeli, in his Amenities of Literature, 'that we owe to Piers Ploughman, an allegorical work of the same wild invention from that other creative mind, the author of "Pilgrim's Progress." How can we think of the one, without being reminded of the other? Some distant relationship seems to exist between the Ploughman's Donnell and Dobet, and Dobet, Friar Platterer, Grace, the Portress of the magnifi¹ 'Nawfrage,' shipwreck.

² In the Editor's library. See Rewonerd Annales, de l'Imprimerie des Ailes, vol. i. p. 297.

cent Tower of Truth, viewed at a distance, and by its side the dungeon of Care, Natural Understanding, and his lean and stern wife Study, and all the rest of this numerous company, and the shadowy pilgrimage of the "Immortal Dreamer" to the "Celestial City." Yet I would mistrust my own feeling, when so many able critics, in their various researches after a prototype of that singular production, have hitherto not suggested what seems to me obvious. Such a notice by so popular a writer, led me very closely to examine this severe satire. It is written in language that to Bunyan would have been almost as impenetrable as Hebrew or Greek. It is a very curious poem, composed about the time of Wichiff, by one of the Lollards, said to be by Robert Langland. In a poetical vision or dream, he exposes and reproves vice, and extols Christian virtue. 'The printer [R. Crowley, 1550] states, that it was written in the time of Edward III., when it pleased God to open the eyes of many to see his truth, giving them boldness of heart to open their mouths, and cry out against the works of darkness. This writer feigneth himself in dreams most Christianly to instruct the weak, and sharply rebuke the obstinate blind. He godlily, learnedly, and wittily rebuked vice in all classes.' There is nothing in this very interesting book that could, in the slightest degree, have aided Bunyan, if he had been able to read it. It presents a melancholy picture of the state of the clergy, and of society generally, at that time; and, according to his account, pilgrims were very sad story-tellers. 'Pilgrames and Palmers plyeht hem tocyther

For to seke S. James and sayntes at Rome

They west foeth theyr way, wyth many wyse tales,

And had leaue to lye all hyr lyfe after.'

The hermits appear to have had a still worse propensity—

'Hermets on a brape wyth holed elaues

Wenten to Walsingham, and her wenches after.'

Mr. D'Israeli must have been dreaming when he imagined the slightest resemblance between Piers Plowman's Vision and the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' either in the plan, or in any of the details of this curious poem.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Were told on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas's-Becket; and it is evident that these pretended holy journeys were full of vice and profligacy.

Erasmus, On the Religious Pilgrimages.

The very droll colloquy of Erasmus, called the Religious Pilgrimage, is preceded by an account of a shipwreck, when all the passengers and crew are calling each on his patron saint, promising pilgrimages and offerings. Among them—'one vowed to St. Christopher, in the great church at Paris, "as loud as he could howl," that he might be sure to be heard, a sore candle, as big as himself, and he was rather a mountain than a statue: a friend gave him a touch. Have a care what you promise, says he, for if you should sell yourself to your shirt, you are not able to purchase such a candle. Hold your tongue, you fool, says 'tother, softly, for fear the saint should hear him; let me set foot a land once, and he has good luck if he get so much as a tallow candle of me!' This pilgrimage has a long letter from the Virgin Mary, written by one of her secretaries, in droll terms, complaining that it is of no use that hundreds should pray to her at once, for she could only hear one at a time, and had no power to assist her worshippers. No one can suppose that Bunyan gained any hint from such satirical works as these.

Spenser's Fadry Queen.

To this work Dr. Adam Clarke considered Bunyan to have been indebted for some ideas in his 'Pilgrim,' or 'Holy War.' It must require no ordinary degree of penetration to discover that which is, to many, perfectly concealed.

This is a very long but elegant allegorical poem, composed of seven legends: 1. The Knight of the Red Cross, or Holiness. This gallant knight, properly experienced and accoutred, rides forth with Truth, represented as a fair lady; his first adventure is with a monstrous dragon called Error, who is slain. They take refuge in the cell of an aged sire, who acted the part of a holy hermit, but proved to be a most unholy enchanter; he calls spirits from the vasty deep, and transforms them into a gallant knight and a beautiful woman. He kindles a flame of jealousy in the breast of the red cross knight, so that he abruptly quits his fair companion, and in his journey meets with a knight called 'Sans Foy,' they fight, and Sans Foy is killed, and a lovely lady, his companion, is taken captive; she proves to be 'Falsehood.' He is taken prisoner by the contrivance of Falsehood, and is thrown into a dungeon in the castle of Giant Orgoglio, where he lies in despair for three months. Truth induces Prince Arthur to attack the Giant, whose body disappears when he is slain after a fearful combat, he relieves the red cross knight from a cell. 'Where entered in, his feet could find no floor,

But all a deep descent, as dark as hell,

That breathed ever forth a filthy banffull smell.'

He is then led to a house of holiness, and is taught repentance. Our knight then seeks and fights the old dragon fend for three successive days, and kills him. He visits the infernal realms; sees what the classic poets have described; meets again with his lady Truth, and his adventures close with their marriage. The next legend is that of Temperance narrating the exploits of Sir Guyon. He attacks and overcomes Furor, Incontinence, and Mammon. He recounts from a friar's book 'a chronicle of Breton's Kings.' His startling description of our forefathers is a good specimen of his versification and stature. 'But for in land a salvage nation dwelt

Of hideous giants, and halfe-beastly men,

That never tasted grace, nor goodness felt,

But wild like beasts lurking in lothsome den,

And flying fast as roebucke through the fen;

All naked without shame or care of cold,

By hunting and by sparing liveain,

Of stature huge, and eke of voyage bold,

That source of men amazed their sterness to behold.'

Temperance is besieged, but relieved by Prince Arthur. Then follows the legends of Britomartis, or Chastity: all the chapters are headed with poetical contents; as—

'The witches soane loves Florimell,

She flyes; he faines to dy.

Satyreon saves the squyre of Dames

From Gyautes tyranny.'

The other legends are of friendship, justice, courtesy, constancy, and mutability. The first legend of Holiness is the only one that bears the slightest resemblance to any part of the 'Pilgrim' or 'Holy War.' In this we have a battle with the old dragon fiend, a descent into hell, and being a prisoner in a giant's castle. It is not at all likely that Bunyan could have found time, even had he the incantation, to have read the Fadry Queen. His poetry is from the school of Francis Quarles, and not of Spenser. The knightly hero seeks the old dragon fiend; the pilgrim is sought by Apollyon. Apostolic injunctions would naturally lead our allegorist Bunyan to portray the dreadful combat. 'The devil, as a roaring lion, walneth about, seeking whom he may devour,' WIDOW KNIGHT. Clothed in the armour described in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and wielding the sword of the Spirit, his final success was certain—'resist the devil, and he will flee from you.' Such texts, with his own experience of the saint's conflict with the powers of darkness, naturally suggested the fight with Apollyon, without the aid of any uninspired author. All Spenser's imagery of the Infernal Regions is taken from Ovid, Virgil, and Dante. But the pilgrims' fears, while passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, depict the author's personal feelings, and the experience of David. 'The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.' PLACE 2 The strong language of Job (A. w.). 'A dreadful sound is in his ears; he believeth not that he shall return out of darkness;' and the emotions of the psalmist, 'an horrible pit and the miry clay,' led to an intensity of feeling, under doubts and fears, which knightly poetry, however elegant, could never have engendered. Spenser was a philosopher well acquainted with heathen literature, from which his images are drawn. While Bunyan, shut out of the enticing treasures of human learning, possessed in that Inspired Volume, which was his daily solace under severe privations, the most noble model for his allegorical imagery, he neither wanted, nor could he have gained, the slightest hint from Spenser. Le Voyage du Chevalier Errant. Par. F. J. do Cartheny. Written about the year 1311, 8vo, Anvers, 1557. Published in English under the title of The Voyage of the Wandering Knight. Showing the whole course of Man's Life; how apt he is to follow Vanity, and how hard it is for him to attain to Virtue. Devised by John Cartheny, a Frenchman; and Translated out of French into English by W[illiam] G[oodycare] of Southampton, Merchant; a work worthy the reading, and dedicated to Sir. F. Drake, Knt. London, Printed by Thos. Snodham, 4to. No date, but about 1611. (See Herbert, p. 1022.)

