certainly a
remarkable, if an offensive book. As with "Robinson Crusoe" and Defoe's
other tales, we can hardly believe that we have not a real history before
us. We feel that there is no reason why the events recorded should not
have happened. There are no surprises; no unlooked-for catastrophes; no
providential interpositions to punish the sinner or rescue the good man.
Badman's pious wife is made to pay the penalty of allowing herself to be
deceived by a tall, good-looking, hypocritical scoundrel. He himself
pursues his evil way to the end, and "dies like a lamb, or as men call
it, like a Chrisom child sweetly and without fear," but the selfsame Mr.
Badman still, not only in name, but in condition; sinning onto the last,
and dying with a heart that cannot repent.

Mr. Froude's summing up of this book is so masterly that we make no
apology for presenting it to our readers. "Bunyan conceals nothing,
assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp and
shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the reward which
such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful; is powerful; he
enjoys all the pleasures which money can bring; his bad wife helps him to
ruin, but otherwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace. Bunyan has
made him a brute, because such men do become brutes. It is the real
punishment of brutal and selfish habits. There the figure stands--a
picture of a man in the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most
familiar; travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire,
as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of Despond and the
Valley of the Shadow of Death. Pleasures are to be found among the
primroses, such pleasures as a brute can be gratified by. Yet the reader
feels that even if there was no bonfire, he would still prefer to be with
Christian."

FOOTNOTES

{1} A small enclosure behind a cottage.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN***

******* This file should be named 1037.txt or 1037.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/3/1037

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United St