LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN.
To his contemporaries Bunyan was known as the Nonconformist Martyr,
and the greatest living Protestant preacher. To us he is mainly
interesting through his writings, and especially through the
'Pilgrim's Progress.' Although he possessed, in a remarkable degree,
the gift of expressing himself in written words, he had himself no
value for literature. He cared simply for spiritual truth, and
literature in his eyes was only useful as a means of teaching it.
Every thing with which a reasonable man could concern himself was
confined within the limits of Christian faith and practice. Ambition
was folly. Amusement was idle trifling in a life so short as man's,
and with issues so far-reaching depending upon it. To understand, and
to make others understand, what Christ had done, and what Christ
required men to do, was the occupation of his whole mind, and no
object ever held his attention except in connection with it. With a
purpose so strict, and a theory of religion so precise, there is
usually little play for imagination or feeling. Though we read
Protestant theology as a duty, we find it as dry in the mouth as
sawdust. The literature which would please must represent nature, and
nature refuses to be bound into our dogmatic systems. No object can be
pictured truly, except by a mind which has sympathy with it.
Shakespeare no more hates Iago than Iago hates himself. He allows Iago
to exhibit himself in his own way, as nature does. Every character, if
justice is to be done to it, must be painted at its best, as it
appears to itself; and a man impressed deeply with religious
convictions is generally incapable of the sympathy which would give
him an insight into what he disapproves and dislikes. And yet Bunyan,
intensely religious as he was, and narrow as his theology was, is
always human. His genius remains fresh and vigorous under the least
promising conditions. All mankind being under sin together, he has no
favourites to flatter, no opponents to misrepresent. There is a
kindliness in his descriptions, even of the Evil One's attacks upon
himself.
The 'Pilgrim's Progress,' though professedly an allegoric story of the
Protestant plan of salvation, is conceived in the large, wide spirit
of humanity itself. Anglo-Catholic and Lutheran, Calvinist and Deist
can alike read it with delight, and find their own theories in it.
Even the Romanist has only to blot out a few paragraphs, and can
discover no purer model of a Christian life to place in the hands of
his children. The religion of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' is the religion
which must be always and everywhere, as long as man believes that he
has a soul and is responsible for his actions; and thus it is that,
while theological folios once devoured as manna from Heaven now lie on
the bookshelves dead as Egyptian mummies, this book is wrought into
the mind and memory of every well-conditioned English or American
child; while the matured man, furnished with all the knowledge which
literature can teach him, still finds the adventures of Christian as
charming as the adventures of Ulysses or Aeneas. He sees there the
reflexion of himself, the familiar features of his own nature, which
remain the same from era to era. Time cannot impair its interest, or
intellectual progress make it cease to be true to experience.
But the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' though the best known, is not the only
work of imagination which Bunyan produced; he wrote another religious
allegory, which Lord Macaulay thought would have been the best of its
kind in the world if the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had not existed. The
'Life of Mr. Badman,' though now scarcely read at all, contains a
vivid picture of rough English life in the days of Charles II. Bunyan
was a poet, too, in the technical sense of the word, and though he
disclaimed the name, and though rhyme and metre were to him as Saul's
armour to David, the fine quality of his mind still shows itself in
the uncongenial accoutrements.
It has been the fashion to call Bunyan's verse doggerel; but no verse
is doggerel which has a sincere and rational meaning in it. Goethe,
who understood his own trade, says that the test of poetry is the
substance which remains when the poetry is reduced to prose. Bunyan
had infinite invention. His mind was full of objects which he had
gathered at first hand, from observation and reflection. He had
excellent command of the English language, and could express what he
wished with sharp, defined outlines, and without the waste of a word.
The rhythmical structure of his prose is carefully correct. Scarcely a
syllable is ever out of place. His ear for verse, though less true, is
seldom wholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he had the
superlative merit that he could never write nonsense. If one of the
motives of poetical form be to clothe thought and feeling in the dress
in which it can lie most easily remembered, Bunyan's lines are often
as successful as the best lines of Quarles or George Herbert. Who, for
instance, could forget these?--
Sin is the worm of hell, the lasting fire:
Hell would soon lose its heat should sin expire;
Better sinless in hell than to be where
Heaven is, and to be found a sinner there.
