Lord Thurlow in 1810, by Professor Arber in 1868, and by Mr. E. S. Shuckburgh in 1891.

Sidney's translation of the Psalms, in which his sister joined him, was long circulated in manuscript, and manuscript copies are numerous (cf. Bodl. Rawlinson MS., Poet. 25; Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 12047-8; and manuscript in Trin. Coll. Cambridge). Donne wrote a fine poem in praise of the work (cf. Poems, 1633; cf. Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, p. 15). It was first printed in 1823 by Robert Triphook under the editorship of Samuel Weller Singer [q. v]., from a manuscript in the handwriting of John Davies of Hereford, then in the possession of B. H. Bright, but now at Penshurst. The title ran: 'The Psalmes of David translated into divers and sundry kindes of Verse, more rare and excellent for the Method and Variety than ever yet had been done in English. Begun by the noble and learned gent. Sir Philip Sidney, Knt., and finished by the right honorable the Countess of Pembroke, his sister.' The first forty-three psalms are, according to notes in the manuscript, alone by Sidney. The metres are very various. Psalm xxxvii is an early example of that employed by Tennyson in 'In Memoriam.' Sidney's renderings enjoyed the advantage of republication with discursive commentary by Mr. Ruskin; Mr. Ruskin's edition of them forms the second volume of his 'Bibliotheca Pastorum,' 1877, and bears the sub-title of 'Rock Honey-comb.' Sidney's paraphrase, according to Mr. Ruskin, 'aims straight, and with almost fiercely fixed purpose, at getting into the heart and truth of the thing it has got to say; and unmistakably, at any cost of its own dignity, explaining that to the hearer, shrinking from no familiarity and restricting itself from no expansion in terms, that will make the thing meant clearer' (Pref. p. xvii).

One of Sidney's poetic works is lost. When William Ponsonby obtained a license for the publication of the 'Arcadia' on 23 Sept. 1588, he also secured permission to print 'a translation of Salust de Bartas done by the same S P. into englishe.' Greville mentioned in his letter to Walsingham that Sidney had executed this translation; and Florio, when dedicating the second book of his translation of Montaigne (1603) to Sidney's daughter, the Countess of Rutland, and to Sidney's friend, Lady Rich, notes that he had

seen Sidney's rendering of 'the first septmane of that arch-poet Du Bartas,' and entreats the ladies to give it to the world. Nothing further is known of it.

All Sidney's extant poetry was collected by Dr. Grosart in 1873 (new edit. 1877). The editor includes, besides the sonnets, songs, poems from the 'Arcadia,' and the psalms, two 'pastoralls' from Davison's 'Poetical Rhapsody;' 'Affection's Snare,' from Rawlinson MS. Poet. 84; and 'Wooing-stuffe,' from 'Cottoni Posthuma' (p. 327), where it is appended to a short prose essay, 'Valour Anatomized,' doubtfully assigned to Sidney.

THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN

EDMUND VENABLES

[From the Dictionary of National Biography.]

BUNYAN, JOHN (1628-1688), author of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Holy War,' 'Grace abounding,' &c., was born at the village' of Elstow, Bedfordshire, a little more than a mile south of the town of Bedford, in November 1628. His baptism is recorded in the parish register of Elstow on the 30th of that month. The family of Buignon, Buniun, Bonyon, or Binyan (the name is found spelt in no fewer than thirty-four different ways), had been settled in the county of Bedford from very early times. Their first place of settlement appears to have been the parish of Pulloxhill, about nine miles from John Bunyan's native village. In 1199 one William Buniun held land at Wilstead, a mile from Elstow. In 1327 one of the same name, probably his descendant, William Boynon, was living at the hamlet of Harrowden, at the south-eastern boundary of the parish, close to the very spot which tradition marks out as John Bunyan's birthplace, and which the local names of 'Bunyan's End,' 'Bunyan's Walk,' and 'Farther Bunyan's' (as old, certainly, as the middle of the sixteenth century) connect beyond all question with the Bunyan family. A field known as 'Bonyon's End' was sold in 1548 by 'Thomas Bonyon of Elstow, labourer,' son of William Bonyon, to Robert Curtis, and other portions of his ancestral property gradually passed to other pur

