to be well performed; for the martyrologist being allowed scarce one whole page to a relation that perhaps merited a volume, had left so many chasms, and so many necessary things unmentioned, that I plainly perceived I wanted a far greater number of circumstances than that he had supplied me with, to make up so maimed a story tolerably complete. And as the relation denied me matter enough to work upon, so the nature of the subject refused most of those embellishments, which in other themes, where young gallants and fair ladies are the chief actors, are wont to supply the deficiencies of the matter. Besides, my task was not near so easy, as it would have been, if I had been only to recite the intrigues of an amour, with the liberty to feign surprising adventures to adorn the historical part of the account, and to make a lover speak as passionately as I could, and his mistress as kindly as the indulgentest laws of decency would permit. But I was to introduce a Christian and a pious lover, who was to contain the expressions of his flame within the narrow bounds of his religion; and a virgin, who, being as modest and discreet as handsome, and as devout as either, was to own an high esteem for an excellent lover, and an uncommon gratitude to a transcendent benefactor, without entrenching either upon her virtue, or her reservedness, And I perceived the difficulty of my task would be increased, by that of reconciling Theodora's scrupulousness to the humours of some young persons of quality of either sex, who were earnest to engage my pen on this occasion, and would expect, that I should make Theodora more kind, than I thought her great piety and strict modesty would permit. But for all this, the esteem that I had for the fair martyr's excellences, and the compliance I had for those, that desired to receive an account of so rare a person's actions and sufferings, made me resolve to try what I could do; which I adventured upon with the less reluctancy, because, though I esteemed it a kind of profaneness to transform a piece of martyrology into a romance, yet I thought it allowable enough, where a narrative was written so concisely, and left so imperfect, as that I had to descant upon, to make such supplements of circumstances, as were not improbable in the nature of the thing, and were little less than necessary to the clearness and entireness of the story, and the decent connection of the parts it should consist of. I supposed too, that I need not scruple to lend speeches to the persons I brought upon the stage, provided they

were suitable to the speakers, and occasions; since I was warranted by the examples of Livy, Plutarch, and other grave and judicious historians, who make no scruple to give us set orations of their own framing, and sometimes put them into the mouths of generals at the head of their armies, just going to give battle; though at such times the hurry and distraction that both they and their auditors must be in, must make it very unlikely, either that they should make elaborate speeches, or their hearers mind and remember them well enough to repeat them to the historians.

(From The Martyrdom of Theodora.)

JOHN BUNYAN

[John Bunyan was born, the son of a tinker, at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628. In his seventeenth year he enlisted, but whether on the side of King or Parliament is undetermined; the fact is noteworthy because of the use he made of his military experiences in the Holy War. He married early a wife who brought him for dowry The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, and The Practice of Piety, books which first attracted him to godliness and literature. His earliest writings were against the Quakers (1656). He was arrested in 1660 for preaching, and imprisoned for twelve years, during which time he wrote various tracts, and notably Grace Abounding, the history of his conversion. He was a licensed preacher from 1672-75, but when the Declaration of Indulgence was cancelled, was again arrested. In the six months of imprisonment that followed he wrote the first part of the Pilgrim's Progress (1677), several of the best passages being added in the second edition of the next year. Other works followed, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682), the second part of the Pilgrim's Progress (1684). For the next sixteen years he was pastor of a church in Bedford, writing in all some sixty volumes; none of which retain vitality but those mentioned. He died 31st August 1688.]

"HE had a sharp quick eye, accomplished with an excellent discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit.” So writes Bunyan's first biographer. "I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up in my father's house in a very mean condition among a company of poor countrymen." So writes Bunyan in his religious autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. And these two sentences give us more than half the explanation of the charm of Bunyan's writing; for that charm lies, first of all, in the excellent discerning of persons, the quick comprehension of the various mixtures of simple and radical virtues and vices, of which his "poor countrymen" were composed, and then in the vivid homely phrases in which the sketches were made. It is more especially the first of these great qualities, the discernment of spirits, which gives permanence to the permanent residue of Bunyan's vast literary production; for while in all his

writing there is abundant evidence of brain-power, and his skill in marshalling texts to defend his dogmatic positions is admirable, yet this general cleverness would not have raised him above the rank of the popular preacher whose performances in the next generation cumber the book - stalls, had it not been for that drop of precious elixir which nature infused into his eyes at birth, as into those of such different people as Geoffrey Chaucer and Jane Austen. It is this which divides Bunyan from one in other respects so like him as George Fox. Both were children of the people, both were intensely religious, both were given to hearing voices in their ears speaking the words of God or of Satan, both for their faith were "in prisons oft"; but the discriminating eye, and the sense of humour which accompanies it, were lacking to Fox, as his Journal makes abundantly conspicuous.

One outcome of this gift of vivid realisation was of course the corresponding vigour of the characters in the allegories; it is a commonplace to acknowledge that Mr. By-ends, Mr. Talkative, and the rest are as familiar to us as people we have met in real life. They were no doubt drawn from the quick, and the descriptive touches are put in with a sure pencil so that they live to us. Examples will be found on nearly every page, but the epithet "gentlemanlike" by which he describes the attitude of Demas, is one of the simplest and most effective. And how happy he is in the names of persons and places, "Mr. Worldly Wiseman," ," "Sir Having Greedy," "Mrs. Bats-eyes," "Mr. Facingboth-ways," "A young woman her name was Dull," "Vanity Fair," ," "The Slough of Despond," ""Flesh Lane" (where Forgetgood dwelt) "right opposite to the Church." His vocabulary as a rule is homely enough, but it is copious, and it is always justly and accurately employed. In the preface to Grace Abounding Bunyan says, "I could have stepped into a style much higher than this in which I have here discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do, but I dare not. I may not play in the relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was." The accurate delineation which in that book he gives of "the thing as it was," in that case the growth of his religious feelings and ideas, depends upon his vivid perception, and this again enables him to clothe his experiences in adequate and nervous language; and so too when the thing he has to represent is some neighbour whom he knows, or some coinage of his fancy, the fit words are equally at command. Had the poor