Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
What occasioned Milton's prose works? Do they properly belong to literature? Why? Compare Milton and Shakespsare with regard to knowledge of men, ideals of life, purpose in writing. Tell the story of Bunyan's life. What unusual elements are found in his life and writings? Give the main argument of The Pilgrim's Progress.
With the loss of self-respect, he is likely to lose all that makes manhood true and noble. The key to John Bunyan's career is found in the self-respect which began to govern his thoughts and acts in maturing youth, and which afterward enabled him to meet persecution victoriously and to develop his peculiar talent.
The more we read of these poems, not given to the world till twelve years after Bunyan's death, and that by a publisher who was "a repeated offender against the laws of honest dealing," the more we are inclined to agree with Dr. Brown, that the internal evidence of their style renders their genuineness at the least questionable.
There is another book, however, early and familiarly known to him, which indisputably affected the bent of his genius in an important degree. This is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."
42 Bunyan's familiarity with these illustrious men was obtained by reading Fox's Acts and Monuments, when in prison. Ed. 43 "Quail"; to overpower. Well might the abettors of Antichrist wonder at the Christian's support under the most cruel tortures.
Like John Bunyan, but never with John Bunyan's literary grace, Behmen will borrow, now a Latin word or phrase from his reading of learned authors, or, more often, from the conversations of his learned friends; and then he will take some astrological or alchemical expression of AGRIPPA, or PARACELSUS, or some such outlaw, and will, as with his awl and rosin-end, sew together a sentence, and hammer together a page of the most incongruous and unheard- of phraseology, till, as we read Behmen's earlier work especially, we continually exclaim, O for a chapter of John Bunyan's clear, and sweet, and classical English!
Any preconceived form would have fettered Bunyan's free spirit; he was a giant in prayer, and commanded the deepest reverence while leading the public devotions of the largest congregations.
"I will retain the book," said the minister, with a smile, "although I don't think you can sell the book here. My brethren in Clarence are not readers. I read little myself. We are poor; we have no time to read. Except the Bible, I know of but one book in this entire community. Sister Dawson has a copy of Bunyan's sublime work, 'Pilgrim's Progress. It was an heirloom.
Leaving this solemn and interesting subject to the prayerful attention of the reader, I shall conclude my advertisement by quoting from a characteristic specimen of Bunyan's style of writing, and it was doubtless his striking mode of preaching: 'Faith doth the same against the devil that unbelief doth to God. Doth unbelief count God a liar? Faith counts the devil a liar.
There is an absence of attempts at grand effects. There is no effort after sublimity, and there is consequently a lighter sense of incongruity in the failure to reach it. On the other hand, there is the greater fulness of detail so characteristic of Bunyan's manner; and fulness of detail on a theme so far beyond our understanding is as dangerous as vague grandiloquence.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking