[1]Ad Dardanum, de diversis generibus musicorum instrumentorum.[2]De Cantu et Musica Sacra(1774).[3]For illustrations seeAnnales archéologiques, iii. p. 82 et seq.[4]Musica getutscht und aussgezogen(Basle, 1511).
[1]Ad Dardanum, de diversis generibus musicorum instrumentorum.
[2]De Cantu et Musica Sacra(1774).
[3]For illustrations seeAnnales archéologiques, iii. p. 82 et seq.
[4]Musica getutscht und aussgezogen(Basle, 1511).
BUN,a small cake, usually sweet and round. In Scotland the word is used for a very rich spiced type of cake and in the north of Ireland for a round loaf of ordinary bread. The derivation of the word has been much disputed. It has been affiliated to the old provincial Frenchbugne, "swelling," in the sense of a "fritter," but theNew English Dictionarydoubts the usage of the word. It is quite as probable that it has a far older and more interesting origin, as is suggested by an inquiry into the origin of hot cross buns. These cakes, which are now solely associated with the Christian Good Friday, are traceable to the remotest period of pagan history. Cakes were offered by ancient Egyptians to their moon-goddess; and these had imprinted on them a pair of horns, symbolic of the ox at the sacrifice of which they were offered on the altar, or of the horned moon-goddess, the equivalent of Ishtar of the Assyro-Babylonians. The Greeks offered such sacred cakes to Astarte and other divinities. This cake they calledbous(ox), in allusion to the ox-symbol marked on it, and from the accusativebounit is suggested that the word "bun" is derived. Diogenes Laertius (c.A.D.200), speaking of the offering made by Empedocles, says "He offered one of the sacred liba, called abouse, made of fine flour and honey." Hesychius (c.6th century) speaks of theboun, and describes it as a kind of cake with a representation of two horns marked on it. In time the Greeks marked these cakes with a cross, possibly an allusion to the four quarters of the moon, or more probably to facilitate the distribution of the sacred bread which was eaten by the worshippers. Like the Greeks, the Romans eat cross-bread at public sacrifices, such bread being usually purchased at the doors of the temple and taken in with them,—a custom alluded to by St Paul in I Cor. x. 28. At Herculaneum two small loaves about 5 in. in diameter, and plainly marked with a cross, were found. In the Old Testament a reference is made in Jer. vii. 18-xliv. 19, to such sacred bread being offered to the moon goddess. The cross-bread was eaten by the pagan Saxons in honour of Eoster, their goddess of light. The Mexicans and Peruvians are shown to have had a similar custom. The custom, in fact, was practically universal, and the early Church adroitly adopted the pagan practice, grafting it on to the Eucharist. Thebounwith its Greek cross became akin to the Eucharistic bread or cross-marked wafers mentioned in St Chrysostom'sLiturgy. In the medieval church, buns made from the dough for the consecrated Host were distributed to the communicants after Mass on Easter Sunday. In France and other Catholic countries, such blessed bread is still given in the churches to communicants who have a long journey before they can break their fast. The Holy Eucharist in the Greek church has a cross printed on it. In England there seems to have early been a disposition on the part of the bakers to imitate the church, and they did a good trade in buns and cakes stamped with a cross, for as far back as 1252 the practice was forbidden by royal proclamation; but this seems to have had little effect. With the rise of Protestantism the cross bun lost its sacrosanct nature, and became a mere eatable associated for no particular reason with Good Friday. Cross-bread is not, however, reserved for that day; in the north of England people usually crossmark their cakes with a knife before putting them in the oven. Many superstitions cling round hot cross buns. Thus it is still a common belief that one bun should be kept for luck's sake to the following Good Friday. In Dorsetshire it is thought that a cross-loaf baked on that day and hung over the chimneypiece prevents the bread baked in the house during the year from "going stringy."
BUNBURY, HENRY WILLIAM(1750-1811), English caricaturist, was the second son of Sir William Bunbury, 5th baronet, of Mildenhall, Suffolk, and came of an old Norman family. He was educated at Westminster school and St Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, and soon showed a talent for drawing, and especially for humorous subjects. His more serious efforts did not rise to a high level, but his caricatures are as famous as those of his contemporaries Rowlandson and Gillray, good examples being his "Country Club" (1788), "Barber's Shop" (1811) and "A Long Story" (1782.) He was a popular character, and the friend of most of the notabilities of his day, whom he never offended by attempting political satire; and his easy circumstances and social position (he was colonel of the West Suffolk Militia, and was appointed equerry to the duke of York in 1787) enabled him to exercise his talents in comfort.
