was only, he assures us, at spare moments that he returned to the House Beautiful, the Delectable Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground.  He had no assistance.  Nobody but himself saw a line till the whole was complete.  He then consulted his pious friends.  Some were pleased.  Others were much scandalized.  It was a vain story, a mere romance about giants, and lions, and goblins, and warriors, sometimes fighting with monsters, and sometimes regaled by fair ladies in stately palaces.  The loose, atheistical wits at Will’s might write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the court; but did it become a minister of the Gospel to copy the evil fashions of the world?  There had been a time when the cant of such fools would have made Bunyan miserable.  But that time was passed, and his mind was now in a firm and healthy state.  He saw that in employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself; and he determined to print.

The “Pilgrim’s Progress” stole silently into the world.  Not a single copy of the first edition is known to be in existence.  The year of publication has not been ascertained.  It is probable that during some months, the little volume circulated only among poor and obscure sectaries.  But soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified the imagination of the reader with all the action and scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity by setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies, which interested his feelings for human beings, frail like himself, and struggling with temptations from within and from without, which every moment drew a smile from him by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and nevertheless left on his mind a sentiment of reverence for God and of sympathy for man, began to produce its effect.  In Puritanical circles, from which plays and novels were strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of genius, though it were superior to the “Iliad,” to “Don Quixote,” or to “Othello,” can ever produce on a mind accustomed to indulge in literary luxury.  In 1668 came forth a second edition, with additions; and then the demand became immense.  In the four following years the book was reprinted six times.  The eighth edition, which contains the last improvements made by the author, was published in 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685.  The help of the engraver had early been called in, and tens of thousands of children looked with terror and delight on execrable copperplates, which represented Christian thrusting his sword into Apollyon or writhing in the grasp of Giant Despair.  In Scotland and in some of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in his native country.  Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable vanity, that in New England his Dream was the daily subject of the conversation of thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding.  He had numerous admirers in Holland and among the Huguenots of France.  With the pleasure, however, he experienced some of the pains of eminence.  Knavish booksellers put forth volumes of trash under his name, and envious scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor ignorant tinker should really be the author of the book which was called his.