e now urged him to impart to others the blessing of
which he was himself possessed. [254] He joined the Baptists, and became
a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He
knew no language but the English, as it was spoken by the common people.
He had studied no great model of composition, with the exception, an
important exception undoubtedly, of our noble translation of the Bible.
His spelling was bad. He frequently transgressed the rules of grammar.
Yet his native force of genius, and his experimental knowledge of all
the religious passions, from despair to ecstasy, amply supplied in him
the want of learning. His rude oratory roused and melted hearers who
listened without interest to the laboured discourses of great logicians
and Hebraists. His works 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 and artisans before it was publicly
commended by any man of high literary eminence. At length critics
condescended to inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a
popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude
had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little
book was really a masterpiece. Bunyan is indeed as decidedly the first
of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakspeare
the first of dramatists. Other allegorists have shown equal ingenuity
but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to
make abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love. [255]

It may be doubted whether any English Dissenter had suffered more
severely under the penal laws than John Bunyan. Of the twenty-seven
years which had elapsed since the Restoration, he had passed twelve in
confinement. He still persisted in preaching; but, that he might preach,
he was under the necessity of disguising himself like a carter. He was
often introduced into meetings through back doors, with a smock frock on
his back, and a whip in his hand. If he had thought only of his own ease
and safety, he would have hailed the Indulgence with delight. He was
now, at length, free to pray and exhort in open day. His congregation
rapidly increased, thousands hung upon his words; and at Bedford, where
he ordinarily resided, mone