poetry need not detain us long.
The most considerable of these--at least in bulk--if it be really his, is
a version of some portions of the Old and New Testaments: the life of
Joseph, the Book of Ruth, the history of Samson, the Book of Jonah, the
Sermon on the Mount, and the General Epistle of St. James. The attempt
to do the English Bible into verse has been often made and never
successfully: in the nature of things success in such a task is
impossible, nor can this attempt be regarded as happier than that of
others. Mr. Froude indeed, who undoubtingly accepts their genuineness,
is of a different opinion. He styles the "Book of Ruth" and the "History
of Joseph" "beautiful idylls," of such high excellence that, "if we found
them in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should consider that a
difficult task had been accomplished successfully." It would seem almost
doubtful whether Mr. Froude can have read the compositions that he
commends so largely, and so much beyond their merit. The following
specimen, taken haphazard, will show how thoroughly Bunyan or the
rhymester, whoever he may be, has overcome what Mr. Froude regards as an
almost insuperable difficulty, and has managed to "spoil completely the
faultless prose of the English translation":--

"Ruth replied,
Intreat me not to leave thee or return;
For where thou goest I'll go, where thou sojourn
I'll sojourn also--and what people's thine,
And who thy God, the same shall both be mine.
Where thou shalt die, there will I die likewise,
And I'll be buried where thy body lies.
The Lord do so to me and more if I
Do leave thee or forsake thee till I die."

The more we read of these poems, not given to the world till twelve years
after Bunyan's death, and that by a publisher who was "a repeated
offender against the laws of honest dealing," the more we are inclined to
agree with Dr. Brown, that the internal evidence of their style renders
their genuineness at the least questionable. In the dull prosaic level
of these compositions there is certainly no trace of the "force and
power" always present in Bunyan's rudest rhymes, still less of the "dash
of genius" and the "sparkle of soul" which occasionally discover the hand
of a master.

Of the authenticity of Bunyan's "Divine Emblems," originally published
three years after his death under the title of "Country Rhymes for
Children," there is no question. The internal evidence confirms