chasers, little being left to descend to John Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas Bunyan (d. 1641), save the 'cottage or tenement' in which he carried on the occupation of 'petty chapman,' or small retail trader. This, in his still extant will, he bequeathed to his second wife, Ann, and after her death to her stepson Thomas and her son Edward in equal shares. Thomas, the elder son, the father of the subject of this biography, was married three times, the first time (10 Jan. 1623) when only in his twentieth year, his second and third marriages occurring within a few months of his being left a widower. John Bunyan was the first child by his second marriage, which took place on 23 May 1627. The maiden name of his second wife was Margaret Bentley. She, like her husband, was a native of Elstow, and was born in the same year with him, 1603. A year after her marriage, her sister Rose became the wife of her husband's younger half-brother, Edward. The will of John Bunyan's maternal grandmother, Mary Bentley (d. 1632), with its 'Dutch-like picture of an Elstow cottage interior two hundred and fifty years ago,' proves (J. BROWN, Biography of John Bunyan, to which we are indebted for all these family details) that his mother 'came not of the very squalid poor, but of people who, though humble in station, were yet decent and worthy in their ways.' John Bunyan's father, Thomas Bunyan, was what we should now call a whitesmith, a maker and mender of pots and kettles. In his will he designates himself a 'brasier;' his son, who carried on the same trade and adopted the same designation when describing himself, is more usually styled a 'tinker.' Neither of them, however, belonged to the vagrant tribe, but had a settled home at Elstow, where their forge and workshop were, though they doubtless travelled the country round in search of jobs. Contemporary literature depicts the tinker's craft as disreputable; but we must distinguish between the vagrant and the steady handicraftsmen, dwelling in their own freehold tenements, such as the Bunyans evidently were. Bunyan, in his intense self-depreciation, writes: 'My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land.' This is certainly not language that we should be disposed to apply to a family which had from time immemorial occupied the same freehold, and made testamen

tary dispositions of their small belongings. The antiquity of the family in Bunyan's native county effectually disposes of the strange hallucination which even Sir Walter Scott was disposed to favour, that the Bunyans, though reclaimed and settled,' may have sprung from the gipsy tribe. Bunyan's parents sent their son to school, either to the recently founded Bedford grammar school, or, which is more probable, to some humbler school at Elstow. He learned reading and writing' according to the rate of other poor men's children.' 'I never went to school,' he writes, 'to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen.' And what little he learned, he confesses with shame, when he was called from his primer and copy-book to help his father at his trade, was soon lost, 'even almost utterly.' In his sixteenth year (June 1644) Bunyan suffered the irreparable misfortune of the loss of his mother, which was aggravated by his father marrying a second wife within two months of her decease. The arrival of a stepmother seems to have estranged Bunyan from his home, and to have led to his enlisting as a soldier. The civil war was then drawing near the end of its first stage. Bedfordshire was distinctly parliamentarian in its sympathies. In the west it was cut off from any communication with the royalists by a strong line of parliamentary posts. These circumstances lead to the conclusion that a Bedfordshire lad was more likely to be found in the parliamentarian than in the royalist forces. This is Lord Macaulay's conclusion, and is supported by Bunyan's latest and most painstaking biographer, the Rev. J. Brown. Mr. Froude, on the other hand, together with Mr. Offor and Mr. Copner, holds that 'probability is on the side of his having been with the royalists.' As there is not a tittle of evidence either way, the question can never be absolutely settled. But we hold, against Mr. Froude, that all probability points to the parliamentary force as that in which Bunyan served. In all likelihood, on his attaining the regulation age of sixteen, which he did in November 1644, he was one of the 'able and armed men' whom the parliament commanded his native county to send 'for soldiers' to the central garrison of Newport Pagnel, and included in one of the levies. The army was disbanded in 1646. Before this occurred Bunyan's provi

dential preservation from death, which, according to his anonymous biographer, 'was a frequent subject of thankful reference by him in later years.' 'When I was a soldier,' he says, 'I, with others, was drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it. But when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which when I consented, he took my place, and coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel he was shot in the head with a musket bullet and died.' Bunyan gives no hint as to the locality of the siege; but, on the faith of a manifestly incorrect account of the circumstance in an anonymous life, published after his death, it has been currently identified with Leicester, which we know to have been taken by the royalist forces in 1645; and in direct contradiction to Bunyan's own words for he says plainly that he stayed behind, and a comrade went in his room - he is described, and that even by Macaulay, as having taken part in the siege, either as a royalist assailant or as a parliamentary defender. Wherever the siege may have been, it is certain that Bunyan was not there. When the forces were disbanded, Bunyan must have returned to his native village and resumed his paternal trade. He 'presently afterwards changed his condition into a married state.' With characteristic reticence Bunyan gives neither the name of his wife nor the date of his marriage; but it seems to have occurred at the end of 1648 or the beginning of 1649, when he was not much more than twenty. He and his wife were 'as poor as poor might be,' without 'so much household stuff as a dish or spoon between them.' But his wife came of godly parents, and brought two pious books of her father's to her new home, the reading of which awakened the slumbering sense of religion in Bunyan's heart, and produced an external change of habits. Up to this time, though by no means what would be called 'a bad character' - for he was no drunkard, nor licentious - Bunyan was a gay, daring young fellow, whose chief delight was in dancing, bell-ringing, and in all kinds of rural sports and pastimes, the ring-leader of the village youth at wake or merry-making, or in the Sunday sports after service time on the green. As a boy he had acquired the habit of profane swearing, in which he became such an adept as to shock those who were far from scrupulous in their language as 'the ungodliest fellow for swearing they ever