TO A.D. 1674]

JOHN MILTON.

JEREMY TAYLOR

661

Milton

did not make his break by simply writing "Book VIII.," but made a poet's pause by this fresh opening :

"The angel ended, and in Adam's ear

So charming left his voice, that he awhile

Thought him still speaking, still stood fix'd to hear;

Then, as new wak'd, thus gratefully replied."

The first five lines of Book XII. were added for the same good reason. John Milton, aged sixty-six, died on Sunday, the 8th of November, 1674.

19. Jeremy Taylor (ch. viii. § 61, 70; ch. ix. § 14), aged forty-seven at the Restoration, published in June, 1660, his Ductor Dubitantium; or, the Rule of Conscience in all her General Measures, a book of casuistry, which he had designed to be the great work of his life. It was dedicated to Charles II., and followed in two months by The Worthy Communicant. In August he was nominated Bishop of Down and Connor; he was made also Vice-Chancellor of Dublin University, and a member of the Irish Privy Council. In April, 1661, he had the adjacent bishopric of Dromore united with Down and Connor, in consideration of his "virtue, wisdom, and industry." At the opening of the Irish Parliament, in May, 1661, Jeremy Taylor preached, and admonished his hearers to oppress no man for his religious opinions, to deal equal justice to men of all forms of faith, and "do as God does, who in judgment remembers mercy.” He still lived near Portmore, and made pious use of his newly-acquired wealth. He apprenticed poor children, maintained promising youths at the University, and rebuilt the choir of Dromore Cathedral. 1664 he issued, with addition of a second part, his Dissuasive from Popery, first published in 1647. His son by his second marriage died before him. Of his sons by the first marriage, the elder, in the army, was killed in a duel with an officer of his own regiment; the younger, destined for the Church, had been drawn to the court, became secretary to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was corrupted by court manners of the Restoration, and a profligate life with a consumptive constitution caused his death about the same time as his father's. Jeremy Taylor died, aged fifty-five, on the 13th of August, 1667, in the year of the publication of “Paradise Lost." Of Milton's three daughters, the eldest, Anne, who had a deformed body and pleasing face, married an architect, and died at the birth of her first child; Mary, the second, did not marry. Deborah, who

In

loved her father, left home to avoid her mother-in-law, went with a lady to Ireland, married Mr. Clarke, a weaver in Spitalfields, and had ten children.

20. John Bunyan (ch. ix. § 15), incurring the penalty for unauthorised preaching, was committed to prison in November, 1660, on the charge of going about to several conventicles in the country, to the great disparagement of the government of the Church of England. He was sent, aged thirty-two, to Bedford Jail for three months. As he would not conform at the end of that time, he was re-committed. He was not included in the general jail delivery at the Coronation of Charles II., in April, 1661. His wife—she was his second wife-appealed three times to the judges, and urged that she had "four small children that cannot help themselves, one of which is blind, and we have nothing to live upon but the charity of good people." She appealed in vain. "I found myself," said Bunyan, encompassed with infirmities. The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of the flesh from the bones, and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants that my poor family was like to meet with should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all besides. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces. 'Poor child!' thought I, 'what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee."" So felt the great warm heart that was pouring out in Bedford Jail its love to God and man. Depth of feeling, vivid imagination, and absorbing sense of the reality of the whole spiritual world revealed to him in his Bible, made Bunyan a grand representative of the religious feeling of the people. In simple direct phrase, with his heart in every line, he clothed in visible forms that code of religious faith and duty which an earnest mind, unguided by traditions, drew with its own simple strength out of the Bible. Bunyan wrote much, profoundly religious tracts, prison meditations, a book of poems-Divine Emblems; or, Temporal Things Spiritualized, fitted for the use of Boys and Girls, and other occasional verse. The whole work of his life was like that indicated in his child's book, a

TO A.D. 1678] JOHN BUNYAN. THE PILGRIM's progress 663 spiritualizing of temporal things. Matter for him was the shadow, soul the substance; the poor man whose soul Bunyan leads by thoughts that it can follow, passes through a hard life with its dull realities all glorified. Look where he may, a man poor and troubled as himself has stamped for him God's image on some part of what he sees. As Bunyan himself rhymes:

"We change our drossy dust for gold,

From death to life we fly;

We let go shadows, and take hold
Of immortality."

The poor man's child, ill taught, and with small power of advancing in the world, may look at a snail and think of what John Bunyan wrote for children, in his prison, of the snail:

That life by Christ do seek, they shall not fail
To have it; let them nothing be afraid:

The herb and flow'r are eaten by the snail.'