The knight determines to seek the palace of true felicity, and first trace riches pleasure, and humour, but he adds, 'I was a very a fool in this as he who hoped to catch fish by raging in the air, is bent the here with bounds in the open sea.' Under the guidance of Folly, he obtained from an armour named Ex Lowell, a shirt of lasciviousness, a doublet of head desires, known of vain pleasures, armour of ignorance, a coralet of inconsistency, vambraces of arrogance, gaundlets of illness, a gurgel of levitiousness, a helmet of lightness, a buckler of shamelessness, a gilt-cap of vain-glory, a girdle of intemperance, a sword of rebellion, and a lance, named Hope of Long-life. 'Then Pride prepared me a galloping horse, called Temerity. At last Folly apparelled herself lightly with a cloak of feathers, and mounted upon a jenet; and opening her feathers and wings with the wind, away she flew, and I also, at a wild adventure, set spurs to my horse, and away we went both.' During their rule, Folly tells him her triumphs in such gross terms, that the knight found fault with this insatiable empress, and calls her some very supolite names; but not having received God's grace, he was unable to forsake her. They come to two paths, one a goodly green meadow; the other rocky, narrow, and full of mountains; and here met with two elegant ladies, on chargers richly caparisoned. Lady Veluptiousness pictures to him the pleasures of idleness, with all worldly delights; and Lady Felicity, the advantages of industry and virtue. As the husbandman could expect no corn unless he prepared the ground and sowed the seed; so that man is marvellously misinformed who thinketh to achieve true blessedness unless he prepares his way by virtue and good deeds. But while Reason preferred the good advice of Felicity, Folly persuaded, and led him to the palace of Veluptiousness. The palace is minutely described, with all its wanton and luxurious enjoyments. After leading a beastly life eleven days, he goes out hunting accompanied by his gay ladies; when suddenly the palace sucks into the earth, yielding such an air of brainstorm, that the like hath not been felt. The knight 'sank into a beastly bog up to his saddle,' and his companions changed into serpents, snakes, toads, and venomous worms. He fell into despair, howled, and scratched his face, he tried to vain to get out, and found 'that after a man he once sank in sin, he will not be able to recover himself unless he have the help of God's grace.' After bitter repentance, he prays; and a splendid lady, called God's Grace, relieved him, and he left Temerity his horse, and Folly his governess, in the bog to fish for frogs. 'Thus you see that God's grace draweth us from sins without any merit of ours; howbeit not without an inward heart-grief and sorrow for sin, which is a special gift of God's grace.' His new guide showed him the ruins of the palace of worldly Felicity converted into a great bed of iron, red dot, upon which his late companions were tormented. He is then led to the school of repentance, which is surrounded with a moat, called Humility. Here all his follies are brought to his remembrance; he sees what torments he had deserved for them, and was half in despair. Portions of Scripture are exhibited, which comfort and convert him. Understanding, now preaches him a sermon on the history of Mary Magdalene. The knight then receives the communion, and is carried to the palace of Virtue. The third part of the voyage describes the happiness with his felt in company with Lady Virtue. At length Faith, from the top of a tower, shows him the city of heaven. It concludes with a prayer, the creed, and ten commandments, and an exhortation to perseverance until the knight shall attain the glorious city of paradise.

Although this work was doubtless intended for good, yet such is the indelicacy of many of its scenes, that it was more calculated to excite evil passions than to lead an inquirer to happiness. The way of salvation is confined to moral observances, without that spring of virtue which flows from faith in Jesus Christ, and its consequent evangelical obedience. There is no similarity between this Voyage and the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' except it be the foresight of the heavenly paradise, which has been, and is, one of the enjoyments of the real Christian from the Revelations of John to the present time. There is no ground for supposing that the persecuted Bunyan ever saw this Chevalier Errant. Whitney's Emblems. 4to, Leyden, 1586; pp. 179.

The cut over one of the emblems represents a man swimming, with a pack upon his back.

'Desire to haue, dothe make vs muche indure,

In trauayle, toile, and labour voide of reste.

The marchant-man is caried with this hare,

Throughe scorching heate, to regions of the Easte:

Oh thixte of goulde, what not? but thou canst do:

And make me: a harter for to consent thereto.

'The transiler poore, when shippe doth suffer wracke,

Who hopes to swimme vnto the wished laude,

Dothe venture life, with fardle on his backe,

That if he scape, the same in steede maye stande.

Thus, hope of life, and loue vnto his goods,

Houdes vp his chinne, with burthen in the floods.'

Another emblem has a cut, representing a pilgrim with his staff leaving a globe [the world] behind him, p. 225. Peregrinus Christianus loquitur.

Adm' deceptfull worlde, thy pleasures I detest:

Nowe, others with thy thoues deinde, my hope in heaven doth rest.

Ialarged as followeth:—

'Even as a flower, or like vnto the grasse,

Which now dothe stande, and straight with sithe dothe fall,

So is our state: now here, now hence wee passe:

For, time atteodes with shredding sithe for all.

And deathe at lengthe, both oulde, and yonge, doth strike:

And into dust dothe surne vs all alike.

'Yet, if we marke how swifte our rare dothe roune,

And waighe the cause, why wee created bee:

Then shall we know, when that this life is donee,

Wee shall bee sure our countrie right to see.

For, here wee are but stramgers, that must ditte:

The nearer house, the nearer to the pitte:

³ Mr. Lowndes, in his Bibliographical Manual, note that Bunyan, in his 'Pilgrim's Progress,' was much indebted to this Wandering Knight 'I

⁴ Adieu

¹ Stockings.

² Armour for the arms.

O happie they, that pondering this arighte,

Before that here their pilgrimage bee past,

Resigne this world: and marche with all their might

Within that pathe, that leades where joyes shall last.

And whilst they may, there, treasure vp their store,

Where, without rust, it lastes for euermore.

This worlde must change: That worlde, shall still indure.

Here, pleasures fade: There, shall they endlesse bee.

Here, man doth sume: And there, hee shalbee pure,

Here, desthe hee tastes: And there, shall neuer die.

Here, bathe bee griefe: And there shall joyes possess.

As none hath seene, nor anie barte can gesse.'

These are the poems from which Mr. Montgomery conceives Bunyan might perhaps have inspired his first idea!

The other of Whitney's Emblems upon pilgrimage, is under a cut representing Mercury and two men travelling upon a road.

'The transylinge man, uncertain where to goe,

When dicers wayes before his face did lie,

Mercuries then, the perfect pathe did showe,

Which when he tooke, he neuer went awrie,

But to his wishes, his iorneys ende did gaine

In happie howre, by his direction plaine.

'This transilinge man: doth tell our wandrige state,

Before whose face, and eeka on curry side,

Hypathes, and wayes, appear amid our gate,

That if the Lorde bee not our onlie guide:

We stumble, fall, and daine goe astraye,

Then happie those, whome God doth shew the waye.'

The Pilgrimage to Paradise. Compiled for the Direction, Comfort, and Resolution of God's poore distressed Children in passing through this irksome Wilderness of Temptation and Tryall. By Leonard Wright. 4to, London, 1591.

Full of sound instruction, but not allegorical.

Benoist (Father-Confessor to Mary Queen of Scots),

Le Chevalier Chrestien.

This is a dialogue between a Christian knight and an infidel, whom he attempts to instruct in the knowledge of God and the Romish faith. It has cuts representing the knight's horse, and the various parts of his armour and habiliments, which are spiritualized. Some of these instructions to an infidel are curious, 'Comme l'Eglise, secoud Paradis, à esté plantée et est contenue en la Vierge, monde mystique.' 'De la descente de Jesus Christ en enfer, ou il a remporté encore une autre victoire sur Satan, brisant ses persons, et deliverant les Præss qu'il y tenoit captif.' This is the true meaning of the deservit into hell in what is called the Apostles' Creed. Among other curious discoveries which the author makes is, that if Adam had not been persuaded to sin by his wife, his posterity would not have been corrupt! The Pilgrimage of Princes. By L. Lloid, one of Queen Elizabeth's Sergeants-at-Arms.

There is nothing allegorical in this entertaining volume. It is a pilgrimage to the characters and works of princes, which are curiously exhibited. A few are in poetry, such as that of King Herod:

'When Herod reigned in Juda king

His life so loathsome led,

On sucking babes and infants blood,

This cruel tyrant fed.

To seek our Saviour Christ, he kill'd

The Babes of Juda land;

And thought our God could not escape

His fomic bloody hand.

Of worms this Herod was devoured,

Of vermin loe, and mire:

His bones, his flesh, was all consumed

And eaten up of Lice.'

The Plaine Man's Path-way to Heaven. By Arth. Dent. 1601.

