that the bell would fall upon him and kill him as a punishment from God, that he used to go outside the door to ring it.  Then again there was the old convent at Elstow, where, long before Bunyan’s time, nuns had lived, who were known to tradition as “the ladies of Elstow.”  Very aristocratic and very human ladies they seem to have been, given to the entertainment of their friends in the intervals of their tasteful devotion, and occasionally needing a rebuke from headquarters.  Yet it seems not improbable that there is some glorified memory of those ladies in the inhabitants of the House Beautiful, which house itself appears to have been modelled upon Houghton House on the Ampthill heights, built by Sir Philip Sidney’s sister but a century before.  The silver mine of Demas might seem to have come from some far-off source in chap-book or romance, until we remember that at the village of Pulloxhill, which had been the original home of the Bunyan family, and near which Bunyan was arrested and brought for examination to the house of Justice Wingate, there are the actual remains of an ancient gold mine whose tradition still lingers among the villagers.

All these things seem to indicate that the great allegory is by no means so remote from the earth as has sometimes been imagined; and perhaps the most touching commentary upon this statement is the curious and very unlovely burying-ground in Bunhill fields, cut through by a straight path that leads from one busy thoroughfare to another.  A few yards to the left of that path is the tomb and monument of John Bunyan, while at an equal distance to the right lies Daniel Defoe.  The Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe are perhaps the two best-known stories in the world, and they are not so far remote from one another as they seem.

Nor was it only in the outward material with which he worked that John Bunyan had much in common with the romance and poetry of England.  He could indeed write verses which, for sheer doggerel, it would be difficult to match, but in spite of that there was the authentic note of poetry in him.  Some of his work is not only vigorous, inspiring, and full of the brisk sense of action, but has an unconscious strength and worthiness of style, whose compression and terseness have fulfilled at least one of the canons of high literature.  Take, for example, the lines on Faithful’s death—­

     “Now Faithful, play the man, speak for thy God: 
     Fear not the wicked’s malice, nor their rod: 
     Speak boldly, man, the truth is on thy side;
     Die for it, and to life in triumph ride.”

Or take this as a second example, from his Prison Meditations—­

     “Here come the angels, here come saints,
       Here comes the Spirit of God,
     To comfort us in our restraints
       Under the wicked’s rod.

     This gaol to us is as a hill,
       From whence we plainly see
     Beyond this world, and take our fill
       Of things that lasting be.