Thus, and in his conflicts against the magistrates, he acted and suffered, in his youth, all the adventures of his own Christian and Faithful, in "The Pilgrim's Progress" (published in 1678). He left an unfading picture of some elements in English society: seventy years later he might have been a Fielding. "He was a born novelist," it has been said: but the novels of his day were the interminable romances of the French type of Scudéry. His "Grace Abounding" is as brilliant in its way as the "Confessions of Saint Augustine". His secular characters in "The Pilgrim's Progress" are as good, by way of sketches, as are the finished portraits in "Tom Jones". In 1680 he published "The Life and Death of Mr. Badman"; in which Mr. Wiseman gives convincing reasons for his opinion "that Mr. Badman has gone to Hell". Mr. Badman, in life's gay morn, like St. Augustine, had "great pleasure in robbing orchards and gardens". "The beginning of the Lord's Day was, to Mr. Badman, as if he was going to prison." As for his eloquence he was "a _Damme_ Blade". In literature his taste was all for "beastly Romances". In church he either slept or flirted, like Mr. Pepys. In the long run, Mr. Badman departed from his prodigal life, "quietly, peaceably, and like a lamb". It cannot be said of Mr. Badman that he had no redeeming vices; he was ill-tempered and envious; he occasionally went on the High Toby lay, and his masterpiece was a fraudulent bankruptcy. Mr. Badman is amusing, but his history, interwoven with many strong and simple anecdotes of other ruffians, cannot be compared in merit with "The Pilgrim's Progress," where the characters are so many and various; the imagination so vivid, many passages so rich in poetic qualities, and the language so simple. It is a great prose epic, a great novel of the road; and beside it "The Holy War" is tame and indistinct. Bunyan wrote many works, now forgotten, on religious themes, and in controversial style his weapon was the cudgel. In his later days he was the most popular of Dissenting preachers. He died just before "King James was walked out of his kingdom," in 1688. If critics sneered at Bunyan throughout the nineteenth century, Dr. Johnson, at least, heartily appreciated the genius of the Non-conformist brasier. With Bunyan-the student of the religious ferment of England in his age may well read the "Journal" of the founder of the Society of Friends, Quakers, George Fox (1624-1691). Like Bunyan, Fox was an untrained thinker and author; like Bunyan he was persecuted: he had not the genius, but he had the art of Bunyan in drawing "with his eye on the object". Clarendon.