The Life of John Bunyan Part 6

One more work of Bunyan's still remains to be briefly noticed, as bearing the characteristic stamp of his genius, "The Life and Death of Mr.

Badman." The original idea of this book was to furnish a contrast to "The Pilgrim's Progress." As in that work he had described the course of a man setting out on his course heavenwards, struggling onwards through temptation, trials, and difficulties, and entering at last through the golden gates into the city of G.o.d, so in this later work his purpose was to depict the career of a man whose face from the first was turned in the opposite direction, going on from bad to worse, ever becoming more and more irretrievably evil, fitter and fitter for the bottomless pit; his life full of sin and his death without repentance; reaping the fruit of his sins in hopeless sinfulness. That this was the original purpose of the work, Bunyan tells us in his preface. It came into his mind, he says, as in the former book he had written concerning the progress of the Pilgrim from this world to glory, so in this second book to write of the life and death of the unG.o.dly, and of their travel from this world to h.e.l.l. The new work, however, as in almost every respect it differs from the earlier one, so it is decidedly inferior to it. It is totally unlike "The Pilgrim's Progress" both in form and execution. The one is an allegory, the other a tale, describing without imagery or metaphor, in the plainest language, the career of a "vulgar, middle-cla.s.s, unprincipled scoundrel." While "The Pilgrim's Progress" pursues the narrative form throughout, only interrupted by dialogues between the leading characters, "Mr. Badman's career" is presented to the world in a dialogue between a certain Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive. Mr. Wiseman tells the story, and Mr. Attentive supplies appropriate reflections on it. The narrative is needlessly burdened with a succession of short sermons, in the form of didactic discourses on lying, stealing, impurity, and the other vices of which the hero of the story was guilty, and which brought him to his miserable end. The plainness of speech with which some of these evil doings are enlarged upon, and Mr. Badman's indulgence in them described, makes portions of the book very disagreeable, and indeed hardly profitable reading. With omissions, however, the book well deserves perusal, as a picture such as only Bunyan or his rival in lifelike portraiture, Defoe, could have drawn of vulgar English life in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in a commonplace country town such as Bedford. It is not at all a pleasant picture. The life described, when not gross, is sordid and foul, is mean and commonplace.

But as a description of English middle-cla.s.s life at the epoch of the Restoration and Revolution, it is invaluable for those who wish to put themselves in touch with that period. The anecdotes introduced to ill.u.s.trate Bunyan's positions of G.o.d's judgment upon swearers and sinners, convicting him of a credulity and a harshness of feeling one is sorry to think him capable of, are very interesting for the side-lights they throw upon the times and the people who lived in them. It would take too long to give a sketch of the story, even if a summary could give any real estimate of its picturesque and vivid power. It is certainly a remarkable, if an offensive book. As with "Robinson Crusoe" and Defoe's other tales, we can hardly believe that we have not a real history before us. We feel that there is no reason why the events recorded should not have happened. There are no surprises; no unlooked-for catastrophes; no providential interpositions to punish the sinner or rescue the good man.

Badman's pious wife is made to pay the penalty of allowing herself to be deceived by a tall, good-looking, hypocritical scoundrel. He himself pursues his evil way to the end, and "dies like a lamb, or as men call it, like a Chrisom child sweetly and without fear," but the selfsame Mr.

Badman still, not only in name, but in condition; sinning onto the last, and dying with a heart that cannot repent.

Mr. Froude's summing up of this book is so masterly that we make no apology for presenting it to our readers. "Bunyan conceals nothing, a.s.sumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp and shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the reward which such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful; is powerful; he enjoys all the pleasures which money can bring; his bad wife helps him to ruin, but otherwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace. Bunyan has made him a brute, because such men do become brutes. It is the real punishment of brutal and selfish habits. There the figure stands--a picture of a man in the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most familiar; travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire, as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Pleasures are to be found among the primroses, such pleasures as a brute can be gratified by. Yet the reader feels that even if there was no bonfire, he would still prefer to be with Christian."

FOOTNOTES

{1} A small enclosure behind a cottage.