There is a rare tract under this title in black letter, with a woodcut of the author, 12 leaves; but the book that was made a blessing to Bunyan is a small octavo volume. This little book made a considerable part of the worldly goods which Bunyan's first wife brought as her portion, and it became one of the means by which he was awakened from the dreary sleep of sin, and therefore an invaluable portion. It is singular that no one has charged him with taking any hints from this book, which is one of the very few which he is known to have read prior to his public profession of faith and holiness in baptism. The author, in his epistle, calls it a 'controversie with Satan and Sione.' It is a dialogue between 'a Divine, an Honest Man, an Ignorant Man, and a Caviller.' They commence about buying a good cow, then worth four pounds, and are drawn into religious conversation. The author is so high a Calvinist, that, speaking of infants, he says, 'some, no doubt, are saved through the election of grace.' He commences with the new birth: arguments are adduced to show why good and worthy men are lost, because they esteem a preacher no more than a shoemaker, nor the Scriptures than their old shoes. He places lying among the principal sins, which he calls the Beelzebub of the world. He introduces very familiar illustrations and well-known proverbs. Speaking against pride, he says, 'How proud many (especially women) be of baddies. For when they have spent a good part of the day in tricking and trimming, pricking and pinning, pricking and pouncing, girding and lacing, and braving up themselves in most exquisite manner, out they come into the streets with their pedlar's shop upon their backs and take themselves to be little Angels—they are one lump of pride—the time will come when they and all their gay clients will be buried in a grave—what will all this profit them when their bodies are buried in the dust and their souls in hell-fire? what then will they say of these doubled and redoubled cuffs, strutting fardigales, long locks, fore tufts, shag barre and new fashions?' He complains of two marks being paid for a pair of stockings [£1, 6s. 8d.] 'What say you to our artificial women, which will be better than God hath made them? they like not his bandy work, they will mend it—they will have other complications, other hair, other bones, and other . . . than God made them.' Modern refinement prevents one of these words from being copied; but the monstrous deformity shown by some ladies of our day, appears 1 Edit. Ronco, 1609, 8vo, p. 97. 2 P. 160. 3 P. 48.

then to have been in fashion. Dent calls such ladies pictures, puppets, and peacocks. Had Bunyan been a plagiarist, how readily might he have borrowed an idea from Dent of the Muck-rake. 'The gripple muck-rakers had as love part with their blood as their goods. They will pinch their own backs and bellies to get their god into their chest.' But Bunyan's Muck-rake is all his own. 'Many lazic lozels and luskish youths do nothing but walk the streets, sit on stalls, and frequent Ale houses. Many rich women do ordinarily lie in bed till nine of the clock, and then forsooth rise, and make themselves ready to go to dinner. And after they have well dined, they spend the rest of the day, and a good part of the night also, in playing, prutting, babbling, cockling, prating, and gossiping. 'I've on this idle life.'¹ The enmity of the natural man against those who bear the image of Christ is thus expressed: 'It is a wonder to consider how deadly the wicked hate the righteous, and almost in every Thing oppose themselves against them; and that in most virulent and spiteful manner. They raide and slander, scoffe and scorne, mocks and mows at them, as though they were not worthy to live upon the earth. They esteem every pelting Rascall, and prefer every vile Varlet before them. And though they have their lives and liberty, their breasts and safety, and all that they have else by them [for their sake], yet for all that, they could be content to este their heart with garluke: so great, so fiery, so burning and hissing-hot is their fury and malice against them. They may be compared to a man that standeth upon a bough in the top of a tree, and with an axe chopped it off, and therewithal falleth down with it, and breaketh his necke.'² Dent, speaking of the entrance by the strait gate, says: 'It must be done by great strife against the world, the flesh, and the Dinell—none can enter in without vehement crowding and almost breaking their shoulder-bones—many which seek shall not bee able to enter.' How different to Bunyan's description: 'Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.' Yet both are right: one places his obstacles long before the pilgrim arrives at the gate; then, having overcome the world and the flesh, the devil shoots at him; the other reserves all the Christian's opposition to the time when entering the gate. Dent's language is picturesque: 'We have all the Dinels in hell against us, with all their horns, heads, marvellous strength, infinite wiles, cunning devices, deep sights, and methodical temptations. Here runs a sore streams against us. Then have we this present ruil world against us, with her innumerable baits, snares, netts, gins and grins to catch us, fetter us and entangle us. Here have we profites and pleasures, riches and honour, wealth and preferment, ambition and countousness. Here comes in a Camp-royall of spiritual and invisible enemies. Lastly we have our flesh, that is, our corrupted nature against us: we have our selves against ourselves.' This book was written fifty years after the Reformation; but so slow were the clergy to teach, or the people to learn, that when a former is asked, 'What is the end of receiving the sacrament?' he answered, 'To receive my maker.' And when asked how many sacraments there were, his answer was, 'Two, Broad and Wine!' Bunyan must have felt the force of such language as the following: 'Every sin that a man commiteth is as a thorn thrust deep into the soul; which will not be got out again but with many a sigh, and many a sorrowful Oh! Oh! Every sin is written with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond upon the conscience, which, if not felt in this life, then with woe, and alas! when it is too late.' The farmer being deeply affected with a sense of his danger, Atheist advises him to read 'The Court of Venus, The Palace of Pleasure, Bees of Southampton, Ellen of Rumania, The Merry Jest of the Friar and the Boy, The Pleasant Story of Clem of the Clough, Adam Bell, and William of Cloudesley, The Odd Tale of William, Richard, and Humphrey, The Pretty Concert of John Splinter's Last Will—excellent books against heart qualms and dumplishness.' To which the zealous minister replied: 'They are good to kindle a fire—they were devised by the devil, seen and allowed by the Pope, printed in Hell, bound by Hobgoblins, and published in Rome, Italy, and Spain.'³ This volume must have been exactly suited to the warm imagination of Bunyan. It had proved invaluable to him as a means of conversion; but, after a careful and delightful perusal, no trace can be found of any phrase or sentence having been introduced into the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

The copy which the Editor has used in extracting the above account is the nineteenth impression, 1625, and has the name of M. Bunyonn written on the bottom of the title; probably the very volume which his wife brought him as her dowry.⁴

The result of long, anxious, and expensive inquiries is, that, from the first idea to the completion of his 'Pilgrim's Progress,' it entirely flowed from Bunyan's own soul. Well might he say—

'Manner and matter too was all mine own.'

Sir Walter Raleigh's Pilgrimage. Written by himself, and published in his remains.

'Give me my scalop shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation.

My gown of glory, hope's true page,⁵

And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

Blood must be my body's only balmer,

No other balm will there be given;

Whilst my soul, like a quiet Palmer,⁶

Travelle's towards the land of Heaven.

Over the silver mountains,

Where springs the nectar fountains,

There will I kiss the bowl of bliss;

And drink mine everlasting fill

Upon every milken hill.

My soul will be a dry before,

But after it will thirst no more.

I'll take them first to quench my thirst,

And taste of nectar's suckets,

At those clear wells, where sweetness dwells,

Drawn up by saints in chrysal buckets.

Then by that happy blestfull day,

More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,

That have cast off their rags of clay,

And walk appareled fresh like me;

And when our bottles and all we

Are fill'd with immortality.

¹ P. 170.

² P. 221.

³ Pp. 371, 372. Edit. 1625.

⁴ In the Editor's library.

⁵ 'Gage,' a pledge or challenge to combat.

⁶ 'Palmer,' a pilgrim, from their carrying a branch of palm, especially on return.

Then the blest ports we'll travel;

Strowed with rubies thick as gravel.

Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire flowers,

High walls of corn, and pearly bowers.

From thence to Heaven's bribeless hall,

Where no corrupted vices brawl;

No conscience molten into gold,

No forged seccuser bought or sold.

No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey,

For there CHRIST is the king's attorney;

Who pleads for all without degrees,

And he hath Angels,¹ but no feet;

And when the twelve grand million jury

Of our sins, with direful fury,

'Gast our souls, black verdicts give,

Christ pleads his death and then we live.

Be thou my speaker (taintless pleader,

Unblotted Lawyer, true proceeders)

Thou would'st salvation e'en for aim,

Not with a bribed lawyer's palms.

And this is my eternal plea

To him that made heaven, earth and sea,

That since my flesh must die so soon,

And want a head to dine next noon,

Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread,

Set in my soul an everlasting head.

Then am I ready, like a Palmer, fit

To tread those blest paths which before I writ,

Of Death and Judgement, Heaven, and Hell,

Who oft doth think, must needs die well.'

The Plain Man's Pilgrimage, or Journey towards Heaven, wherein if he walks carefully he may attain to everlasting life. By W. W[ebster]. 1Smo, 1613.

First, To set out on the journey, we must get rid of covetousness. Second, For speed, we must begin young—give God the heart, and number our days. We have a long journey to go in a short space of time—a day. A short life is like a winter's day; a long life like a day in summer. One of his similes is far beyond ordinary comprehension. 'For as the windows of the temple were large within and narrow without; so they which are within the church have greater light than they which are without.' Another extract will show the doctrinal views of the author. 'We must put on his (Christ's) righteousness, which is as strange a vesture to us, as our flesh was to him; it requires great cunning to wear it cleanly and comely, from foyling² and reading it, lest it should be taken from us again.' The author gives much good advice as to searching the Scriptures and prayer, but there is nothing allegorical in this rare little volume.

The Pilgrim.

This old comedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher, could afford no hint to Bunyan, and it is very probable that he never wasted one of his precious minutes over a play.

To a late period, and even to the present day,

¹ 'Angels,' gold coins, one-third of a sovereign, afterwards raised to ten shillings; or the spirits of heaven.