Or these, on persons whom the world calls men of spirit:--
Though you dare crack a coward's crown,
Or quarrel for a pin,
You dare not on the wicked frown,
Or speak against their sin.
The 'Book of Ruth' and the 'History of Joseph' done into blank verse
are really beautiful idylls. The substance with which he worked,
indeed, is so good that there would be a difficulty in spoiling it
completely; but the prose of the translation in the English Bible,
faultless as it is, loses nothing in Bunyan's hands, and if we found
these poems in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should
consider that a difficult task had been accomplished successfully.
Bunyan felt, like the translators of the preceding century, that the
text was sacred, that his duty was to give the exact meaning of it,
without epithets or ornaments, and thus the original grace is
completely preserved.
Of a wholly different kind, and more after Quarles's manner, is a
collection of thoughts in verse, which he calls a book for boys and
girls. All his observations ran naturally in one direction; to minds
possessed and governed by religion, nature, be their creed what it
may, is always a parable reflecting back their own views.
But how neatly expressed are these 'Meditations upon an Egg':--
The egg's no chick by falling from a hen,
Nor man's a Christian till he's born again;
The egg's at first contained in the shell,
Men afore grace in sin and darkness dwell;
The egg, when laid, by warmth is made a chicken,
And Christ by grace the dead in sin doth quicken;
The egg when first a chick the shell's its prison,
So flesh to soul who yet with Christ is risen.
Or this, 'On a Swallow':--
This pretty bird! Oh, how she flies and sings;
But could she do so if she had not wings?
Her wings bespeak my faith, her songs my peace;
When I believe and sing, my doubtings cease.
Though the Globe Theatre was, in the opinion of Nonconformists, 'the
heart of Satan's empire,' Bunyan must yet have known something of
Shakespeare. In the second part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' we find:--
Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
The resemblance to the song in 'As You Like It' is too near to be
accidental:--
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to be in the sun;
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall be no enemy,
Save winter and rough weather.
Bunyan may, perhaps, have heard the lines, and the rhymes may have
clung to him without his knowing whence they came. But he would never
have been heard of outside his own communion, if his imagination had
found no better form of expression for itself than verse. His especial
gift was for allegory, the single form of imaginative fiction which he
would not have considered trivial, and his especial instrument was
plain, unaffected Saxon prose. 'The Holy War' is a people's Paradise
Lost and Paradise Regained in one. The 'Life of Mr. Badman' is a
didactic tale, describing the career of a vulgar, middle-class,
unprincipled scoundrel.
These are properly Bunyan's 'works,' the results of his life so far as
it affects the present generation of Englishmen; and as they are
little known, I shall give an account of each of them.
The 'Life of Badman' is presented as a dialogue between Mr. Wiseman
and Mr. Attentive. Mr. Wiseman tells the story, Mr. Attentive comments
upon it. The names recall Bunyan's well-known manner. The figures
stand for typical characters; but as the _dramatis personae_ of many
writers of fiction, while professing to be beings of flesh and blood
are no more than shadows, so Bunyan's shadows are solid men whom we
can feel and handle.
Mr. Badman is, of course, one of the 'reprobate.' Bunyan considered
theoretically that a reprobate may to outward appearance have the
graces of a saint, and that there may be little in his conduct to mark
his true character. A reprobate may be sorry for his sins, he may
repent and lead a good life. He may reverence good men and may try to
resemble them; he may pray, and his prayers may be answered; he may
have the spirit of God, and may receive another heart, and yet he may
be under the covenant of works, and may be eternally lost. This
Bunyan could say while he was writing theology; but art has its rules
as well as its more serious sister, and when he had to draw a living
specimen, he drew him as he had seen him in his own Bedford
neighbourhood.
Badman showed from childhood a propensity for evil. He was so
'addicted to lying that his parents could not distinguish when he was
speaking the truth. He would invent, tell, and stand to the lies which
he invented, with such an audacious face, that one might read in his
very countenance the symptoms of a hard and desperate heart. It was
not the fault of his parents; they were much dejected at the
beginnings of their son, nor did he want counsel and correction, if
that would have made him better: but all availed nothing.'
