lene Milk-street annexed. In 1685 he obtained the prebend of Harleston, in St Paul's. Soon after, he met with a severe affliction in the condemnation of Mr Alderman Cornish, for high treason. He had appeared for him on his trial, and visited him in Newgate, nor did he cease to entreat Judge Jefferies in his favour, as long as any hope remained of saving his life. But Calamy was destined by a retributive Providence to feel, in this instance, the cruelty of that inexorable persecution against one of his own friends, whose severity against an innocent controvertist there is too much reason to think he had winked at, and secretly enjoyed, if not prompted. The reply of Jefferies to his last application in favour of Cornish was strikingly characteristic of that ermined monster:-" Dear Doctor, set your heart at rest, and give yourself no further trouble; for I assure you, that if you could offer a mine of gold as deep as the monument is high, and a bunch of pearls as big as the flames at the top of it, it would not purchase that man's life."

It has been said, that the execution of this gentleman, together with other public calamities, induced that illness under which the doctor speedily sunk. He terminated his earthly career in January, 1686. During his lifetime seven sermons were published which had been preached on special occasions, and, after his death, his brother James published, in one volume, thirteen others. These sermons have been much admired by episcopalian divines. They display very respectable abilities, and are calculated for impression.

Bishop Pearson.

BORN A. D. 1612.-DIED A. D. 1686.

DR JOHN PEARSON, born in 1612, was successively master of Jesus and Trinity colleges in Cambridge, and also Margaret professor of divinity in that university. He held the living of St Clement's, Eastcheap, and was consecrated bishop of Chester on the 9th of February, 1672. He was an excellent divine and a profound scholar. His works are few but of great reputation. His exposition of what is called the Apostles' Creed, is esteemed one of the most finished pieces of theology in our language. It has gone through a great many editions. It has been alleged that as a bishop, Dr Pearson was somewhat too remiss and easy in the discharge of his episcopal functions; this may be accounted for in some measure, by the fact of his late preferment.

Bishop Fell.

DIED A. D. 1686.

DR JOHN FELL was the son of Dr Samuel Fell, some time dean of Christ church, Oxford. In 1643 he graduated M. A. About this time he volunteered in the king's cause, and was made an ensign in the garrison of Oxford. After the restoration, his loyalty was rewarded with the deanery of Christ church. In 1667 he was made vice-chancel

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.

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"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 :

-Some have of late, to counterfeit

My Pilgrim, to their own my title set;
Yea, others, half my name and title too,

Have stitched to their books, to make them do.

"These interlopers," Mr Southey continues, "may have very likely given Bunyan an additional inducement to prepare a second part himself. It appeared in 1684. No additions or alterations were made in this part, though the author lived more than four years after its publication."

'The Pilgrim's Progress' has been translated into almost all the modern European languages. Next to the Bible, it is probably the most popular book in the world. Writers of all parties, and of every variety of taste, have concurred in representing it as a master-piece of piety and genius, in which sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail. It is certainly the finest allegorical piece of writing extant.

"If this work," says Southey, "is not a well of English undefiled, it is a clear stream of current English, the vernacular speech of his age; sometimes, indeed, in its rusticity and coarseness, but always in its plainness and its strength. To this natural style Bunyan is in some degree beholden for his general popularity; his language is every where level to the most ignorant reader, and to the meanest capacity: there is a homely reality about it; a nursery tale is not more intelligible in its manner of narration to a child. Another cause of his popularity is, that he taxes the imagination as little as the understanding. The vividness of his own imagination is such, that he saw the things of which he was writing as distinctly with his mind's eye as if they were indeed passing before him in a dream. And the reader, perhaps, sees them more satisfactorily to himself, because the outline only of the picture is presented to him, and the author having made no attempt to fill up the details, every reader supplies them according to the measure and scope of his own intellectual and imaginative powers."

Mr Ivimey remarks, "The plan of this work is admirable, being drawn from the circumstances of his own life, as a stranger and pilgrim, who had left the City of Destruction,' upon a journey towards the 'Celestial Country.' The difficulties he met with in his determination to serve Jesus Christ, suggested the many circumstances of danger through which this pilgrim passed. The versatile conduct of some professors of religion, suggested the different characters which Christian met with in his way; these, most probably, were persons whom he well knew, and who, perhaps, would be individually read at the time. His deep and trying experience, arising from convictions of sin, drew the picture of a man with a heavy burden upon his back, crying as he fled from destruction, but going he knew not whither, Life! life! eternal life!""