His son SirHenry Edward Bunbury, Bart. (1778-1860), who succeeded to the family title on the death of his uncle, was a distinguished soldier, and rose to be a lieutenant-general; he was an active member of parliament, and the author of several historical works of value; and the latter's second son, Sir Edward Herbert Bunbury, also a member of parliament, was well known as a geographer and archaeologist, and author of aHistory of Ancient Geography.
BUNBURY,a seaport and municipal town of Wellington county, Western Australia, 112 m. by rail S. by W. of Perth. Pop. (1901) 2455. The harbour, known as Koombanah Bay, is protected by a breakwater built on a coral reef. Coal is worked on the Collie river, 30 m. distant, and is shipped from this port, together with tin, timber, sandal-wood and agricultural produce.
BUNCOMBE,orBunkum(from Buncombe county, North Carolina, United States), a term used for insincere political action or speaking to gain support or the favour of a constituency, and so any humbug or clap-trap. The phrase "to talk for (or to) Buncombe" arose in 1820, during the debate on the Missouri Compromise in Congress; the member for the district containing Buncombe county confessed that his long and much interrupted speech was only made because his electors expected it, and that he was "speaking for Buncombe."
BUNCRANA,a market-town and watering-place of Co. Donegal, Ireland, in the north parliamentary division on the east shore of Lough Swilly, on the Londonderry & Lough Swilly & Letterkenny railway. Pop. (1901) 1316. There is a trade in agricultural produce, a salmon fishery, sea fisheries and a manufacture of linen. The town is beautifully situated, being flanked on the east and south by hills exceeding 1000 ft. The picturesque square keep of an ancient castle remains, but the present Buncrana Castle is a residence erected in 1717. The golf-links are well known.
BUNDABERG,a municipal town and river port of Cook county, Queensland, Australia, 10 m. from the mouth of the river Burnett, and 217 m. by rail N. by W. of Brisbane. Pop. (1901) 5200. It lies on both sides of the river, and connexion between the two ports is maintained by road and railway bridges. There are saw-mills, breweries, brickfields and distilleries in the town, and numerous sugar factories in the vicinity, notably at Millaquin, on the river below the town. There are wharves on both sides of the river, and the staple exports are sugar, golden-syrup and timber. The climate is remarkably healthy.
BUNDELKHAND,a tract of country in Central India, lying between the United and the Central Provinces. Historically it includes the five British districts of Hamirpur, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur and Banda, which now form part of the Allahabad division of the United Provinces, but politically it is restricted to a collection of native states, under the Bundelkhand agency. There are 9 states, 13 estates and the pargana of Alampur belonging to Indore state, with a total area of 9851 sq. m. and a total population (1901) of 1,308,326, showing a decrease of 13% in the decade, due to the effects of famine. The most important of the states are Orchha, Panna, Samthar, Charkhari, Chhatarpur, Datia, Bijawar and Ajaigarh. A branch of the Great Indian Peninsula railway traverses the north of the country. A garrison of all arms is stationed at Nowgong.
The surface of the country is uneven and hilly, except in the north-east part, which forms an irregular plain cut up by ravines scooped out by torrents during the periodical rains. The plains of Bundelkhand are intersected by three mountain ranges, the Bindhachal, Panna and Bander chains, the highest elevation not exceeding 2000 ft. above sea-level. Beyond these ranges the country is further diversified by isolated hills rising abruptly from a common level, and presenting from their steep and nearly inaccessible scarps eligible sites for castles and strongholds, whence the mountaineers of Bundelkhand have frequently set at defiance the most powerful of the native states of India. The general slope of the country is towards the north-east, as indicated by the course of the rivers which traverse or bound the territory, and finally discharge themselves into the Jumna.
The principal rivers are the Sind, Betwa, Ken, Baighin, Paisuni, Tons, Pahuj, Dhasan, Berma, Urmal and Chandrawal. The Sind, rising near Sironj in Malwa, marks the frontier line of Bundelkhand on the side of Gwalior. Parallel to this river, but more to the eastward, is the course of the Betwa. Still farther to the east flows the Ken, followed in succession by the Baighin, Paisuni and Tons. The Jumna and the Ken are the only two navigable rivers. Notwithstanding the large number of streams, the depression of their channels and height of their banks render them for the most part unsuitable for the purposes of irrigation,—which is conducted by means ofjhilsand tanks. These artificial lakes are usually formed by throwing embankments across the lower extremities of valleys, and thus arresting and accumulating the waters flowing through them. Some of the tanks are of great capacity; the Barwa Sagar, for instance, is 2½ m. in diameter. Diamonds are found, particularly near the town of Panna, in a range of hills called by the natives Band-Ahil.
