"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."

BUNYAN TERCENTENARY,

W KITING OF A GREAT CLASSIC

(By CHARLES WILSON.)

The tercentenary of John Bunyan's birth comes due this month, though exactly on what date seems to be a matter of some doubt. "The inspired tinker," Bunyan has been called, but there was little of the old-time itinerant' mender of pans and kettles, too often in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of gipsy birth, and given as much to "horse coping" and the purloining of stray chickens as to the telling of fortunes and patching up of domestic utensils, about John Bunyan's father, who carried on quite a respectable trade as a "brazier" and coppersmith at Elstow, now hardly a mile away from the prosperous town of Bedford.

Young John had, for his time, quite a decent education. As a lad he learnt early to read and write, and his father, though a poor man, possessed a Miles Coverdale Bible, and a contemporary portrait of the son shows a. fine folio edition of Fox's "Book of Martyrs" in the background of the picture of the author of "The Pilgrim's Progress." As a boy, young John showed . signs of possessing an inward strain of mysticism. He dreamed dreams of "fiends flying away with him." As he grew up, however, he fell so away from Puritan grace as to be fond of "dancing." He rang the church -bells, played at tipcat, read "Sir Bevis of Southampton," an "unholy book." Worse than all was his indulging in profanity. He confesses that "a woman of loose character declared he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever heard in all her life." Like many youths of his day he was drafted into the Parliamentary army, and served against the Bang in the decisive campaign of 1645. Of his conversion, it is said, as a sequel to his having been "profoundly affected" by a sermon against Sabbath breaking, I need not write in detail, but I may mention that his wife, by whom he had four children, was evi± dently a strong-willed woman—history has never recorded her name—and spiritually inclined, for she is said to have brought as her contribution to the household library, "The Man's Pathway to Heaven*? and "The Practice of Piety/* Banyan became a member of a little Nonconformist community at Elstow Beginning to preach and write religious works, he fell out with the powers that we» m sack matters, and, refusing to cease his "malignant influences" was committed to Bedford gaol, where he remained over twelve years. "If you let me out today, ill preach again tomorrow," was his attitude, and he spent most of his time writing his "Grace Abounding* and otter works. _In 1672 he was released under "The Declaration of Indulgence," but three years later this was cancelled, and again all the Nonconformists suffered. Again he. went to gaoL It was during this

I J : .' . . l : months, that lie ..wrote ".'The Pilgrim's Progress," emerging to at once become a distinguished and popular preacher in London Snd. elsewhere. "■* .

"The Pilgrim's Progress" at once achieved: success, when published, in 1678, by Nathaniel Ponder at the Peacock, in the Poultry, l near Cornhill. It was Bunyan's twenty-fourth publication and he was then in his forty-eighth year. Strange to say, but one copy of the first edition is known to exist. Where it is now*—probably in the British Museum, or in the possession of some American multi-millionaire—l know hot, but at the time when Mr. Eliot Stock published his facsimile it was owned by a Mr. R. S. Holford, who had bought jit at Tetbury for twenty guineas. An edition was printed at Boston, in America, and it was soon issued in Dutch and French translations, followed by editions in Welsh, Walloon, German, Polish and Swedish, between 1688 and 1743. It was even translated into Japanese and Chinese, being illustrated by Chinese and Japanese artists, who adapted scenes and costumes to Oriental conditions.

One of the reasons why early editions of "The Pilgrim's Progress" and other of Bunyan's writings are nowadays so difficult to find is no: doubt largely due to the fact- that the .books were at first circulated among the poorer classes and were subjected to rough usage which scarcely made for their, permanent preservation. Macaulay put it well when he wrote (apropos to Southey's fine edition of the • classic) that "all the numerous editions of 'The Pilgrim's Progress' were evidently meant for the cottage and the servants' halli '•' The paper, the printing,' the, plates were of the meanest description. In general, when the educated minority differs (with the uneducated majority) about the meritß of a book the opinion of the educated minority finally prevails. The I Pilgrim** Progress* is perhaps the only book about which, after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority has come over to the opinion of the common, people."

The success of the famous allegory soon started a number of silly and malicious Tumours that the work could not possibly hare been written by a man of such humble birth and connections as Bunyan, the slanderers overlooking the fact that this was his twenty-fourth publication, and that he had already been responsible for at least one book of unquestionable force and merit, his "Grace Abounding." There is a contemporary portrait of Bunyan which paints him as a very fine stamp of man, both physically and his character generally. It k, I think, not too well known and is worth quoting. "He appeared in countenance to be of stern and rough temper; but in his conversation mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much discourse in company, unless some urgent occasion required it; observing never to boast of himself, or his parts, but rather seem low in his own eyes, and submit himself to the judgment of others; abhorring lying and swearing; being just in all that lay in his power to his word, not seeming to revenge injuries, loving to reconcile duTerenees and make friendship with all; a sharp, quick eye, accomplished "j£* an excellent discerning of S?***2it« B * of rood juimnaot %B& OKfik S§9~*