Lying was not Badman's only fault. He took to pilfering and stealing.
He robbed his neighbours' orchards. He picked up money if he found it
lying about. Especially, Mr. Wiseman notes that he hated Sundays.
'Reading Scriptures, godly conferences, repeating of sermons and
prayers, were things that he could not away with.' 'He was an enemy to
that day, because more restraint was laid upon him from his own ways
than was possible on any other.' Mr. Wiseman never doubts that the
Puritan Sunday ought to have been appreciated by little boys. If a
child disliked it, the cause could only be his own wickedness. Young
Badman 'was greatly given also to swearing and cursing.' 'He made no
more of it' than Mr. Wiseman made 'of telling his fingers.' 'He
counted it a glory to swear and curse, and it was as natural to him as
to eat, drink, or sleep.' Bunyan, in this description, is supposed to
have taken the picture from himself. But too much may be made of this.
He was thinking, perhaps, of what he might have been if God's grace
had not preserved him. He himself was saved. Badman is represented as
given over from the first. Anecdotes, however, are told of
contemporary providential judgments upon swearers, which had much
impressed Bunyan. One was of a certain Dorothy Mately, a woman whose
business was to wash rubbish at the Derby lead mines. Dorothy (it was
in the year when Bunyan was first imprisoned), had stolen twopence
from the coat of a boy who was working near her. When the boy taxed
her with having robbed him, she wished the ground might swallow her up
if she had ever touched his money. Presently after, some children who
were watching her, saw a movement in the bank on which she was
standing. They called to her to take care, but it was too late. The
bank fell in, and she was carried down along with it. A man ran to
help her, but the sides of the pit were crumbling round her: a large
stone fell on her head; the rubbish followed, and she was overwhelmed.
When she was dug out afterwards, the pence were found in her pocket.
Bunyan was perfectly satisfied that her death was supernatural. To
discover miracles is not peculiar to Catholics. They will be found
wherever there is an active belief in immediate providential
government.
Those more cautious in forming their conclusions will think, perhaps,
that the woman was working above some shaft in the mine, that the
crust had suddenly broken, and that it would equally have fallen in
when gravitation required it to fall, if Dorothy Mately had been a
saint. They will remember the words about the Tower of Siloam. But to
return to Badman.
His father, being unable to manage so unpromising a child, bound him
out as an apprentice. The master to whom he was assigned was as good
a man as the father could find: uptight, Godfearing, and especially
considerate of his servants. He never worked them too hard. He left
them time to read and pray. He admitted no light or mischievous books
within his doors. He was not one of those whose religion 'hung as a
cloke in his house, and was never seen on him when he went abroad.'
His household was as well fed and cared for as himself, and he
required nothing of others of which he did not set them an example in
his own person.
This man did his best to reclaim young Badman, and was particularly
kind to him. But his exertions were thrown away. The good-for-nothing
youth read filthy romances on the sly. He fell asleep in church, or
made eyes at the pretty girls. He made acquaintance with low
companions. He became profligate, got drunk at alehouses, sold his
master's property to get money, or stole it out of the cashbox. Thrice
he ran away and was taken back again. The third time he was allowed to
go. 'The House of Correction would have been the most fit for him, but
thither his master was loath to send him, for the love he bore his
father.'
He was again apprenticed; this time to a master like himself. Being
wicked he was given over to wickedness. The ways of it were not
altogether pleasant. He was fed worse and he was worked harder than he
had been before; when he stole, or neglected his business, he was
beaten. He liked his new place, however, better than the old. 'At
least, there was no godliness in the house, which he hated worst of
all.'
So far, Bunyan's hero was travelling the usual road of the Idle
Apprentice, and the gallows would have been the commonplace ending of
it. But this would not have answered Bunyan's purpose. He wished to
represent the good-for-nothing character, under the more instructive
aspect of worldly success, which bad men may arrive at as well as
good, if they are prudent and cunning. Bunyan gives his hero every
chance. He submits him from the first to the best influences; he
creates opportunities for repentance at every stage of a long
career--opportunities which the reprobate nature cannot profit by, yet
increases its guilt by neglecting.
