The Portland daily press., 1880-04-24
Recent Publications.

Mr.. Froude's biography of Bunyan, in the
Men of English Letters Series (New York:
Harpers; Portland: Loring, Short & Harmony
is one of the strongest and most vivid portrait
ures of these volumes. The authors powerful
historic touch is not less fortunate in biogra-
ply. From his earliest years the writer of Pill
grim's Progress seems to have been subject to
the most distressing anxieties as to the state
and future of his soul; and he judged his boy
ish shortcomings and follies with great severi-
ty. He was given to swearing and lying, he
contritely declared; but his parents appear to
have considered him good boy; and it is not
unlikely that he exaggerated somewhat his
leanings to bad language. Bunyan's youth
was passed in a morbid state of self-aecusation,
of deadly horror at his sins, of which game
of ball on the village green appears to have
been the worst and most deeply repented. He
met with many hairbreadth escapes from
drowning and once from an adder's bite. In
1915, at the age of II, Bunyan left his fathers
tinker shop, having been conscripted as SOL
dier: He does not say on which side he fought,
seeming to think that whether on this side or
that of such sinful vanity as war, it mattered
nothing. He took no interest in politics; for,
says Mr.. Froude, he considered that "the only
right of man that he thought much about was
the right to be eternally damned if he did not
lay hold of grace. King and subject were alike
creatures, whose sole significance lay in their
individual immortal souls" Mr.. Froude rath-
er concludes, from evidence, that Bunyan was
oP cf IIo ~ ,;a - 81
a few days before the battle of Nasehy. Mr..
Carlyle thinks that Bunyan was in the garri-
son and taken prisoner, but it is proven that
he was among the besiegers. Bunyan himself
says nothing of the warlike times except to re-
cord providential escape of his own. His
troop was soon disbanded, and he went con-
tentedly back to the mending of pots and ket-
ties. When playing at ball on the common he
was seized with the conviction that it was ut
ter sin, and from this time he seemed more
than ever tormented with the superstitions of
conscience, some of them as unreasonable and
arbitrary as DR.. Johnson's habit of touch
ing every fence-post; ard, one would say, the
result of morbid nerves rather than of right
eousness. 1t is fairly narrowing to read of the
torturing scruples that beset the poor mans
mind. Charles II. forbade the meetings of
Nonconformists and in the winter of 1660-1
Bunyan was imprisoned for preaching at such
assemblies AT the summer assZes the court
was disposed to be lenient toward Bunyan;
and Sir Matthew Hale, in especial, was ready
to devise means by which he should obtain
pardon, or writ OF error" Bunyan would
not accept either; he meant to preach as it
might please him, without regard to statutes;
so, as Mr.. Froude observes, the kindest thing
was to leave him in prison, although the con-
finement was in fact nominal. He was let go
as far as London, where he began to preach
again. If the law was not to become dead
letter it must be enforced, so Bunyan was sent
back into the four walls of his prison. He re-
manned there for twelve years, treated with
consideration, and would have been free on
any day that he would have promised conform
ity with the laws of the land. His literary ge-
MUS was intense, but narrow. Allegory was
its best expression, though he wrote much po-
etry. The Life of Mr.. Badman, the Holy
War, and the famous Pilgrim Progress were
his principal works-the latter of these very
far superior to the Others His life was une-
died at the age of sixty. These are the barest
points of outline of life which Mr.. Froude's
skilful hand has memorialized so well in the
present volume.
Geoffrey Chaucer. By Adolphus W. Ward.
English Men of Letters Series. (New York;
Harpers; Portland: Loring Short & Harmon,
Mr.. Ward begins this memoir very effectively
by a complete and stirring picture of the times
in which Chaucer lived, of the medieval Lon.
don, so different from the great city as it exists
to-day; of the green English fields where
"daisies white and rede' bloom in this spring s
sunlight as when Chaucer gathered them to
lay between the pages of his poems. Mr.. Ware
concludes from such evidence as he has gath.
cred, that Chaucer was born about 1910. Ii
was period of wealth, show and splendor
and jests and complaints of the fnery
of the ladies were heard everywhere; though
indeed the gentlemen went brave in
boots with toes pointed many inches be
yond the foot, in garments punched and
shredded by the man-milliner," and the horses
wore harnesses and trappings with embroid.
cred cloths and bars of gold and silver
EFcu tIo pIOidultf VI IIo UlLl0 was ornament
al, and prose and poetry sparkled with tinsel
and conceits. Against this bizarre background
of the usage of the time, Chaucer's fresh and
natural genius shines like the sun reflected in
a dewdrop. 1t is true he had rich material to
work with; the customs of chivalry had not
passed away, and there was courtly and
poetic flavor in the life of the time that aided
the development of the genius of this father Of
English verse. Chaucer's description of him.
self, given very modestly, is exceedingly win.
ming. He had the essence of poetic genius
the native feeling of cart for arts sake" with
no desire to prove this or that truth, no thought
beyond the delight and dramatic fitness of the
moment. He was full of sunny gaiety; and
in Mr.. Wards admirable phrase had ''pref
erence for the good in things as they are to the
good in things as they might be-" In brief,
Chaucer the man and the poet was bright
clear and sunny-souled, and his verse loses nc
freshness with time. Chaucer came of a
family of winners, and the warmth and spar.
kle of their wines may have crept into the
atmosphere of his genius. But no evidence