JAMES THE SECOND.

59

behind him pulling liis clothes. He thought that the brandof Cain had been set upon him. He feared that he was aboutto burst asunder like Judas. His mental agony disorderedhis health. One day he shook like a man in the palsy. Onanother day he felt a fire within his breast. It is difficult tounderstand how he survived sufferings so intense, and solong continued. At length the clouds broke. From thedepths of despair, the penitent passed to a state of serenefelicity. An irresistible impulse now urged him to impartto others the blessing of which he was himself possessed.*He joined the Baptists, and became a preacher and writer.His education had been that of a mechanic. He knew nolanguage but the English, as it was spoken by the commonpeople. He had studied no groat model of composition, withthe exception, an important exception undoubtedly, of ournoble translation of the Bible. His spelling was bad. Hefrequently transgressed the rules of grammar. Yet hisnative force of genius, and his experimental knowledge ofall the religious passions, from despair to ecstasy, amplysupplied in him the want of learning. His rude oratoryroused and melted hearers who listened without interest tothe laboured discourses of great logicians and Hebraists. Hisworks were widely circulated among the humbler classes.One of them, the Pilgrim’s Progress, was, in his own lifetime,translated into several foreign languages. It was, however,scarcely known to the learned and polite, and had been,during near a century, the delight of pious cottagers andartisans before it was publicly commended by any man of highliterary eminence. At length critics condescended to inquirewhere the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay.They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude hadjudged more correctly than the learned, and that the despisedlittle book was really a masterpiece. Bunyan is indeed asdecidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the firstof orators, or Shakspeare the first of dramatists. Otherallegorists have shown equal ingenuity; but ho other alle-

CHAP.

VII.

1687 .

• Bunyan’s Grace Abounding.