which he worked,
indeed, is so good that there would be a difficulty in spoiling it
completely; but the prose of the translation in the English Bible,
faultless as it is, loses nothing in Bunyan's hands, and if we found
these poems in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should
consider that a difficult task had been accomplished successfully.
Bunyan felt, like the translators of the preceding century, that the
text was sacred, that his duty was to give the exact meaning of it,
without epithets or ornaments, and thus the original grace is
completely preserved.

Of a wholly different kind, and more after Quarles's manner, is a
collection of thoughts in verse, which he calls a book for boys and
girls. All his observations ran naturally in one direction; to minds
possessed and governed by religion, nature, be their creed what it
may, is always a parable reflecting back their own views.

But how neatly expressed are these 'Meditations upon an Egg':--

The egg's no chick by falling from a hen,
Nor man's a Christian till he's born again;
The egg's at first contained in the shell,
Men afore grace in sin and darkness dwell;
The egg, when laid, by warmth is made a chicken,
And Christ by grace the dead in sin doth quicken;
The egg when first a chick the shell's its prison,
So flesh to soul who yet with Christ is risen.

Or this, 'On a Swallow':--

This pretty bird! Oh, how she flies and sings;
But could she do so if she had not wings?
Her wings bespeak my faith, her songs my peace;
When I believe and sing, my doubtings cease.

Though the Globe Theatre was, in the opinion of Nonconformists, 'the
heart of Satan's empire,' Bunyan must yet have known something of
Shakespeare. In the second part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' we find:--

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.

The resemblance to the song in 'As You Like It' is too near to be
accidental:--

Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to be in the sun;
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall be no enemy,
Save winter and rough weather.

Bunyan may, perhaps, have heard the lines, and the rhymes may have
clung to him without his knowing whence they came. But he would never
have been heard of outside his own communion, if his imagination ha