Badman's term being out, his father gives him money and sets him up as
a tradesman on his own account. Mr. Attentive considers this to have
been a mistake. Mr. Wiseman answers that even in the most desperate
cases, kindness in parents is more likely to succeed than severity,
and if it fails they will have the less to reproach themselves with.
The kindness is, of course, thrown away. Badman continues a loose
blackguard, extravagant, idle and dissolute. He comes to the edge of
ruin. His situation obliges him to think; and now the interest of the
story begins. He must repair his fortune by some means or other. The
easiest way is by marriage. There was a young orphan lady in the
neighbourhood, who was well off and her own mistress. She was a
'professor' eagerly given to religion, and not so wise as she ought to
have been. Badman pretends to be converted. He reforms, or seems to
reform. He goes to meeting, sings hymns, adopts the most correct form
of doctrine, tells the lady that he does not want her money, but that
he wants a companion who will go with him along the road to Heaven. He
was plausible, good-looking, and, to all appearance, as absorbed as
herself in the one thing needful. The congregation warn her, but to no
purpose. She marries him, and finds what she has done too late. In
her fortune he has all that he wanted. He swears at her, treats her
brutally, brings prostitutes into his house, laughs at her religion,
and at length orders her to give it up. When she refuses, Bunyan
introduces a special feature of the times, and makes Badman threaten
to turn informer, and bring her favourite minister to gaol. The
informers were the natural but most accursed products of the
Conventicle Acts. Popular abhorrence relieved itself by legends of the
dreadful judgments which had overtaken these wretches.
In St. Neots an informer was bitten by a dog. The wound gangrened and
the flesh rotted off his bones. In Bedford 'there was one W. S.'
(Bunyan probably knew him too well), 'a man of very wicked life, and
he, when there seemed to be countenance given to it, would needs turn
informer. Well, so he did, and was as diligent in his business as most
of them could be. He would watch at nights, climb trees and range the
woods of days, if possible to find out the meeters, for then they were
forced to meet in the fields. Yea, he would curse them bitterly, and
swore most fearfully what he would do to them when he found them.
Well, after he had gone on like a Bedlam in his course awhile, and had
done some mischief to the people, he was stricken by the hand of God.
He was taken with a faltering in his speech, a weakness in the back
sinews of his neck, that ofttimes he held up his head by strength of
hand. After this his speech went quite away, and he could speak no
more than a swine or a bear. Like one of them he would gruntle and
make an ugly noise, according as he was offended or pleased, or would
have anything done. He walked about till God had made a sufficient
spectacle of his judgments for his sin, and then, on a sudden, he was
stricken, and died miserably.'
Badman, says Mr. Wiseman, 'had malice enough in his heart' to turn
informer, but he was growing prudent and had an eye to the future. As
a tradesman he had to live by his neighbours. He knew that they would
not forgive him, so 'he had that wit in his anger that he did it not.'
Nothing else was neglected to make the unfortunate wife miserable. She
bore him seven children, also typical figures. 'One was a very
gracious child, that loved its mother dearly. This child Mr. Badman
could not abide, and it oftenest felt the weight of its father's
fingers. Three were as bad as himself. The others that remained became
a kind of mongrel professors, not so bad as their father nor so good
as their mother, but betwixt them both. They had their mother's
notions and their father's actions. Their father did not like them
because they had their mother's tongue. Their mother did not like them
because they had their father's heart and life, nor were they fit
company for good or bad. They were forced with Esau to join in
affinity with Ishmael, to wit, to look out for a people that were
hypocrites like themselves, and with them they matched and lived and
died.'
