lor of the university, and in 1675 was consecrated bishop of Oxford. Learning was greatly indebted to his patronage and munificence. He was a munificent benefactor to his college, and greatly improved the press of the university. For many years he annually published a book, generally a classic author, to which he wrote a preface and notes, and presented it to the students of his college as a new year's gift: among these was a very valuable and excellent edition of the Greek Testament in 12mo. 1675. His edition of the works of Cyprian affords also a conspicuous proof of his industry and learning. John Bunyan. BORN A. D. 1628.-DIED A. D. 1688. JOHN BUNYAN, the author of The Pilgrim's Progress,' was born at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628. His parents were poor but honest people, who gave their son such an education as their circumstances could afford. His early life was marked by many irregularities; even while yet a child, he says of himself, he "had but few equals for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God." Bunyan has, in his Grace Abounding,' given many curious particulars of his early history and experience. It is a most interesting psychological document, but our limits forbid quotation. About the year 1653, Bunyan became a member of the Baptist church in Bedford, then under the care of the Rev. John Gifford. Three years afterwards, he began to preach himself. He has given the particulars of this important crisis in his history, in a piece entitled, A Brief Account of the Author's Call to the Work of the Ministry.' After having exercised his gifts for about five years, during which time he supported himself by his honest industry as a tinker, he was apprehended and indicted "as an upholder and maintainer of unlawful assemblies and conventicles, and for not conforming to the national worship of the church of England." To this event, disastrous as its first aspect was to himself and his family, he was indebted, under the providence of God, for that leisure which enabled him to compose those various treatises with which his name is now associated, and some of which will stand alone and unrivalled while the world endures. "It is not known," says Southey, "in what year The Pilgrim's Progress' was first published, no copy of the first edition having as yet been discovered. The second is in the British Museum; it is with additions, and its date is 1678. But as the book is known to have been written during Bunyan's imprisonment, which terminated in 1672, it was probably published before his release, or, at latest, immediately after it." The eighth edition of this work was printed for Nathaniel Ponder, at the Peacock in the Poultry, for whom also a tenth edition was published in 1685. "The rapidity," says Southey, "with which editions succeeded one another, and the demand for pictures to illustrate them, are not the only proofs of the popularity which The Pilgrim's Progress' obtained before the second part was published. In the verses prefixed to that part, Bunyan complains of dishonest imitators : |