The Life of John Bunyan [41]
years of banishment, to their homes and their flocks. Chapels were
re-opened. The gaols were emptied. Men were set free to worship
God after their own fashion. John Bunyan left the prison which had
for twelve years been his home." More than three thousand licenses
to preach were at once issued. One of the earliest of these, dated
May 9, 1672, four months before his formal pardon under the Great
Seal, was granted to Bunyan, who in the preceding January had been
chosen their minister by the little congregation at Bedford, and
"giving himself up to serve Christ and His Church in that charge,
had received of the elders the right hand of fellowship." The
place licensed for the exercise of Bunyan's ministry was a barn
standing in an orchard, once forming part of the Castle Moat, which
one of the congregation, Josias Roughead, acting for the members of
his church, had purchased. The license bears date May 9, 1672.
This primitive place of worship, in which Bunyan preached regularly
till his death, was pulled down in 1707, when a "three-ridged
meeting-house" was erected in its place. This in its turn gave
way, in 1849, to the existing more seemly chapel, to which the
present Duke of Bedford, in 1876, presented a pair of noble bronze
doors bearing scenes, in high relief, from "The Pilgrim's
Progress," the work of Mr. Frederick Thrupp. In the vestry are
preserved Bunyan's chair, and other relics of the man who has made
the name of Bedford famous to the whole civilized world.
CHAPTER VII.
Mr. Green has observed that Bunyan "found compensation for the
narrow bounds of his prison in the wonderful activity of his pen.
Tracts, controversial treatises, poems, meditations, his 'Grace
Abounding,' and his 'Holy War,' followed each other in quick
succession." Bunyan's literary fertility in the earlier half of
his imprisonment was indeed amazing. Even if, as seems almost
certain, we have been hitherto in error in assigning the First Part
of "The Pilgrim's Progress" to this period, while the "Holy War"
certainly belongs to a later, the works which had their birth in
Bedford Gaol during the first six years of his confinement, are of
themselves sufficient to make the reputation of any ordinary
writer. As has been already remarked, for some unexplained cause,
Bunyan's gifts as an author were much more sparingly called into
exercise during the second half of his captivity. Only two works
appear to have been written between 1666 and his release in 1672.
Mr. Green has spoken of "poems" as among the products of Bunyan's
pen during this period. The compositions in verse belonging to
this epoch, of which there are several, hardly deserve to be
dignified with so high a title. At no part of his life had Bunyan
much title to be called a poet. He did not aspire beyond the rank
of a versifier, who clothed his thoughts in rhyme or metre instead
of the more congenial prose, partly for the pleasure of the
exercise, partly because he knew by experience that the lessons he
wished to inculcate were more likely to be remembered in that form.
Mr. Froude, who takes a higher estimate of Bunyan's verse than is
commonly held, remarks that though it is the fashion to apply the
epithet of "doggerel" to it, the "sincere and rational meaning"
which pervades his compositions renders such an epithet improper.
"His ear for rhythm," he continues, "though less true than in his
prose, is seldom wholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he
had the superlative merit that he could never write nonsense."
Bunyan's earliest prison work, entitled "Profitable Meditations,"
was in verse, and neither this nor his later metrical ventures
before his release - his "Four Last Things," his "Ebal and
Gerizim," and his "Prison Meditations" - can be said to show much
poetical power. At best he is a mere rhymester, to whom rhyme and
metre, even when self-chosen, were