Badman meanwhile, with the help of his wife's fortune, grew into an
important person, and his character becomes a curious study. 'He
went,' we are told, 'to school with the Devil, from his childhood to
the end of his life.' He was shrewd in matters of business, began to
extend his operations, and 'drove a great trade.' He carried a double
face. He was evil with the evil. He pretended to be good with the
good. In religion he affected to be a freethinker, careless of death
and judgment, and ridiculing those who feared them 'as frighted with
unseen bugbears.' But he wore a mask when it suited him, and admired
himself for the ease with which he could assume whatever aspect was
convenient. 'I can be religious and irreligious,' he said; 'I can be
anything or nothing. I can swear and speak against swearing. I can lie
and speak against lying. I can drink, wench, be unclean, and defraud,
and not be troubled for it. I can enjoy myself and am master of my own
ways, not they of me. This I have attained with much study, care, and
pains.' 'An Atheist Badman was, if such a thing as an Atheist could
be. He was not alone in that mystery. There was abundance of men of
the same mind and the same principle. He was only an arch or chief one
among them.'
Mr. Badman now took to speculation, which Bunyan's knowledge of
business enabled him to describe with instructive minuteness. His
adventures were on a large scale, and by some mistakes and by personal
extravagance he had nearly ruined himself a second time. In this
condition he discovered a means, generally supposed to be a more
modern invention, of 'getting money by hatfuls.'
'He gave a sudden and great rush into several men's debts to the value
of four or five thousand pounds, driving at the same time a very great
trade by selling many things for less than they cost him, to get him
custom and blind his creditors' eyes. When he had well feathered his
nest with other men's goods and money, after a little while he breaks;
while he had by craft and knavery made so sure of what he had, that
his creditors could not touch a penny. He sends mournful sugared
letters to them, desiring them not to be severe with him, for he bore
towards all men an honest mind, and would pay them as far as he was
able. He talked of the greatness of the taxes, the badness of the
times, his losses by bad debts, and he brought them to a composition
to take five shillings in the pound. His release was signed and
sealed, and Mr. Badman could now put his head out of doors again, and
be a better man than when he shut up shop by several thousands of
pounds.'
Twice or three times he repeated the same trick with equal success. It
is likely enough that Bunyan was drawing from life and perhaps from a
member of his own congregation; for he says that 'he had known a
professor do it.' He detested nothing so much as sham religion which
was put on as a pretence. 'A professor,' he exclaims, 'and practise
such villanies as these! Such an one is not worthy the name. Go
professors, go--leave off profession unless you will lead your lives
according to your profession. Better never profess than make
profession a stalking horse to sin, deceit, the devil, and hell.'
Bankruptcy was not the only art by which Badman piled up his fortune.
The seventeenth century was not so far behind us as we sometimes
persuade ourselves. 'He dealt by deceitful weights and measures. He
kept weights to buy by and weights to sell by, measures to buy by and
measures to sell by. Those he bought by were too big, and those he
sold by were too little. If he had to do with other men's weights and
measures, he could use a thing called sleight of hand. He had the art
besides to misreckon men in their accounts, whether by weight or
measure or money; and if a question was made of his faithful dealing,
he had his servants ready that would vouch and swear to his look or
word. He would sell goods that cost him not the best price by far, for
as much as he sold his best of all for. He had also a trick to mingle
his commodity, that that which was bad might go off with the least
mistrust. If any of his customers paid him money, he would call for
payment a second time, and if they could not produce good and
sufficient ground of the payment, a hundred to one but they paid it
again.'
'To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest' was Mr.
Badman's common rule in business. According to modern political
economy, it is the cardinal principle of wholesome trade. In Bunyan's
opinion it was knavery in disguise, and certain to degrade and
demoralise everyone who acted upon it. Bunyan had evidently thought on
the subject. Mr. Attentive is made to object:--
'But you know that there is no settled price set by God upon any
commodity that is bought or sold under the sun; but all things that we
buy and sell do ebb and flow as to price like the tide. How then shall
a man of tender conscience do, neither to wrong the seller, buyer, nor
himself in the buying and selling of commodities?'