² 'Foyling,' pressing, creasing, rumpling.

in Roman Catholic countries, the word pilgrim is only understood as relating to a meritorious pilgrimage to the shrine of some saint. In the Glossographia Anglicana, 1719, the meaning of the word pilgrim is 'one that travels upon account of religion, to visit holy places; to pay his devotion to the relics of dead saints.' The principal places were Rome, Loretto, Jerusalem, Compostella, and the local shrines with which every country in Europe abounded. In former times it was a duty inculcated upon all classes, from the king to the peasant, from the archbishop to the humblest clerk, all bent beneath the custom of the times; and two visits to a neighbouring shrine were considered equivalent to one at double the distance. Such as were unable to go in person, gave money to have the duty performed by proxy. A dream or vision, a penance ordered, or a vow made in the hour of danger, were frequently the prelude to a pilgrimage, and the belief was general, that if they were not made during life, they might, with greater trouble, be performed after death. 'Some went for payment of a vow

In time of trouble made,

And some who found that pilgrimage

Was a pleasant sort of trade.'³

Frequently two hundred thousand pilgrims were at Loretto at one time. They formed processions round the palace of our Lady, on their bare knees, five, seven, nine, or twelve times. We can scarcely credit the accounts of the number of devotees who practised all sorts of vices, going and returning, to secure the pardon of sin, by visiting the shrine, and invoking the aid of the saint—so besotted and intoxicated were mankind made by the Church. In six months, from January to June, 1435, the King of England granted licenses to two thousand eight hundred and fifty pilgrims, to Compostella alone; and it is impossible to give any idea of the myriads of Europeans who perished on pilgrimages, especially to the Holy Land. The church constantly prayed for these votaries, as the Church of England now prays for those who travel by land or by water. The Rev. W. Acworth, at a meeting of the Bible Society, related an anecdote, which may be useful to travellers in popish countries.⁴ 'A gentleman who had travelled before me from Rome, had with him some Bibles, Testaments and tracts, on the top of which he had placed good old John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. When the package was opened, the Douanniers examined this book, and not being very good English scholars, they knew not what to make of the title, Bun—Bun—Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress!' 'What is that?' said one; ⁴ Southey.

⁵ Report, May 1836, p. 392.

"Oh," replied the other, "tis some work on the advantage of pilgrimages;" and consequently the whole were immediately allowed. Now, I had my regular passport; but I venture to say, that good John Bunyan's Pilgrim was a better passport for the Bible than any other which could have been found on that occasion.

The Pilgrim's Practice, containing many Gully Prayers. By Robert Bruen. 8vo, Lond. 1621.

The Pilgrim's Profession.—This is accompanied by The Pearl of the Gospel; with a glass for Gentlemen to dress themselves by. By Thomas Taylor, D.D. 8vo, 1624.

There is nothing allegorical in these volumes.

The Pilgrim of Casteole; written in Spanish, translated into English; 4to, 1623; and republished many times.

This is a romance, probably invented in English. It represents a lover in the disguise of a pilgrim. He suffers shipwreck, and is picked up by some fishermen, who must look him, when covered with weeds and mud, for a fard of cloth, but found it to be the pilgrim in a trance. They restore him to strength, and he enters upon some very extraordinary adventures. In his journey, he gives a good illustration of the then popular faith in haunted houses. Being benighted, he found a lodging in a hospital, deserted in regard of a strange nephews which every night was there heard, which hath happened ever since the death of a stranger who came thither to lodge, nobody hath dwelt there. The pilgrim having made the sign of the cross, laid down to sleep, but in the deep silence he awoke, for his bed did move as a ship or a horse, which did carry him; he opened his eyes, and saw horsemen enter by two and two into the chamber, who, lighting torches which they held in their hands at the candle which he had left burning, cast them against the ceiling of the chamber, where they stuck fast with their bottoms upward, which dropt down burning flames upon his bed and upon, or clothes. He covered himself as well as possibly he could, leaving a little hole to look out at, that he might see whether his bed did burn or not, when he instantly he saw the flames out, and that upon a table which was in a corner of the chamber, four of them were at primero, they passed, discarded, and set up money, as if they had truly played. At length they, delisting upon a difference, fell into a quarrel in the chamber, which made such a noise with clashing of swords, that the miserable pilgrim called for help upon our lady of Gadaigne, when the clattering of swords, and all other noise ceased, and he was all of a sweat with fear. Presently he felt that the bed and the clothes were pulled away from him by the uttermost corners, and he saw a man come in with a lighted torch in his hand, followed by two others, the one with a great brazen bason, and the other sharpening a little knife. Then began he to tremble, and all his hair to stand on end, he would have spoken, but was not able, when they were over him, the torch was put out, and the pilgrim, thinking that they would kill him, put his hands forth against the knife, when he felt that they laid hold on him, he gave a great cry, and the torch instantly knuckled again, and he saw himself between two mastiff dogs, who held him fast in their teeth. Jesus, cried out the pilgrim, at which name all those fantastic illusions vanished away, leaving him so weary and so affrighted that he could stay there no longer. He then went to a holy hermit, who had a stone for his pillow, his staff for a companion, and a doth's head for his looking-glass; who learnedly attributed all these midnight revels to angels fallen from the lowest quire, who suffer less pains than other, as having not so much sinned, but do take pleasure to displease men with frightness, misery, rumours, subtitutes, and so to take things, which they do in the night in houses, which thereby they make altogether unbeatable, not being able otherwise to hurt but by those foolish and ridiculous efforts, limited and bound by the Almighty. It appears by numerous stories in this book, that the Pilgrim's habit was frequently assumed by runaway lovers, of whom this volume contains many romantic accounts. It contains nothing allegorical, but professes to be a relation of matter-of-fact adventures.

The most curious book which has fallen under my notice, upon these painful pilgrimages, is

The Pilgrim of Loretto performing his Vow made to the Glorious Virgin Mary, Mother of God. By L. Richeome. 4to, Paris, 1630. Dedicated to Mary, Queen of Charles I.

This work is intended to show the merits and advantages of pilgrimages to holy places, because the Jews were pilgrims to Jerusalem three times a year. The kings, or sages, made their pilgrimage, guided to the star of the world. Our Lord was a pilgrim in Egypt, and he has left many places to which Christians should undertake holy pilgrimages, and obtain the fruits of his graces, among these, Loretto is the most famous. This chapel is forty feet long, twenty wide, and twenty-five high, built of ordinary small stones, hard and squared long, of the colour of brick, the walls adorned with paintings of sacred stories, a stone altar—"breathing as it were something divine." The image of the Blessed Virgin, crowned with precious stones; her gown of cloth of gold, with a sky-coloured mantle. On her left arm the little child Jesus, having a countenance full of grace and majesty. In the year 1291, the 9th of May, this house was at night carried by angels from Galilee into Sela-voine, and removed there four years. On the 11th of the 19th of November, 1294, it was removed, first into the Mark of Ancona, to a forest, the property of a lady named Loretto; but the forest being infested with thieves, it was removed to a hill hard by. In less than a month, it was again removed to Recanada, and these remains. Dr. Frankan says that three remores are as bad as a fire, but this house, with all its contents, was bodily removed, without injury, four times; and to prevent scepticism, the author recounts some wonders performed by angels—"we know by their natural force, they recollect about the huge frames of the celestial Bodys, from East to West with an admirable swiftness and constancy now these six thousand years together, without any pains or difficulty—a work without comparison more difficult, than to carry a house once or twice, from one country to another, although it be miraculous, and admirable for the rances." He asks the testimony of Francis Price, which, if true, describes the "be had often heard of his grandfather, that he did see the house of the blessed Virgin, when being carried in the air it lighted in the forest," besides which, it was honoured with innumerable miracles. The result was, that emperors, popes, and princes presented gifts to the Virgin, unto the immoral gold and silver paste, diamonds, and besides accumulated to an incredible value; it has been thought that millions of pounds sterling would not have paid for them, at a fair valuation.¹

This pilgrimage is completed in forty days; three seven going, being the number of penance and purgation; nine to spend at Loretto, for the orders of angels, the intellectual light; and ten to return, it being the number of perfection. The pilgrim is to use his rosary of sixty-three beads, the age of the Virgin when she died; saying upon the small beads an Ave Maria, and upon the larger, every tenth, a Paternoster. Having confessed and communicated, three pilgrims commence the pilgrimage; and the first day's meditation was on the condition of man, as a pilgrim and stranger upon earth. It closes with a canticle, of which this is the last stanza.— ¹ Merely then, let's march apace

Unto this blessed Virgin's Hall,

There shall we see the heaven's grace

Inclosed in a Chappel small:

And leuene to be of this mayde-wife

Perfect Pilgrimes all our life.

