med to tempt him to the Unknown Sin.

What did all this mean? It meant that Bunyan was within an ace of
madness.

It happens to a certain proportion of men, religiously brought up, to
suffer like Bunyan. They hear voices, they are afraid of that awful
unknown iniquity, and of eternal death, as Bunyan and Cowper were afraid.

Was it not De Quincey who was at school with a bully who believed he had
been guilty of the unpardonable offence? Bullying is an offence much
less pardonable than most men are guilty of. Their best plan (in
Bunyan's misery) is to tell Apollyon that the Devil is an ass, to do
their work and speak the truth.

Bunyan got quit of his terror at last, briefly by believing in the
goodness of God. He did not say, like Mr. Carlyle, "Well, if all my
fears are true, what then?" His was a Christian, not a stoical
deliverance.

The "church" in which Bunyan found shelter had for minister a converted
major in a Royalist regiment. It was a quaint little community, the
members living like the early disciples, correcting each other's faults,
and keeping a severe eye on each other's lives. Bunyan became a minister
in it; but, Puritan as he was, he lets his Pilgrims dance on joyful
occasions, and even Mr. Ready-to-Halt waltzes with a young lady of the
Pilgrim company.

As a minister and teacher Bunyan began to write books of controversy with
Quakers and clergymen. The points debated are no longer important to us;
the main thing was that he got a pen into his hand, and found a proper
outlet for his genius, a better way than fancy swearing.

If he had not been cast into Bedford jail for preaching in a cottage, he
might never have dreamed his immortal dream, nor become all that he was.
The leisures of gaol were long. In that "den" the Muse came to him, the
fair kind Muse of the Home Beautiful. He saw all that company of his, so
like and so unlike Chaucer's: Faithful, and Hopeful, and Christian, the
fellowship of fiends, the truculent Cavaliers of Vanity Fair, and Giant
Despair, with his grievous crabtree cudgel; and other people he saw who
are with us always,--the handsome Madam Bubble, and the young woman whose
name was Dull, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and Mr. Facing Bothways, and
Byends, all the persons of the comedy of human life.

He hears the angelic songs of the City beyond the river; he hears them,
but repeat them to us he cannot, "for I'm no poet," as he says himself.
He beheld the country of Beu