Mr. Wiseman answers in the spirit of our old Acts of Parliament,
before political economy was invented:--
'Let a man have conscience towards God, charity to his neighbours, and
moderation in dealing. Let the tradesman consider that there is not
that in great gettings and in abundance which the most of men do
suppose; for all that a man has over and above what serves for his
present necessity and supply, serves only to feed the lusts of the
eye. Be thou confident that God's eyes are upon thy ways; that He
marks them, writes them down, and seals them up in a bag against the
time to come. Be sure that thou rememberest that thou knowest not the
day of thy death. Thou shalt have nothing that thou mayest so much as
carry away in thy hand. Guilt shall go with thee if thou hast gotten
thy substance dishonestly, and they to whom thou shalt leave it shall
receive it to their hurt. These things duly considered, I will shew
thee how thou should'st live in the practical part of this art. Art
thou to buy or sell? If thou sellest do not commend. If thou buyest do
not dispraise, any otherwise but to give the thing that thou hast to
do with its just value and worth. Art thou a seller and do things grow
cheap? set not thy hand to help or hold them up higher. Art thou a
buyer and do things grow dear? use no cunning or deceitful language to
pull them down. Leave things to the Providence of God, and do thou
with moderation submit to his hand. Hurt not thy neighbour by crying
out Scarcity, scarcity! beyond the truth of things. Especially take
heed of doing this by way of a prognostic for time to come. This
wicked thing may be done by hoarding up (food) when the hunger and
necessity of the poor calls for it. If things rise do thou be grieved.
Be also moderate in all thy sellings, and be sure let the poor have a
pennyworth, and sell thy corn to those who are in necessity; which
thou wilt do when thou showest mercy to the poor in thy selling to
him, and when thou undersellest the market for his sake because he is
poor. This is to buy and sell with a good conscience. The buyer thou
wrongest not, thy conscience thou wrongest not, thyself thou wrongest
not, for God will surely recompense with thee.'
These views of Bunyan's are at issue with modern science, but his
principles and ours are each adjusted to the objects of desire which
good men in those days and good men in ours have respectively set
before themselves. If wealth means money, as it is now assumed to do,
Bunyan is wrong and modern science right. If wealth means moral
welfare, then those who aim at it will do well to follow Bunyan's
advice. It is to be feared that this part of his doctrine is less
frequently dwelt upon by those who profess to admire and follow him,
than the theory of imputed righteousness or justification by faith.
Mr. Badman by his various ingenuities became a wealthy man. His
character as a tradesman could not have been a secret from his
neighbours, but money and success coloured it over. The world spoke
well of him. He became 'proud and haughty,' took part in public
affairs, 'counted himself as wise as the wisest in the country, as
good as the best, and as beautiful as he that had the most of it.' 'He
took great delight in praising himself, and as much in the praises
that others gave him.' 'He could not abide that any should think
themselves above him, or that their wit and personage should be by
others set before his.' He had an objection, nevertheless, to being
called proud, and when Mr. Attentive asked why, his companion answered
with a touch which reminds us of De Foe, that 'Badman _did not tell
him the reason_. He supposed it to be that which was common to all
vile persons. They loved their vice, but cared not to bear its name.'
Badman said he was unwilling to seem singular and fantastical, and in
this way he justified his expensive and luxurious way of living.
Singularity of all kinds he affected to dislike, and for that reason
his special pleasure was to note the faults of professors. 'If he
could get anything by the end that had scandal in it, if it did but
touch professors, however falsely reported, oh, then he would glory,
laugh and be glad, and lay it upon the whole party. Hang these rogues,
he would say, there is not a barrel better herring in all the holy
brotherhood of them. Like to like, quoth the Devil to the collier.
This is your precise crew, and then he would send them all home with a
curse.'
Thus Bunyan developed his specimen scoundrel, till he brought him to
the high altitudes of worldly prosperity; skilful in every villanous
art, skilful equally in keeping out of the law's hands, and feared,
admired and respected by all his neighbours. The reader who desires to
see Providence vindicated would now expect to find him detected in
some crimes by which justice could lay hold, and poetical retribution
fall upon him in the midst of his triumph. An inferior artist would
certainly have allowed his story to end in this way. But Bunyan,
satisfied though he was that dramatic judgments did overtake offenders
in this world with direct and startling appropriateness, was yet aware
that it was often otherwise, and that the worst fate which could be
inflicted on a completely worthless person was to allow him to work
out his career unvisited by any penalties which might have disturbed
his conscience and occasioned his amendment. He chose to make his
story natural, and to confine himself to natural machinery. The
judgment to come Mr. Badman laughed at 'as old woman's fable,' but his
courage lasted only as long as he was well and strong. One night as he
was riding home drunk, his horse fell and he broke his leg. 'You would
not think,' says Mr. Wiseman, 'how he swore at first. Then coming to
himself, and finding he was badly hurt, he cried out, after the manner
of such, Lord help me; Lord have mercy on me; good God deliver me, and
the like. He was picked up and taken home, where he lay some time. In
his pain he called on God, but whether it was that his sin might be
pardoned and his soul saved, or whether to be rid of his pain,' Mr.
