ted godly," and who,
though she brought him no marriage portion, so that they "came together
as poor as poor might be," as "poor as howlets," to adopt his own simile,
"without so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt" them, yet
brought with her to the Elstow cottage two religious books, which had
belonged to her father, and which he "had left her when he died." These
books were "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," the work of Arthur Dent,
the puritan incumbent of Shoebury, in Essex--"wearisomely heavy and
theologically narrow," writes Dr. Brown--and "The Practise of Piety," by
Dr. Lewis Bayley, Bishop of Bangor, and previously chaplain to Prince
Henry, which enjoyed a wide reputation with puritans as well as with
churchmen. Together with these books, the young wife brought the still
more powerful influence of a religious training, and the memory of a holy
example, often telling her young graceless husband "what a godly man her
father was, and how he would reprove and correct vice both in his house
and amongst his neighbours, and what a strict and holy life he lived in
his days both in word and deed." Much as Bunyan tells us he had lost of
the "little he had learnt" at school, he had not lost it "utterly." He
was still able to read intelligently. His wife's gentle influence
prevailed on him to begin "sometimes to read" her father's legacy "with
her." This must have been entirely new reading for Bunyan, and certainly
at first not much to his taste. What his favourite reading had been up
to this time, his own nervous words tell us, "Give me a ballad, a news-
book, George on Horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book
that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables." But as he and his
young wife read these books together at their fireside, a higher taste
was gradually awakened in Bunyan's mind; "some things" in them he "found
somewhat pleasing" to him, and they "begot" within him "some desires to
religion," producing a degree of outward reformation. The spiritual
instinct was aroused. He would be a godly man like his wife's father. He
began to "go to church twice a day, and that too with the foremost." Nor
was it a mere formal attendance, for when there he tells us he took his
part with all outward devotion in the service, "both singing and saying
as others did; yet," as he penitently confesses, "retaining his wicked
life," the wickedness of which, however, did not amount to more than a
l