The mines of Maharajpur, Rajpur, Kimera and Gadasia have been famous for magnificent diamonds; and a very large one dug from the last was kept in the fort of Kalinjar among the treasures of Raja Himmat Bahadur. In the reign of the emperor Akbar the mines of Panna produced diamonds to the amount of £100,000 annually, and were a considerable source of revenue, but for many years they have not been so profitable.
The tree vegetation consists rather of jungle or copse than forest, abounding in game which is preserved by the native chiefs. There are also within these coverts several varieties of wild animals, such as the tiger, leopard, hyena, wild boar,nilgáiand jackal.
The people represent various races. The Bundelas—the race who gave the name to the country—still maintain their dignity as chieftains, by disdaining to cultivate the soil, although by no means conspicuous for lofty sentiments of honour or morality. An Indian proverb avers that "one native of Bundelkhand commits as much fraud as a hundred Dandis" (weighers of grain and notorious rogues). About Datia and Jhansi the inhabitants are a stout and handsome race of men, well off and contented. The prevailing religion in Bundelkhand is Hinduism.
The earliest dynasty recorded to have ruled in Bundelkhand were the Garhwas, who were succeeded by the Parihars; but nothing is known of either. AboutA.D.800 the Parihars are said to have been ousted by the Chandels, and Dangha Varma, chief of the Chandel Rajputs, appears to have established the earliest paramount power in Bundelkhand towards the close of the 10th centuryA.D.Under his dynasty the country attained its greatest splendour in the early part of the 11th century, when its raja, whose dominions extended from the Jumna to the Nerbudda, marched at the head of 36,000 horse and 45,000 foot, with 640 elephants, to oppose the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni. In 1182 the Chandel dynasty was overthrown by Prithwi Raj, the ruler of Ajmer and Delhi, after which the country remained in ruinous anarchy until the close of the 14th century, when the Bundelas, a spurious offshoot of the Garhwa tribe of Rajputs, established themselves on the right bank of the Jumna. One of these took possession of Orchha by treacherously poisoning its chief. His successor succeeded in further aggrandizing the Bundela state, but he is represented to have been a notorious plunderer, and his character is further stained by the assassination of the celebrated Abul Fazl, the prime minister and historian of Akbar. Jajhar Singh, the third Bundela chief, unsuccessfully revolted against the court of Delhi, and his country became incorporated for a short time with the empire. The struggles of the Bundelas for independence resulted in the withdrawal of the royal troops, and the admission of several petty states as feudatories of the empire on condition of military service. The Bundelas, under Champat Rai and his son. Chhatar Sal, offered a successful resistance to the proselytizing efforts of Aurangzeb. On the occasion of a Mahommedan invasion in 1732, Chhatar Sal asked and obtained the assistance of the Mahratta Peshwa, whom he adopted as his son, giving him a third of his dominions. The Mahrattas gradually extended their influence over Bundelkhand,and in 1792 the peshwa was acknowledged as the lord paramount of the country. The Mahratta power was, however, on the decline; the flight of the peshwa from his capital to Bassein before the British arms changed the aspect of affairs, and by the treaty concluded between the peshwa and the British government, the districts of Banda and Hamirpur were transferred to the latter. Two chiefs then held the ceded districts, Himmat Bahadur, the leader of the Sanyasis, who promoted the views of the British, and Shamsher, who made common cause with the Mahrattas. In September 1803, the united forces of the English and Himmat Bahadur compelled Shamsher to retreat with his army. In 1809 Ajaigarh was besieged by a British force, and again three years later Kalinjar was besieged and taken after a heavy loss. In 1817, by the treaty of Poona, the British government acquired from the peshwa all his rights, interests and pretensions, feudal, territorial or pecuniary, in Bundelkhand. In carrying out the provisions of the treaty, an assurance was given by the British government that the rights of those interested in the transfer should be scrupulously respected, and the host of petty native principalities in the province is the best proof of the sincerity and good faith with which this clause has been carried out. During the mutiny of 1857, however, many of the chiefs rose against the British, the rani of Jhansi being a notable example.