Similar instructions are given for each day's meditation. After the ten commandments follow the five, which were forgotten or omitted in the decalogue, and are called the Commandments of the Church. 1. To keep the feasts. 2. To hear mass. 3. To fast Lent, &c. 4. To confess. 5. To take the sacrament at Easter: to which are added, 6. Not to marry in times forbidden; and 7. To pay tithes. When they had arrived at Loretto, themes were given for this nine days' meditation, during his sojourn there: as a meditation upon the holy eucharist; on the conception of the blessed Virgin; on her ancestors, presentation; repostual of Joseph and Mary, both being virgins to the time of their death; the incarnation; nativity, &c. Before leaving Loretto, they pray to the Virgin; the close of this prayer is—'to stirre us up to yield honour, praise, and immortal thanks to the Sonne and the Mother, who with their honour have made thee so honourable.' On their return, these pilgrims were mistaken for thieves, and narrowly escaped death. Many miracles are talked over; and among them, one narrated by Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, in 1526, in his book against Ecclampsmus, of a priest who lived many months without food or hunger, and in the midst of snow, without feeling cold, BY LICKING A STONE. The best sentence in the volume is in the thirty-fifth day. The meditation is upon the preaching of John: 'he that in his preaching maketh himself admired, and not Jesus Christ, and draweto the harts of his hearers after himselfe, and not after Jesus Christ, is a thiefe, employing his Masters money and guiftes to his owne uses, and not to his Masters honour.' The three pilgrims being benighted, climbed an oak to pass the night. One of them said, 'If it rains, what shall we do?' 'We will doe,' answered another, 'as they do in Normandy.' 'And what do they there?' replied he. 'They let it rain,' quoth the other. At eleven o'clock at night, they are alarmed by a horrible spectacle. A monstrous old goat, with a black candle burning blue between his horns, read in a book, making a circle, when sixty-six sorcerers and witches came riding through the air, to this devil's ball. As they arrived, they did the old goat homage, by kissing under his tail, and commenced dancing. Upon a bank they made an alter, and parodied the sacrifice of the mess. At length, the old goat caught sight of the pilgrims; in a moment the dance was dashed; three of them were turned into fierce wolves, who mounted the tree to devour the pilgrims; but they made the sign of the cross, and said, 'Jesus Maria,' the wolves fell down like sacks of corn, and the assembly vanished, leaving a most horrible stench behind them,² as if the plague had there burnt all the rags of her infection. All this is narrated, not as an allegory, but as a matter of fact. When such abominable stories were believed, we can hardly wonder at the brutal severity of our laws against poor old women, called witches. In the morning, among goblets of flesh and other foul matters, they found a piece of turnip, cut to resemble a host,³ with a silver chalice and paten, these they carried to the nearest monastery, from which they had been stolen.

A merchant, who had befriended the pilgrims, when in the most imminent danger of being murdered, vowed to devote himself to religion, and was instantly carried, by invisible agency, through the air, for many miles to a monastery, where he took the vows.

The pilgrims meet some heart with pretended reformation, and recover them to holy church, by narrating some miracles; among others, one of a priest who was captured by the Turks, and on his refusing to turn Mahometan, they took out his bowels and heart, and put them into his hands, leaving him to be devoured by wild beasts. But in fulfilment of a vow that he had made to the blessed Virgin, he got up and walked to Loretto, with his heart and bowels in his hands; recounted to the officers of the church what had happened, showed them his empty body and his life in his hand, and fiddled his vow! A painting of this miracle is preserved in the chapel. The pilgrims, on the fortieth day, return in safety, and become monks. This curious and rare volume ends with the Litany, Rosary, and Corone of the blessed Virgin, in English: being the official prayers to Mary, as sanctioned by the church. These illustrate the dispute as to whether or not she is an object of worship with the Romish Church. The following is 'The Oblation of the Assumption':— 'O Sovereign Lady and Virgin, the honour of mankind, and beauty of the heavens, I humbly offer unto thee 10. Aves and one Pater-noster, to the glorious mystery of thy Assumption; when by the B. Sonne, thou wert called to his everlasting glory, & descended at thy happy passage to have present the holy Apostles thy servants, & wast received body and soule into the heavenly habitations of the celestial spirits, as thence of the Angels & mother of their Lord & master.' The lady who, with considerable talent and great humility, published Bunyan in epic poetry, under the signature of C. C. V. G., in a note to a Key, says, 'It is a certain fact, and one not very generally known, that a complete design of a Pilgrim's Progress is to be found in Lucian's "Hermotimus; it is not to be imagined that Bunyan could have seen it there, from the limited educational advantages he possessed; yet, the obvious allegory occurred to his mind, unschooled as it was, in a similar arrangement with that suggested by Lucian.'⁴ Mr. Tooke thus translates the passage:⁵ 'Hermotimus, of Cladomena, of whom it is related, that his soul often quitted him, and after having wandered a long while about the world by itself, re-

¹ See Library of Learning, 510, p. 405.

² Pp. 356, 357. This volume is of extreme rarity; it is in the Editor's library.

³ 'Host,' the consecrated wafer.

⁴ This also struck Mr. Southey. See his Letter to Sir E. Brydges in his Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 285.

⁵ Lucian's Works, translated by Tooke, with Wieland's Notes, 4th, 1820, vol. ii. p. 268.

turned again into its body, and that Hermotimus was several times taken for dead, and always rose again. To this Mr. Wieland adds a note: 'It was a singular gift that he had of being able to leave his body, and come into it again; and as a proof that his soul, while its body lay for dead, was actually out of it, he knew, not only to give account of the remotest places, and of what he had there seen and heard, with accuracy, and in conformity to truth, but also foretold sundry future events, as earthquakes and other calamities, which actually came to pass. And this he carried on so long, that his faithful wife was induced to deliver up his body to his enemies, during one of these emigrations of the soul, who immediately burnt it; and thus for ever stopped all re-entrances to the poor soul. The learned Bishop Huet directly pronounces this beautiful story to be an old wife's tale.' Where the poor burnt-out soul obtained another habitation, we are not told. This notion of the soul wandering about without the body has been lately revived, among other absurdities called Mesmerism; but what idea Bunyan could get from this absurd story, is far beyond my comprehension. Bernard's Isle of Man: or, the Legal Proceedings in Manshire against Sin.

This interesting little volume was very popular. The author, a Puritan member of the Church of England, who, profiting by the personal respect felt for him by his bishop, escaped punishment, and was permitted to enjoy his living of Batcomb. The purity of his life; his zeal for the conversion of perishing sinners; and his obedience to the dictates of his own conscience, would, but for such protection, have subjected him to persecution. The late Dr. Adam Clarke¹ considered that there was much reason to believe that The Isle of Man, or Spenser's Faery Queen, gave birth to the 'Pilgrim's Progress' and 'Holy War.' Dr. Southey² imagines that Bunyan had seen this book, because his verses introductory to the Second Part have some similarity to Bernard's Apology for his Allegory, which closes the volume. Such authorities induced me to a careful re-perusal of a book which had given me much pleasure in bygone days. Sin is the Thief and Robber; he stealth our graces; spoileth us of every blessing; utterly undoeth us, and maketh miserable both body and soul. He is a murderer; spares no person, sex, or age; a strong thief; no human power can bind him; a subtle thief; he beguiled Adam, David, yea, even Paul. The only watchman to spy him out is Godly, Jealousy. His resort is in Soul's Town, lodging in the heart. Sin is to be sought in the by-lanes, and in Sense, Thought, Word, and Deed Streets. The hue and cry is after fellows called Outside, who nod or sleep at church, and, if awake, have their mind wandering; Sir Worldly-wise, a self-conceited earth-worm; Sir Luke-worm, a Jack-on-both-sides, Sir Pinesible Civil, Master Machiavel; a boentious fellow named Libertine; a snappish fellow, one Scrupulously, and one Babbling-Babylonian, these conceal the villain Sin. To escape, he pretends to be an honest man; calls vices by virtuous names; his relations, Ignorance, Error, Opinion, Identity, Stability, Custom. Forefathers, Sir Power, Sir Sampler, Sir Most-do, Sir Silly; Vain Hope, Presumption, Wilful and Saint-like, all shelter and hide him. The Justice, Lord Jesus, issues his warrant, God's Word, to the Constable, Mr. Illuminated-Understanding, dwelling in Regeneration, aided by his wife Grace, his sons Will and Obedience, and his daughters, Faith, Hope, and Charity, with his men Humility and Self-Denial, and his maids Temperance and Patience. Having got his warrant, he calls to aid his next neighbour Godly Sorrow, with his seven sons Care, Clearing, Indignation, Fear, Vebement Desire, Zeal, and Revenge, these are capable of apprehending the sturdest thief. He goes to the common inn, an harlot's house called Mistress Heart, a receptacle for all villains and thieves, no dishonest person being denied house-room. Mistress Heart married her own father, one Old-man, keeping riot night and day, to prevent any godly motion from lodging there. The house has five doors, Hearing, Seeing, Tasting, Smelling, and Feeling. Eleven maids, impudent harlots, wait upon the guests, Love, Hatred, Desire, Detestation, Vain-hope, Despair, Fear, Audacity, Joy, Sorrow, and Anger, and a man-servant Will. The Dishes are the lusts of the flesh, served in the platter of pleasure, the lust of the eyes in the plate of profit; and the pride of life. The drink is the pleasures of sin; their bed-room is natural corruption. 'In this room Iyeth Mistress Heart, all her maids, her man, and all her guests together, like wild Irish.' The bed is impenitence, and the coverings carnal security, when the constable enters, he attaches them all with apprehensions of God's wrath, and carries them before the judge, who examines the prisoners, and imprisons them until the assures, in the custody of the jailer, New-man. 'If any prisoner breaks out, the sheriff Religion must bear the blame; saying, This is your religion, is it?' The keepers and fetters, as vows, fasting, prayer, &c., are described with the prison. The second part is the trial of the prisoner, and judgment without appeal; the commission is Conscience; the circuit the Soul; the counsel for the king are Divine Reason and Quicksightedness; the clerk Memory; the witness Godly Sorrow; the grand Jury Holy Men, the inspired authors; the traverse jury Faith, Love of God, Fear of God, Charity, Sincerity, Unity, Patience, Innocency, Chastity, Equity, Verity, and Contestation; all these are challenges by the prisoners, who would be tried by Nature, Doubting, Careless, &c., all freeholders of great means. This the judge overrules; Old-man is put on his trial first, and David, Job, Isaiah, and Paul, are witnesses against him. He pleads, 'There is no such thing as Original Corruptions; Pelagius, a learned man, and all those now that are called Anabaptists, have hitherto, and yet do maintain that sin cometh by imitation, and not by inbred pravity.' Good, my lord, cast not away so old a man, for I ² Acts xxviii 22. This slander was thus published in 1683. In the face of the Baptist Confession of Faith, printed in 1646, presented to Parliament, and many times reprinted, the eleventh Article in which is—'In the beginning God made all things very good; created man after his own image, felt with all meet perfection of nature, and free from all sin, but long he shook not in this honour, Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to seduce, first Eve, then by her, seducing Adam, who, without any compulsion, in eating the forbidden fruit, trans¹ Postscript to Wetherall's Life of Bunyan, prefixed to The Pilgrim, an Epic Poem, by C. C. V. G., Parsons' Town, 1844.