The first part of The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to that which is to Come, delivered under the similitude of a Dream, wherein is discovered the Manner of his Setting Out, his Dangerous Journey, and Safe Arrival at the Desired Country, was written in Bedford Jail, where Bunyan was a prisoner for more than eleven years, from November, 1660, to March, 1672, when a Royal declaration allowed Nonconformists (except Roman Catholics) to meet under their licensed ministers. His Holy City had been published in 1665; and after his release Bunyan published a Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith, a Confession of his Faith, an appeal entitled Come and Welcome to Christ, before that First Part of the Pilgrim's Progress appeared in 1678, four years after the death of Milton. The allegory is realized with genius akin to that of the dramatist. Christian, with the Burden on his back and the Book in his hand, sets out on his search for eternal life, and is at once engaged in a series of dialogues. Neighbours Obstinate and Pliable attempt to turn him back. Pliable goes a little way with him, but declines to struggle through the Slough of Despond, and gets out on the wrong side. Then Christian meets Mr. Worldly Wiseman, from the town of Carnal Policy, hard by, has a talk

with him before he enters in at the Strait Gate, triumphs over Apollyon, passes through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, overtakes his townsfellow Faithful, who tells his experiences of the journey, and they then come upon Talkative, who was also of their town, son of one Say-well, of Prating Row. All the dialogue is touched with humorous sense of characters drawn from life and familiar to the people, while the allegory blends itself everywhere with the poor man's Bible reading, and has always its meaning broadly written on its surface, so that the simplest reader is never at a loss for the interpretation. The adventures of Christian, in Vanity Fair are full of dramatic dialogue. Then there is still talk by the way between Christian and Hopeful before they lie down to sleep in the grounds of Doubting Castle, where they are caught in the morning by its master, the Giant Despair. There is life and character still in the story of their peril from the giant, before Christian remembers that he has "a key in his bosom," called Promise, that will open any lock in Doubting Castle. And so the allegory runs on to the end, lively with human interest of incident and shrewd character-painting by the way of dialogue, that at once chain the attention of the most illiterate; never obscure, and never for ten lines allowing its reader to forget the application of it all to his own life of duty for the love of God. The story ends with the last conflict of Christian and Hopeful, when at the hour of death they pass through the deep waters, leaving their mortal garments behind them in the river, and are led by the Shining Ones into the Heavenly Jerusalem. In 1682 appeared Bunyan's allegory of the Holy War; and in 1684 the second part of "Pilgrim's Progress," telling the heavenward pilgrimage of Christian's wife and four children. England was England still, under a king who was tainting fashionable literature. Her highest culture produced in the reign of Charles II. "Paradise Lost;" and from among the people who had little culture except that which they drew for themselves from the Bible, came the 'Pilgrim's Progress."

21. Richard Baxter (ch. ix. § 13) was also an active writer throughout the reign of Charles II. Soon after the Restoration, in 1662, there were more than 4,200 Quakers in prison at one time. In 1670, Robert Barclay, of Ury, near Aberdeen, then twenty-two years old, defended the Friends, whose society he had joined, in a treatise, published at Aberdeen, entitled, Truth cleared from Calumnies. In 1676 he was confined with others in

TO A.D. 1684] BUNYAN. R. BARCLAY.

RALPH CUDWorth 665

a prison so dark that unless the keeper set the door open or brought a candle they could not see to eat the food brought in to them. In the same year appeared Barclay's Apology for the True Christian Divinity as the same is held forth and preached by the People called in scorn Quakers, being a full Explanation and Vindication of their Principles and Doctrines. It was first published in Latin, at Amsterdam, and then, translated by the author, published in England. The address to Charles II., in the place of a dedication, called upon him for justice on behalf of a most peaceful body of his subjects, and said: "Thou hast tasted of prosperity and adversity, thou knowest what it is to be banished thy native country, to be overruled as well as to rule and sit upon the throne; and being oppressed, thou hast reason to know how hateful the oppressor is both to God and man. If, after all these warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto the Lord with all thy heart, but forget Him who remembered thee in thy distress, and give up thyself to follow lust and vanity, surely great will be thy condemnation."

22. In the reign of Charles II., the Episcopal Church had among its representatives (besides, for a year, Thomas Fuller) Jeremy Taylor, Cudworth, Barrow, Tillotson, Leighton, Beveridge, and Burnet. Thomas Fuller (ch. viii. § 59) under Charles II. was restored to his prebend of Salisbury, and made D.D. and chaplain to the king; but he lived only until August, 1661. His History of the Worthies of England appeared in 1662, and is the most popular of all his works.

Ralph Cudworth, born in 1617, at Aller, Somersetshire, became Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1644 he was Master of Clare Hall; in 1645, Regius Professor of Hebrew, and devoted himself to Jewish antiquities. He became D.D. in 1651; in 1654, Master of Christ's College (meanwhile also rector of North Cadbury, Somersetshire). He then married, and spent the rest of his life at Cambridge. In 1678 he published the first part of The True Intellectual System of the Universe. The work was planned in three parts, of which this first part was devoted to the refutation of atheism. The other two parts were to have been on Moral Distinctions and Free Will. His philosophical method and liberality of mind offended many theologians, who cried out on him as an atheist for his method of refuting atheism. He died in the year of the Revolution, leaving one daughter, who married Sir Francis Masham.

Isaac Barrow, born in 1630, educated at Charterhouse