"With the account of his experience and imprisonment before us,” Mr Ivimey justly observes, "we cease to wonder that Bunyan's fine imagination, though he had no books but the Bible, and Fox's ، Acts and Monuments,' should produce so exquisite a performance as The Pilgrim's Progress:' it naturally grew out of the circumstances of his life. The manner in which he relates the steps that led to its composition and publication, is so simple and yet so expressive, that though it is printed with every edition of this work, as the author's apology

for it, yet I cannot withhold myself the pleasure of inserting it in this place.

When at the first I took my pen in hand
Thus for to write, I did not understand
That I at all should make a little book,
In such a mode; nay, I had undertook
To make another; which, when almost done,
Before I was aware, I this begun :
And thus it was-I, writing of the way,
And race of saints, in this our gospel day.
Fell suddenly into an allegory,

About their journey, and the way to glory,
In more than twenty things which I set down:
This done, I twenty more had in my crown;
And they again began to multiply,

Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly.
Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast,
I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last
Should prove ad infinitum, and eat out
The book that I already am about.
Well, so I did, but yet, I did not think
To show to all the world my pen and ink
In such a mode; I only thought to make
I knew not what; nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my neighbour; no not I;
I did it mine own self to gratify.

Neither did I but vacant seasons spend,

In this my scribble, nor did I intend

But to divert myself, in doing this,

From worser thoughts, which make me do amiss.
Thus I set pen to paper with delight,

And quickly had my thoughts in black and white:

For having now my method by the end,

Still as I pulled, it came; and so I penned

It down; until at last, it came to be,

For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.
Well, when I had thus put my ends together,

I showed them others, that I might see whether
They would condemn them, or them justify;

And some said, Let them live; some, let them die;
Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;
Some said, It might do good, others said, No.
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 thus divided,
I print it will; and so the case decided.'

"Thus, it appears, that, concerning this work, which, from the excellence of its matter, and from the circumstances in which it was written, has excited universal admiration, the good man was himself obliged to give the casting vote in its favour, and was doubtless charged with vanity by many for publishing it: but he will now be justified, as actuated by the spirit of love and of a sound mind.”

Bunyan was restored to liberty in 1672, through the interference, it is generally supposed, of Barlow, bishop of Lincoln. Soon after his enlargement, he built a chapel at Bedford, by the contributions of his friends; and here he continued to preach to large audiences till his death. He also occasionally extended his ministrations to the surrounding country. Little, however, has been recorded of his life dur

ing the sixteen years which elapsed between his enlargement and death. He died in London on the 12th of August 1688. He is described as having been "tall of stature, strong-boned, but not corpulent, somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes, wearing his hair on his upper lip, after the old British fashion. His hair reddish, but, in his latter days, time had sprinkled it with grey. His nose well set, but not declining nor bending, and his mouth moderately large, his forehead somewhat high, and his habit always plain and modest."

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Bunyan's writings are numerous, and of very different degrees of merit. Besides The Pilgrim's Progress,' he is the author of another allegorical treatise, entitled, The Holy War.' It is, however, a work of very inferior merit compared with the other.

The fall and recovery of man are represented in The Holy War' by two remarkable revolutions in the town of Mansoul: the human soul being represented allegorically as a once beautiful and prosperous town, seduced from its allegiance to its king and governor by the stratagems of Diabolus, his inveterate enemy; but, after a tedious war, again recovered by the victorious arms of Immanuel, the king's son. Bunyan was not unqualified for the management of a military allegory, having himself been a soldier in early life, and present at some of the contests in the civil war. His works were collected and published in folio, in 1692, by Ebenezer Chandler, Bunyan's successor at Bedford, and John Wilson, a brother pastor. His biography has engaged several pens. Scott, Burder, Ivimey, and Southey, have written memoirs of Bunyan; and several elaborate essays on his writings and genius have appeared in periodical works.

George Fox.

BORN A. D. 1624.-died a. d. 1690.

GEORGE FOX, the founder of the society of friends or quakers, was born at Fenny-Drayton, a village of Leicestershire, in the year 1624. His father is reputed to have been a man of strictly religious habits, and to have paid great attention to the education of his son. He was however in the humble rank of a weaver, and was very probably infected with something of the fanaticism which too frequently prevailed in that age, prolific above all others in forms of opinion and variety of sects. George Fox was apprenticed at a suitable age to a grazier, and there is little doubt that his occupation tended to foster the native bias of his mind. The keeping of sheep has been found in all ages favourable to meditation. The pastoral life has been honoured by some of the most illustrious visions of inspiration, and it has often also been a nursery of wild imaginations and fanatical delusions.*

At the age of nineteen he professed to have received a divine com

Whatever were the extravagances and improprieties of George Fox's public conduct, to which we cannot avoid alluding, we wish to infer from them no charge whatever against that highly respectable and benevolent body who own him as the founder of their sect, but who would, we believe, be the last to justify, or to imitate many of the actions attributed to Fox.