² Life of Bunyan, p. xii.

am at this day 5560 years old. He is found guilty, and his sentence is—'Thou shalt be carried back to the place of execution, and there be cast off, with all thy deeds, and all thy members daily mortified and crucified with all thy lusts, of every one that hath truly put on Christ.' Mistress Heart is then tried, Moses (Gen. viii. 21), Jeremiah (xvii. 9), Ezekiel, Matthew (xv. 9), and others, give evidence, and she is convicted, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment under the jailer, Mr. Newman. All the rest of the prisoners are tried; the juries called in due order; prisoners plead; witnesses are called; defence heard, verdict given, and sentence passed. One among the prisoners, named Equestry, has a long trial with numerous scriptures brought to testify against him; his sentence closes the book—'That thou, the Master of Iniquity, with the Old Serpent called the Devil, or Satan thy father, with thy lewd mother that great whore, drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, which sitteth upon a scarlet-coloured beast; as also with that false prophet, the son of perdition, thy gale and governor, shall be cast alive where the dragon is, into the lake of fire burning with brimstone, there to be tormented with all the marked ones in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; without rest day and night, the smoke of which torment shall ascend up for ever and for ever, without mercy or hope of redemption.' The contents form a key to the allegory. There is not the slightest similarity between this and the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and the only resemblance it bears to the 'Holy War,' is making the senses the means of communication with the heart or soul—an idea usual and universal in every age, the use of which cannot subject a writer to the charge of plagiarism. A correspondent in the Gentleman's Magazine¹ imagines the following strange genealogy or descent: Bunyan from Bernard; from Fletcher's Purple Island; from Spenser's Faëry Queen; from Gawin Douglas's King Hart; from the Old Mysteries and Moralities. He might have added, from the dreams of the Fathers!!! Scudder's Christian's Daily Walk, 1625.

This excellent book was much read by the Puritans and nonconformists, and was strongly recommended by Dr. Owen and R. Baxter.

The sum of it is a Christian's directions to walk with God. The moral actions of man's life are aptly resembled by the metaphor of walking; no man while he liveth here is at home. There are two contrary homes to which every man is always going, either to heaven or to hell. Every action of man is one pace or step whereby he goeth to the one place or the other; so that God's own children, while they live in this world as pilgrims and strangers, are but in the way, not in the country which they seek. grossed the command of God and fell, whereby death came upon all his posterity, who now are concerned in sin, and, by nature, the children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and other miseries in this world, and for ever, unless the Lord Jesus Christ set them free. How marvellous, that a pious clergyman, while presenting to the word the Trial of Sin, should be guilty of so great a piece of iniquity, as this gross and uncalled-for misrepresentation! ¹ January 1844, p. 32.

The book that has been most noticed as likely to have been seen by Bunyan, is

Bolswert's Pilgrimage of Duyfkens and Willemya-kens, Svo, Antwerp, 1627.²

It was translated into French, and became somewhat popular. This book was noticed by two gentlemen from Yorkshire, who called to see my extensive collection of early English Bibles and books, about twenty-four years ago. Among other books they noticed a very fine copy of this rare volume of Bolswert's, the prints in which reminded them of Bunyan's 'Pilgrim,' and on their return to the north, a paragraph was inserted in a provincial paper stating that our 'Pilgrim's Progress' was a translation. The falsehood of such a statement has been fully proved by Mr. Southey, to whom the identical volume was lent, for the purpose of fully entering into the question, and there appears not to be the slightest similarity in the two stories. The cuts which struck my visitors were—A man sleeping, and a pilgrim leaning over the bed; through the open door two pilgrims are seen walking; they stoop on the bank of a river, at the head of watch, in the distance, the sun is setting. Another cut represents the pilgrims with fools' capt on their heads, driven by a mob, and one of them before a man sitting with his secretary at a table, a third shows the alarmed pilgrim in a circle of lighted candles, while a necromancer produces golden and sprites from an overhanging hill; a fourth shows the two pilgrims going up a steep mountain, when one of them falls over the brink. The story is, that Dovekin goes to Willemynken to awake her, and she sets out; they wash in a river which has its source in Rome, and, taking the Netherlands in its way, flows on to Jerusalem. They are infested with vermin at a kermak,³ go through a number of ridiculous adventures, until one is blown from a rock, and is lost; the other arrives at Jerusalem, and is married. This short analysis is by Mr. Southey; but a translation of this pilgrimage into French lately fell into my hands, and on an attentive perusal of it, the object of the writer becomes perfectly apparent.

Dovekin—Colombelle, the dove is one who, without inquiry, obeys the church. Willemynken—Volontairette, self-willed, or without restraint—will not submit without inquiry. These two sisters set out on pilgrimage: Colombelle is happy in every adventure, until blessed with a splendid husband and great wealth; while Volontairette gets into perpetual dangers and difficulties, until she meets a violent death. The whole object is to prevent inquiry; to keep the mind enslaved to priestcraft; to obstruct that research into scriptural truth which the Holy Ghost enjoins, 'Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.' I Th. v. 21. 'Beloved, believe not every spirit.

² Bolswert was an engraver of great eminence. He illustrated Sunquet's Via Vita Eterna, the plates to this book are beautifully engraved, and are remarkable for his prolific imagination in drawing devils.

³ 'Kerners,' a Flemish fair.

WITNESSES TO THE EDITOR.

but try the taboos whether they are of God: he seems many false preachers are gone not into the world. I am. It is almost a wonder that a tale so useful to the same people pass the rest in this country, has not been published in English.

We now come to a similar class of books published during Kenyan's life.

Wholesome Report for the Gods in her Pilgrimage rewards Jerusalem which to show. By John

Hedges. A pocket volume, 1628.

This is a series of publications on passages of Holy Writ, arranged in the order of the alphabet.

The Bible's Progress to the Celestial Common, or

Humanity Jerusalem. By way of guilty meditations and holy contemplations. Accompanied with divers learned informations and pithy personations, leading to Christianity and Humanity.

In two parts. First, on the Nature of God, and second, on the sum of the Gospel. By John

Wells, small 4to, 1639.

True Inventory of the Goods and Charities of Supervision, late of the parish of Ignorance, in the

County of Mind Location. 4to, 1642.

The Lost Will and Testament of Sir J. Presbyter, with his admonitions to legions of perjured friends. 4to, 1647.

The two last belong to a series of national attacks upon

Tennessee.

A Spiritual Died between a Christian and Islam.

By H.J., 1646; with a frontispiece representing a Saint armed, supported by Faith, Hope, and

Charity, fighting Diabolos, attended by Mundus and Caro. Flame is proceeding from the mouth of Diabolos.

This is a long and heavy conference between a nature and faith, with colleagues and prayers attending over 626 pages, and entered by anything other than.