Wiseman 'could not determine.' This leads to several stories of
drunkards which Bunyan clearly believed to be literally true. Such
facts or legends were the food on which his mind had been nourished.
They were in the air which contemporary England breathed.
'I have read in Mr. Clarke's Looking-glass for Sinners,' Mr. Wiseman
said, 'that upon a time a certain drunken fellow boasted in his cups
that there was neither heaven nor hell. Also he said he believed that
man had no soul, and that for his own part he would sell his soul to
any that would buy it. Then did one of his companions buy it of him
for a cup of wine, and presently the devil, in man's shape, bought it
of that man again at the same price; and so in the presence of them
all laid hold of the soul-seller, and carried him away through the air
so that he was no more heard of.'
Again:
'There was one at Salisbury drinking and carousing at a tavern, and he
drank a health to the devil, saying that if the devil would not come
and pledge him, he could not believe that there was either God or
devil. Whereupon his companions, stricken with fear, hastened out of
the room, and presently after, hearing a hideous noise and smelling a
stinking savour, the vintner ran into the chamber, and coming in he
missed his guest, and found the window broken, the iron bars in it
bowed and all bloody, but the man was never heard of afterwards.'
These visitations were answers to a direct challenge of the evil
spirit's existence, and were thus easy to be accounted for. But no
devil came for Mr. Badman. He clung to his unfortunate neglected wife.
'She became his dear wife, his godly wife, his honest wife, his duck,
his dear and all.' He thought he was dying, and hell and all its
horrors rose up before him. 'Fear was in his face, and in his tossings
to and fro he would often say I am undone, I am undone, my vile life
hath undone me.' Atheism did not help him. It never helped anyone in
such extremities Mr. Wiseman said; as he had known in another
instance:--
'There was a man dwelt about twelve miles off from us,' he said, 'that
had so trained up himself in his Atheistical notions, that at last he
attempted to write a book against Jesus Christ and the Divine
authority of the Scriptures. I think it was not printed. Well, after
many days God struck him with sickness whereof he died. So being sick,
and musing of his former doings, the book that he had written tore his
conscience as a lion would tear a kid. Some of my friends went to see
him, and as they were in his chamber one day he hastily called for pen
and ink and paper, which, when it was given to him, he took it and
writ to this purpose. "I such an one in such a town must go to hell
fire for writing a book against Jesus Christ." He would have leaped
out of the window to have killed himself, but was by them prevented of
that, so he died in his bed by such a death as it was.'
Badman seemed equally miserable. But deathbed repentances, as Bunyan
sensibly said, were seldom of more value than 'the howling of a dog.'
The broken leg was set again. The pain of body went, and with it the
pain of mind. He was assisted out of his uneasiness, says Bunyan, with
a characteristic hit at the scientific views then coming into fashion,
'by his doctor,' who told him that his alarms had come 'from an
affection of the brain, caused by want of sleep;' 'they were nothing
but vapours and the effects of his distemper.' He gathered his spirits
together, and became the old man once more. His poor wife, who had
believed him penitent, broke her heart, and died of the
disappointment. The husband gave himself up to loose connections with
abandoned women, one of whom persuaded him one day, when he was drunk,
to make her a promise of marriage, and she held him to his word. Then
retribution came upon him, with the coarse, commonplace, yet rigid
justice which fact really deals out. The second bad wife avenged the
wrongs of the first innocent wife. He was mated with a companion 'who
could fit him with cursing and swearing, give him oath for oath, and
curse for curse. They would fight and fly at each other like cat and
dog.' In this condition--for Bunyan, before sending his hero to his
account, gave him a protracted spell of earthly discomforts--they
lived sixteen years together. Fortune, who had so long favoured his
speculations, turned her back upon him. Between them they 'sinned all
his wealth away,' and at last parted 'as poor as howlets.'
