and my Lord Fair-speech; in the House of Commons, Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Any-thing, and Mr. Facing-bothways; nor would "the parson of the parish, Mr. Twotongues," have been wanting. The town of Bedford probably contained more than one politician who, after contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the strumpets, and more than one priest who, during repeated changes in the discipline and doctrines of the church, had remained constant to nothing but his benefice. One of the most remarkable passages in the Pilgrim's Progress is that in which the proceedings against Faithful are described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were conducted under Charles the Second. The license given to the witnesses for the prosecution, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancor of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms preliminary to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord Hategood performs the office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs himself could have performed it. "JUDGE. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee? "FAITHFUL. May I speak a few words in my own defense? "JUDGE. Sirrah, sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say." No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times "sinned up to it still," and even went beyond it. The imaginary trial of Faithful, before a jury composed of personified vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the real trial of Alice Lisle before that tribunal where all the vices sat in the person of Jefferies. The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed. Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress. J. Salwyn Schapiro (1879) is assistant professor of History in the College of the City of New York. He received his early education in the public schools of Hudson, New York, and his collegiate training at the College of the City of New York and at Columbia University, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia in 1909. He is the author of Social Reform and the Reformation and Modern and Contemporary European History. The review here given appeared originally in the New York Nation. It is longer than most reviews, partly because of the importance of the book to be discussed, partly because of the method of treatment adopted by the reviewer. The article has three main divisions: (a) a general discussion of the subject of history, with reference to Mr. Wells; (b) a summary of the Outline of History, with comment; (c) an estimate of Mr. Wells's whole literary product, for the purpose of pointing out features which are common to all his writings. J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO H. G. WELLS'S "OUTLINE OF HISTORY" (This article appeared in The Nation for February 3, 1921. It is reprinted by permission of the author and of the editor of The Nation.) I In The Outline of History Mr. Wells has performed at least one remarkable feat: he has interested the average intelligent reader in history. No professional historian now living has ever done it or could do it. The average intelligent person will read fiction, essays, philosophy, science, and sometimes even poetry; but he will not read history. And the reason for this is obvious. History has recently been written for one of two audiences. One of these audiences consists of students in school and college to whom history is presented as an endless and tiresome succession of dates, battles, political parties, the "heroic dead," politicians, kings, and generals. Examinations once over, these students promptly proceed to forget all about it. But the memory of horrors associated with studying history lingers, and in after-life nothing will induce them to open a book on this subject. Or history has been written by the Ph. Deified for the Ph. Deified, generally in a language unknown to living men. When an ordinary person happens across a volume of this type and begins reading it, he is at first mystified, then dismayed, and ends by giving the book as a gift to a deserving nephew. Now and then a Macaulay, a Green, a Michelet, a Treitschke, a Mommsen, a Bancroft comes along and writes a history so vivid, so full |