The Christian Pilgrim in his Conflict and Conquest.

By John Castaniza. Printed in Paris, 1662.

A seminar, but not allegorical volume of perfect instructions, with fine plates.

The Pilgrim, from Quacken's Haddons.

"O that my steps were devoted to keep thy children."

To one, 1.

1.

"Thus I, the object of the world's disdain,

With pilgrims has increased the many earth:

I only relish what the world swears very,

The earth is my grief, her end is good my earth,

Her light my darkness, and her truth my own

Her freedom is my poor, and her daughter my niece."

2.

"Read earth I premonition not my seeming love,

To my long stay, let me thy thoughts become there,

Then art my peace, and my heart's choice,

My life's a preparation but to have time,

Like one that works a door, I walk about time,

With that I cannot live, I cannot live without them.

3.

"The world is a lab earth whose achievements I enjoy

Are all composed of rules and essential necessities;

So, running love, he's livery, I think that ways

A thought, and to that great, unheeded, wanderer,

Her way is dark, her path unheeded, must's.

He had's the way I can find, so hard a few ways to learn!"

4.

"This giving? his truth is learned. I about the other hand with a woman of which some love

"I came down," a dollar, coming to and out,

But something pleasant to the food dancer,

Where, I see heresy, and there even a woman,

He falls without return, and make without discussion.

5.

"Where shall I seek a guide? where shall I send

Some lucky hand to lead my tumulting peace?

What 'rents' nature will, about my feet.

To 'more' the danger of these long-rous places?

What hopes have I to pass without a guide?

Where are you only through, a thousand bill bonds.

6.

"An unexpected star did greatly dieh

Before the same man, to a greater light;

Rushabing here I found a double guide,

A peller and a shred—by day, by night;

Yet in my deep rate dangers, which he for

More great than thorns, I have no peller, shred, any shred.

7.

"O that the pinnets of a chimney I dare

Would not say, perhaps through the empty air,

When open being and I, how would I return there

The reach of danger, and forgotten care!

My backward eyes should near commit that fault,

Where lasting guilt should build a movement of will.

8.

"Come God, that are the 8-ning spring of faith

Lunch some men with thy reddened sap;

Then art my path, direct my steps aright;

I have no other faith, no other way;

I'll trust my God, and him alone pursue;

He has must be my path, his heavenly light my skin!"

9. A new source. Cap. iv.

"O Lord, who not the Lord, the way, the truth, the life, in whom there is no darkness, error, vanity, nor death; the light, without which there is darkness; the way, without which alone is wandering; the truth, without which there is error, the life, without which there is death. Say, Lord, Let there be light, and I shall see light and endure as ever; I shall see the way, and avoid wandering; I shall see the truth, and alone error, I shall see the, and escape death. 'Simmons, O

Simmons are blind and, which march in darkness, and the shadow of death, and throw my feet in the way of peace.'"

1. A disastrous, standing across

2. Sparing, still of worship.

3. Charity, also morals.

4. Clipping, with dying.

'Erie, 2.

'Pilgrim, trudge on, what makes thy soul complain,

Crowns thy complaint; the way to rest is pain:

The road to resolution lies by doubt:

The next way home's the farthest way about.'

Under the Commonwealth, a great effort was made to purify the Church, by an examination of all those clergymen who, either from profane conduct, ignorance, or want of talent, were a scandal to their profession; or whose violent attachment to monarchy led them to foment rebellion against the Government, and who were unfit for the work of the ministry; all such were ejected from their livings; and pluralists were strictly limited to one living, the selection being left to themselves. These triers and judges are all named in an ordinance of the Lords and Commons, October 20, 1645, and September 26, 1646. The description of characters they were to try, is thus given:— 'All persons that shall blasphemously speak or write any thing of God, his holy word, or Sacraments. An incestuous person. An adulterer. A fornicator. A drunkard. A profane swearer or curser. One that hath taken away the life of any person maliciously. All worshippers of images, Crosses, Crucifixes, or Reliquers; all that shall make any images of the Trinity, or of any Person thereof. All religious worshippers of Saints, Angels, or any mere creature. Any person that shall profess himself not to be in charity with his neighbour. Any person that shall challenge any other person by word, message, or writing to fight, or that shall accept such challenge and agree thereto. Any person that shall knowingly carry any such challenge by word, message, or writing. Any person that shall upon the Lord's day use any dancing, playing at dice, or cards, or any other game; Masking, Wake, Shooting, Bowling, playing at foot-ball, or stool-ball, Wrestling, or that shall make, or resort unto any plays, interludes, fencing, Bull-baiting, or Bear-baiting, or that shall use hawking, hunting or coursing, fishing or fowling, or that shall publicly expose any wares to sale, otherwise than as is provided by an ordinance of parliament. Any person that shall travel on the Lord's Day without reasonable cause. Any person that keepeth a known stewer or brothel house, or that shall solicit the chastity of any person for himself or any other. Any person, father or mother, that shall consent to the marriage of their child to a papist, or any person that shall marry a papist. Any person that shall repair for any advice unto any witch, wizard, or fortune teller. Any person that shall assault his parents, or any magistrate, Minister, or Elder in the execution of his office. Any person that shall be legally attainted of Burret, Forgery, Extortion, or Bribery. And the several and respective Elderships shall have power likewise to suspend from the sacrament of the Lords Supper all ministers that shall be duly proved to be guilty of any of the crimes aforesaid, from giving or receiving the Sacrament of the Lords Supper.' With power to appeal to the provincial Assembly, to the National, and from thence to the Parliament.' The commissioners, called triers, ejected many from their livings who had been a disgrace to their calling. The character of the clergy was at a very low standard. Bunyan called them proud, wanton, drunkards, covetous, riding after tithecocks and handfuls of barley.² And the exclusion of such from their livings, has been since called the sufferings of the clergy! To ridicule the efforts of these triers, and, at the same time, some of the Calvinistic doctrines, a small volume was published, entitled The Examination of Tilenus in Utopia, London, 1658; said to have been written by Bishop Womack;³ and merely because the names of the supposed triers are Dr. Absolute, Mr. Fatality, Mr. Fri-babe, Dr. Damm-man, Mr. Take o' Trust, Mr. Narrow Grace [Philip Rye], Mr. Know-little [Hugh Peters], Dr. Dubious [R. Baxter], &c., therefore it has been asserted⁴ that Bunyan must have read and profited by this book, in composing his allegorical works. It is neither a 'Pilgrim's Progress,' a 'Holy War,' nor a 'Heavenly Footman;' and to imagine that Bunyan was assisted by this book, merely because the triers are named after some doctrinal or practical bias, is as absurd as to suppose that the boys in a grammar-school were aided by Bunyan, because they nick-named their master, 'Dr. Flog'em,' for his unmanly and absurd attempts to drive Latin by force into his pupils. In the Journal of George Fox, one of the founders of the Society of Friends, under the year 1659, is the copy of a long letter sent by him to these triers. In this he calls upon them to dismiss all ministers who are 'evil beasts, slow bellies, given to wine and filthy lucre, proud, and that have fallen into the condemnation of the devil.' He instances one Ralph Hollingworth, priest of Phillingham, whose parishioner, Thomas Bromby, a thatcher, having refused to pay a sum under six shillings for tithe-dues, instead of preaching the glad tidings of salvation to him, and his wife and family, sent him to jail, and had then kept him there eight and thirty weeks. We now come to a short Pilgrimage, which has in it one feature similar to the perseverance of Christian. It is one of the delightful poems of George Herbert's, in his pocket volume called The Temple, entitled,⁵

The Pilgrimage.

'I travel on, seeing the hill, where by

My expectation,

A long it was and weary way

The gloomy cave of Desperation

I left on the one, and on the other side

The rock of Pride.

² 'Vindication of Gospel Truths,' vol. ii. p. 178.

³ Southey's Life of Bunyan, p. 92.

⁴ A most intelligent bookseller, and a great admirer of Bunyan, lent his two volumes, observing that it was universally admitted that the triers had aided our Author; but if he had ever read the triers, it must have tried his patience, and satisfied him that there was not the slightest ground for such an admission.

⁵ Eleventh edition, pp. 135, 136.

¹ An original copy, in possession of the Editor, pp. 5-7.

* And so I came to Phasianic minders stewed

With many a flower,

Fain would I here have made a hole,

But I was quicken'd by my hour.

So to cares cups I came, and there got through

With much ado.

* That led me to the wild of Passion, which

Some call the world;

A wasted place, but sometimes rich,

Here I was robb'd of all my gold,

Save one good Angel, which a friend had told

Close to my side.

* At length I got unto the gladown hill,

Where lay my hope,

Where lay my heart, and climbing still,

When I had gained the brow and top,

A lake of brackish waters on the ground

Was all I found.

* With that abac'd and struck with many a sting,

Of swarming fears,

I fell, and cry'd, Alas my King!

Can both the way and end be tears?

