and therefore (as seems usual with poets) the line came to an untimely end. At the restoration of Charles II., Milton's name is known to have been on the proscribed list, and it is supposed that his life was only saved by the intervention of some one having influence at court (whether Davenant or another) who had love for Milton or poetry. It would be hard, one would think, to lead a helpless blind poet to the block; yet Milton's words against the Stuarts had been so many, so bitter and so powerful, that the poet himself must have been surprised at finding his life spared. In fact, only a few were beheaded except those personally concerned in the condemnation and death of Charles I. His third wife was a very capable woman, who made the last eleven years of his life quite comfortable; in spite of an extreme narrowness of means, caused by a heavy fine exacted at the Restoration, and the loss of his house in the great fire of London in 1666. We can not but fancy that there was a knot of the old Puritan worthies, bound together by a community of memories, of principles and of misfortunes, who stood manfully together in adversity as they had in battle and triumph; and that in such a society, John Milton could never be forlorn though sightless, in misery though poor. Indeed, we learn that he had several devoted friends, both old and young, who came and sat with him, read to him, wrote for him, so that he complained no more of loneliness. His older works may have given him some income at this time; but for "Paradise Lost"-one of the world's greatest sun-bursts of poetry - he received just £5 in hand and £5 more for each additional 1500 copies; payments which reached £20 in all! It would be impossible to describe "Paradise Lost" and superfluous to praise it. It simply may be said that no English education, no cultivation attained by any English speaking person, can be held to approach completeness which does not include the knowledge of that greatest of English poems. CHAPTER XXI. BUNYAN. THE DIARISTS. OHN BUNYAN (1628–88) holds a dual place in the world's regard; first as a martyr—almost an apostle of religion and morals; second, as a genius in literature. He was born at Elston in Bedfordshire. His father was a tinker, which in those days was nearly synonymous with vagrant, for tinkers in general were disreputable wanderers like the gypsies, if not like them beggars and pilferers. But Bunyan's father seems to have had a home of his own, and to have sent his son to the village-school-at the serious outlay of fourpence a month, for in those days education was a rare luxury to the poor. Bunyan early felt a strong religious bent; as was shown by fits of morbid remorse for trivial faults, and strenuous, though often ineffectual, attempts to cure them; yet the chief sins from which sprang this remorse were dancing, ringing the church-bells, playing "tip-cat" (a harmless boyish diversion) and reading the "profane" romance of Sir Bevis of Southampton; a fabulous knight whose exploits were like those of the better known myth Guy of Warwick. The last-named sin we are prone to pardon—if not praise -for two reasons: In the first place the world in general has long since ceased to condemn the reading of fiction as such, provided it contain nothing debasing to morals or destructive to piety; and, second, it must have been the power gained in this way that enabled Bunyan to construct, in later years, the immortal allegory of the "Pilgrim's Progress." As to the "ringing," there is something significant and almost pathetic in that. It was not any unlawful or outrageous practice. It was merely a joyful peal on the church-bells given out on holidays and Sunday evenings, as a kind of serenade to the retiring people. But to the Puritans (of whom Bunyan was one) all amusements were sinful, undevout, worldly, and therefore unworthy of God's people. So poor Bunyan, torn between natural gayety and imposed restraint, says: Before this I had taken much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such practice vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my mind hankered; wherefore I would go to the steeple- house and look on, though I durst not ring. At about seventeen he enlisted as a soldier in the parliamentary army that was fighting against Charles I., the Roundheads against the Cavaliers. This experience was another help to his pen in later years. His pages abound in camps and fortresses, and drums and trumpets calling Christians to arms; as well as giants, dragons, lions and enchanted caves and castles. In his "Holy War" (which it is said would be the best allegory in literature if he had not also written the "Pilgrim's Progress"), his description of the losing and retaking of the city of Mansoul shows the thoughts, knowledge and experience of a soldier in Cromwell's army. After the end of his military career he married, at about nineteen, the woman who became the good genius of his life. Whatever was best in him she fostered, and from all that was evil she weaned him by the charm of her gentleness and purity. We lose our regret at his giving up the dancing, tip-cat and bell-ringing when we learn that he was not so much driven from them by his own bigotry as drawn from them by her gentle influence. At about this time he experienced such a spasm of pious fervor as amounted nearly to what is known as "religious mania,” and almost unsettled his reason, although this did not show itself in regard to the common affairs of life; in them his conduct was uniformly discreet. He felt as certain of the physical presence of the devil as did Luther in his prison on the Wartburg. He thought himself another Judas; and, as he tells us in his autobiography, expected to burst asunder in the midst like his prototype. Spiritual peace followed the storm, but it was years before his mind recovered its tone. His pastor in the Bedford chapel (Baptist) dying, Bunyan, who had shown himself powerful in prayer and exhortation, unwillingly became a preacher; and his intense fervor made him a power in the work. Illiterate he was -but so were his hearers, and zeal more than atoned for all deficiencies. The law forbade any man to preach who had not been regularly ordained, and the poor tinker, the self-taught, self-made exhorter, though during the Commonwealth he had been unmolested, fell under the royal ban in the first year of the restoration. The king forbade him to speak, but his conscience forbade him to keep silence; brute force prevailed over mere conscious rectitude and Bunyan spent nearly twelve years in Bedford jail. His prison. stood upon a bridge, and his cell was said to be damp enough "to make the moss grow upon the prisoner's eyebrows." It was so dark that it was only by long habit he could work. Yet work he must to support his wife and children. As the tinker's trade was impossible in confinement, the kind jailor helped him to an expedient through which a pittance might be earned; it was the putting tags on stay-laces; and the poor prisoner furnished yearly many thousands of these to the hawkers or peddlers. What made his case the harder was that one of his children was blind; a thought that added the last pang of anguish to his imprisonment. Said he: "Poor child! I can not bear that even the wind should blow on thee; and now thou must suffer cold and hunger, thou must beg, thou must be beaten-and yet," he added, "I must do it." This is pathetic, tear-compelling, even after the lapse of centuries. Bunyan could not be idle. He drew his fellow-prisoners together in a religious society in which he was pastor, and labored to do them good. He had for his only reading a Bible, Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and one or two other religious books; these he read over and over until he knew them almost by heart. His one relaxation was indulged in by stealth; a recreation which proved also an immortal creation; the writing of the first part of the "Pilgrim's Progress." His own account of the way in which his book grew is most interesting. He says: When at first I took my pen in hand About their journey and the way to glory In more than twenty things which I set down; Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly. Looked at from any point of view, the "Pilgrim's Progress" is one of the most remarkable works of imagination ever produced. That a man who had read so little should show such varied invention was strange; but that he should be capable of a sustained flight of creative fancy, where nothing is forced or out of place, and where |