life; his age was thirty-two when he was imprisoned; and the
inactivity and severance from his wife and little children were hard to
bear. "The parting with my wife and poor children," he says in words of
simple pathos, "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 those 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 to 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.'"
But suffering could not break his purpose, and Bunyan found compensation
for the narrow bounds of his prison in the wonderful activity of his
pen. Tracts, controversial treatises, poems, meditations, his "Grace
Abounding," and his "Holy City," followed each other in quick
succession. It was in his gaol that he wrote the first and greatest part
of his "Pilgrim's Progress."

[Sidenote: The "Pilgrim's Progress."]

The book had only just been completed when the Indulgence set Bunyan
free. Its publication was the earliest result indeed of his deliverance,
and the popularity which it enjoyed from the first proves that the
religious sympathies of the English people were still mainly Puritan.
Before Bunyan's death in 1688 ten editions of the "Pilgrim's Progress"
had already been sold; and though even Cowper hardly dared to quote it a
century later for fear of moving a smile in the polite world about him,
its favour among the middle classes and the poor has grown steadily
from its author's day to our own. It is now the most popular and the
most widely known of all English books. In none do we see more clearly
the new imaginative force which had been given to the common life of
Englishmen by their study of the Bible. Its English is the simplest and
homeliest English which has ever been used by any great English writer;
but it is the English of the Bible. The images of the "Pilgrim's
Progress" are the images of prophet and evangelist; it borrows for its
tenderer outbursts the very