This short six months’ imprisonment assumes additional importance from the probability, first suggested by Dr. Brown, which the recovery of its date renders almost a certainty, that it was during this period that Bunyan began, if he did not complete, the first part of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”  We know from Bunyan’s own words that the book was begun in gaol, and its composition has been hitherto unhesitatingly assigned to his twelve years’ confinement.  Dr. Brown was, we believe, the first to call this in question.  Bunyan’s imprisonment, we know, ended in 1672.  The first edition of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” did not appear till 1678.  If written during his earlier imprisonment, six years must have elapsed between its writing and its publication.  But it was not Bunyan’s way to keep his works in manuscript so long after their completion.  His books were commonly put in the printers’ hands as soon as they were finished.  There are no sufficient reasons—­though some have been suggested—­for his making an exception to this general habit in the case of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”  Besides we should certainly conclude, from the poetical introduction, that there was little delay between the finishing of the book and its being given to the world.  After having written the book, he tells us, simply to gratify himself, spending only “vacant seasons” in his “scribble,” to “divert” himself “from worser thoughts,” he showed it to his friends to get their opinion whether it should be published or not.  But as they were not all of one mind, but some counselled one thing and some another, after some perplexity, he took the matter into his own hands.

   “Now was I in a strait, and did not see
   Which was the best thing to be done by me;
   At last I thought, Since you are so divided,
   I print it will, and so the case decided.”

We must agree with Dr. Brown that “there is a briskness about this which, to say the least, is not suggestive of a six years’ interval before publication.”  The break which occurs in the narrative after the visit of the Pilgrims to the Delectable Mountains, which so unnecessarily interrupts the course of the story—­“So I awoke from my dream; and I slept and dreamed again”—­has been not unreasonably thought by Dr. Brown to indicate the point Bunyan had reached when his six months’ imprisonment ended, and from which he continued the book after his release.

The First Part of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” issued from the press in 1678.  A second edition followed in the same year, and a third with large and important additions in 1679.  The Second Part, after an interval of seven years, followed early in 1685.  Between the two parts appeared two of his most celebrated works—­the “Life and Death of Mr. Badman,” published in 1680, originally intended to supply a contrast and a foil to “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” by depicting a life which was scandalously bad; and, in 1682, that which Macaulay, with perhaps exaggerated eulogy, has said,