Yet taking heart, I rose, and then perceiv'd

I was deceived.

* My lull was further: So I slung away,

Yet heard a cry

Just as I went, None goes that way

And lives: If that be all, said I,

After so foul a Journey death is fair,

And but a chair.

The only similarity is that Christian goes up the hill Difficulty; he hears the cry of Timorans and Mistrust — 'Just before us be a couple of hours; if we came within reach, they would presently pull us in pieces.' Christian's reply was — 'If I go back, I shall perish. If I can get to the celestial city, I am sure to be in safety there. I must venture.' A Dialogue between Life and Death. Very requisite for the contemplation of all transitory Pilgrims, and pious-minded Christians. 1657.

This little book consists of only twenty-four leaves, and might have been seen by Bunyan as a religious tract previous to his writing the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' It contains nothing allegorical as to pilgrimages, nor any idea that could have assisted our author in composing his great work.

It is a Dance of Death, illustrated with very rude cuts, and printed with a homely rhyme to each.

A Spiritual Journey of a young man towards the Land of Peace to live essentially in God, who met in his journey with three sorts of dispute. With some proverbs or sentences, which the old age spake to the young man. Also a Spiritual Dialogue, whereunto is annexed a round or chorus dance, whereunto the vain heathenish lusts, with their wicked confused loose minds and thoughts (as well in confusion as in a show of holiness), assemble from all corners of the earth, and dancing hand in hand, skip and jump to Hell. Translated out of Dutch. London, printed by J. Maceck, 1659. Small 4to.

There is nothing allegorical in this volume; it consists of dispositions, proverbs, and dialogues, the whole intent of which is to show that an illuminated uniform spirit must be sought, not from the Bible, but from inward light, and that to seek knowledge from the Scriptures without that spirit is like journeying by night with a knitery in which there is no light—fighting with a scabbard without a sword—quenching thirst with a vessel in which is no wise, or being contented, when hungry, with a cupboard or bin without bread. Reading's Guide to the Holy City; or, Directions and Helps to an Holy Life. 4to, Oxford, 1657.

The Pilgrim's Pass to the New Jerusalem. By M. R. Gent, London, 1659, small 8vo.

This volume contains a series of meditations on passages of Scripture, intended to convey the consolations of a good hope, through faith in the Redeemer, to his pilgrims. It contains nothing allegorical.

Pordage's Mundorum Explicatio, or the Explanation of an Hieroglyphical Figure; wherein are couched the mysteries of the Eternal, Internal, and External Worlds, showing the true progress of a Soul from the Court of Babylon to the City of Jerusalem; from the Adamical fallen state, to the regenerate and Angelical. A Sacred Poem. 8vo, 1661.

There is nothing allegorical in these volumes.

Jesus, Maria, Joseph; or, The devout Pilgrim to the ever blessed Virgin Mary. 12mo, Amsterdam, 1663.

This is a mere guide to devotees, in their approaches to the Virgin Mary.

Philothea's Pilgrimage to Perfection. Described in a Practice of Ten Days' Solitude. By Brother John of the Holy Cross, Frier Minour. Small 8vo, Bruges, 1668.²

A rare volume, published during the time that Bunyan was writing his 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and it is not at all probable that he saw this Roman Catholic production; but if he had seen and read it, he could not have gleaned a hint to use in his wondrous 'Dream.' It is dedicated to the Countess Dowager of Sussex.

In this, Brother John Cross has made a wonderful discovery—that countesses, being the more refined images of God, above the vulgar, have, by their noble descent, a clearer aptness to

² 'Angel,' a gold coin, in value one-third of the ancient sovereign.

² In the Editor's library.

sublime thoughts and actions! What could such a man have thought of the son of a carpenter, of fishermen, of publicans, of tent-makers, or of tinkers? The pilgrim's name is 'Phil-ther,' she enters on her pilgrimage with the author's good wishes, expressed in the language of Holy Toby: 'Walk well, God be in thy way, and his holy Angel accompany Thes.' The journey is divided into ten days' solitary employment, that the pilgrim might be ravished into the heavenly paradise, to hear and see what we are loath to leave and cannot utter. To attain this, very minute directions are given as to time, place, posture of body, method, choice of a guide, &c. The guide he describes as 'a medicine of life and immortality.' 'Who be to him that is alone,' says Brother John, probably feeling under his state of celibacy. His qualification is knowledge, charity, and discretion; he will securely lead thee to rest and peace. Her exercises are to be vocal prayer, reading spiritual books, corporal mortifications, and manual labour; use only one meal a day; to this, add a hair cloth next the skin, and occasional floggings. These are general instructions, which are followed by objects for meditation on each day's journey, so as to arrive at perfection in ten days; solitude, humility and austerity, patience and charity, viceness by sin, the sacrament, mortification, flight from earth, spiritual life, God speaking to man, love's ascents and descents, the soul's repose in God, union with Christ, and ending with meditations upon the Passions. An Hue and Cry after Conscience; or, The Pilgrim's Progress by Candle-Light, in Search after Honesty and Plain Dealing. Represented under the Similitude of a Bless. Wherein is discovered the The Pritty manner of his setting out. His Pleasant Humours on his Journey. The Disappointment he met with after all his Search. Together with his flight at last into another Country, where he is still on his Rambles. Written by John Dunton, 1685, 18mo. The advertisement to the reader says, that, as the author's previous work was of the pilgrim's journey to an heavenly country, so now of all sorts of wicked pilgrims, of either sex, that are either posting directly to hell, or madly dancing and frolicking upon the brink of destruction. Progressing by candle-light, all manner of vice and regency is painted to the life, in its proper colours; and then brought to light as a fatal spectacle to the thinking and gazing part of mankind, together with the most eminent cheats of all trades and professions. This is a display of vice, villany, and deceit of every description, without any continuous plot; and it adds one to a thousand proofs of the degraded and debauched state of society in the reign of Charles II, and of our happy exemption from such scenes. Morality and purity have extended, as voluntary efforts to spread Divine truth increased; awful was the state of society when none but state-paid priests were permitted to teach the glad tidings of salvation.¹ Bishop Patrick's Parable of the Pilgrim. 4to, 1687.

Whoever has patience to wade through ten pages of Bishop Patrick's Parable, must be fully convinced that his Lordship's limping and unwieldy

Pilgrim will never be able, with all his hobbling, to overtake, or even to get within sight of John Bunyan by many a thousand miles—a striking proof that exquisite natural ability casts a brighter and more captivating lustre, than the deepest acquired parts. The bishop's Pilgrim has only one description which has the slightest similarity to Bunyan's style. A gentleman rides up to the pilgrims, 'very civil and inviting,' but they observed that he had a sword by his side, and a pair of pistols before him, together with another instrument hanging at his belt, which was formed for pulling out of eyes. They told him—'We are strongly possessed against those who would make us believe we cannot see our way unless we let them pull out our eyes, and who are not content to labour by reason to bring them to their bent, but shoot them to death if they stifly refuse, as if they were but regues and thieves.' The learned bishop does not approve of the Roman Catholics using force, pulling out of eyes, or shooting churchmen; while, at that very time, his own church, if dissenters refused, to use his own phrase, to have their eyes pulled out, seat them to prison, tormented them, and, in some cases, they hung, drew, and quartered them! On getting rid of him, another man, more sad and melancholy, crossed their way, with a dagger by his side and a pistol peeping out of his pocket—he represents the Presbyterians or Independents, and to him the Episcopalian says, 'I retain my own eyes, but use also those of "the Conductors of Souls; and am glad with all mine heart that I have met with one both to teach and to watch over me." Your dagger will soon grow to a sword; you pretend to liberty, and will give none.' How true is the saying, "with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged"? The very crime which the learned bishop imputes to others, was most prominently his own; for at that time no Church was more hostile to the Christian's duty of seeing with his own eyes, or judging for himself from a personal examination of the Sacred Scriptures. The bishop exclaims against those who persecuted his Church, but veils the infamous Protestant persecutions by which that same Church was spotted as with a leprosy. After all, Patrick, with some excellencies, is but a sorry pedlar, dealing in damaged wares; for, instead of Christian experience formed from Scripture, we find scraps from the philosophers and heathen mythology. Patrick and Bunyan were writing their pilgrims about the same time: they do not appear to have anything in common. Patrick was a learned man, and his elaborate work requires the pains to read it which he took in its composition; while Bunyan's story flowed freely from his rich imagination, and the reader enjoys it with the same flowing pleasure. The sixth edition of the Parable of the Pilgrim has a finely executed frontispiece, representing a pilgrim leaving a city, and going a roundabout way to the New Jerusalem, which shines forth in the clouds.²

¹ A copy of this book is preserved in Dunton's Works, No. 799. 4. 3, in the British Museum.

² London, 1687.

Patrick's Pilgrim, slightly abridged, was published in the Englishman's Library; and still more abridged, in a neat pocket volume, at Oxford, by Parker.