Then came the end. Badman was still in middle life, and had naturally
a powerful constitution; but his 'cups and his queans' had undermined
his strength. Dropsy came, and gout, with worse in his bowels, and 'on
the top of them all, as the captain of the men of death that came to
take him away,' consumption. Bunyan was a true artist, though he knew
nothing of the rules, and was not aware that he was an artist at all.
He was not to be tempted into spoiling a natural story with the
melodramatic horrors of a sinner's deathbed. He had let his victim
'howl' in the usual way, when he meant him to recover. He had now
simply to conduct him to the gate of the place where he was to receive
the reward of his iniquities. It was enough to bring him thither still
impenitent, with the grave solemnity with which a felon is taken to
execution.
'As his life was full of sin,' says Mr. Wiseman, 'so his death was
without repentance. He had not, in all the time of his sickness, a
sight and a sense of his sins; but was as much at quiet as if he had
never sinned in his life: he was as secure as if he had been sinless
as an angel. When he drew near his end, there was no more alteration
in him than what was made by his disease upon his body. He was the
selfsame Mr. Badman still, not only in name, but in condition, and
that to the very day of his death and the moment in which he died.
There seemed not to be in it to the standers by so much as a strong
struggle of nature. He died like a lamb, or, as men call it, like a
chrisom child, quietly and without fear.'
To which end of Mr. Badman Bunyan attaches the following remarks: 'If
a wicked man, if a man who has lived all his days in notorious sin,
dies quietly, his quiet dying is so far from being a sign of his being
saved that it is an incontestable proof of his damnation. No man can
be saved except he repents; nor can he repent that knows not that he
is a sinner: and he that knows himself to be a sinner will, I warrant
him, be molested for his knowledge before he can die quietly. I am no
admirer of sick-bed repentance; for I think verily it is seldom good
for anything. But I see that he that hath lived in sin and profaneness
all his days, as Badman did, and yet shall die quietly, that is,
without repentance steps in between his life and his death, is
assuredly gone to hell. When God would show the greatness of his anger
against sin and sinners in one word, He saith, Let them alone! Let
them, alone--that is, disturb them not. Let them go on without
control: Let the devil enjoy them peaceably. Let him carry them out of
the world unconverted quietly. This is the sorest of judgments. I do
not say that all wicked men that are molested at their death with a
sense of sin and fear of hell do therefore go to heaven; for some are
made to see and are left to despair. But I say there is no surer sign
of a man's damnation than to die quietly after a sinful life, than to
sin and die with a heart that cannot repent. The opinion, therefore,
of the common people of this kind of death is frivolous and vain.'
So ends this very remarkable story. It is extremely interesting,
merely as a picture of vulgar English life in a provincial town such
as Bedford was when Bunyan lived there. The drawing is so good, the
details so minute, the conception so unexaggerated, that we are
disposed to believe that we must have a real history before us. But
such a supposition is only a compliment to the skill of the composer.
Bunyan's inventive faculty was a spring that never ran dry. He had a
manner, as I said, like De Foe's, of creating the illusion that we are
reading realities, by little touches such as 'I do not know,' 'He did
not tell me this,' or the needless introduction of particulars
irrelevant to the general plot such as we always stumble on in life,
and writers of fiction usually omit. Bunyan was never prosecuted for
libel by 'Badman's' relations, and the character is the corresponding
contrast to Christian in the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the pilgrim's
journey being in the opposite direction to the other place. Throughout
we are on the solid earth, amidst real experiences. No demand is made
on our credulity by Providential interpositions, except in the
intercalated anecdotes which do not touch the story itself. The wicked
man's career is not brought to the abrupt or sensational issues so
much in favour with ordinary didactic tale-writers. Such issues are
the exception, not the rule, and the edifying story loses its effect
when the reader turns from it to actual life, and perceives that the
majority are not punished in any such way. Bunyan conceals nothing,
assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp
and shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the
rewards which such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful, he
is powerful; he enjoys all the pleasures which money can buy; 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.