BUNDI,orBoondee, a native state of India, in the Rajputana agency, lying on the north-east of the river Chambal, in a hilly tract historically known as Haraoti, from the Hara sept of the great clan of Chauhan Rajputs, to which the maharao raja of Bundi belongs. It has an area of 2220 sq. m. Many parts of the state are wild and hilly, inhabited by a large Mina population, formerly notorious as a race of robbers. Two rivers, the Chambia and the Mej, water the state; the former is navigable by boats. In 1901 the population was 171,227, showing a decrease of 42% due to the effects of famine. The estimated revenue is £46,000, the tribute £8000. There is no railway, but the metalled road from Kotah to the British cantonment of Deoli passes through the state. The town of Bundi had a population in 1901 of 19,313. A school for the education of boys of high rank was opened in 1897.
The state of Bundi was founded aboutA.D.1342 by the Hara chief Rao Dewa, or Deoraj, who captured the town from the Minas. Its importance, however, dates from the time of Rao Surjan, who succeeded to the chieftainship in 1554 and by throwing in his lot with the Mahommedan emperors of Delhi (1569) received a considerable accession of territory. From this time the rulers of Bundi bore the title of rao raja. In the 17th century their power was curtailed by the division of Haraoti into the two states of Kotah and Bundi; but they continued to play a prominent part in Indian history, and the title of maharao raja was conferred on Budh Singh for the part played by him in securing the imperial throne for Bahadur Shah I. after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. In 1804 the maharao raja Bishan Singh gave valuable assistance to Colonel Monson in his disastrous retreat before Holkar, in revenge for which the Mahratas and Pindaris continually ravaged his state up to 1817. On the 10th of February 1818, by a treaty concluded with Bishan Singh, Bundi was taken under British protection. In 1821 Bishan Singh was succeeded by his son Ram Singh, who ruled till 1889. He is described as a grand specimen of the Rajput gentleman, and "the most conservative prince in conservative Rajputana." His rule was popular and beneficent; and though during the mutiny of 1857 his attitude was equivocal, he continued to enjoy the favour of the British government, being created G.C.S.I. and a counsellor of the empire in 1877 and C.I.E. in 1878. He was succeeded by his son Raghubir Singh, who was made a K.C.S.I. in 1897 and a G.C.I.E. in 1901.
BUNER,a valley on the Peshawar border of the North-West Frontier Province of India. It is a small mountain valley, dotted with villages and divided into seven sub-divisions. The Mora Hills and the Ilam range divide it from Swat, the Sinawar range from Yusafzai, the Guru mountains from the Chamla valley, and the Duma range from the Puran Valley. It is inhabited by the Iliaszai and Malizai divisions of the Pathan tribe of Yusafzais, who are called after their country the Bunerwals. There is no finer race on the north-west frontier of India than the Bunerwals. Simple and austere in their habits, religious and truthful in their ways, hospitable to all who seek shelter amongst them, free from secret assassinations, they are bright examples of the Pathan character at its best. They are a powerful and warlike tribe, numbering 8000 fighting men. The Umbeyla Expedition of 1863 under Sir Neville Chamberlain was occasioned by the Bunerwals siding with the Hindostani Fanatics, who had settled down at Malka in their territory. In the end the Bunerwals were subdued by a force of 9000 British troops, and Malka was destroyed, but they made so fierce a resistance, in particular in their attack upon the "Crag" picket, that the Indian medal with a clasp for "Umbeyla" was granted in 1869 to the survivors of the expedition. The government of India refrained from interfering with the tribe again until the Buner campaign of 1897 under Sir Bindon Blood. Many Bunerwals took part in the attack of the Swatis on the Malakand fort, and a force of 3000 British troops was sent to punish them; but the tribe made only a feeble resistance at the passes into their country, and speedily handed in the arms demanded of them and made complete submission.
BUNGALOW(an Anglo-Indian word from the Hindustanibanglā, belonging to Bengal), a one-storeyed house with a verandah and a projecting roof, the typical dwelling for Europeans in India; the name is also used for similar buildings which have become common for seaside and summer residences in America and Great Britain. Dak or dawk bungalows (fromdakordawk, a post, a relay of men for carrying the mails, &c.) are the government rest-houses established at intervals for the use of travellers on the high roads of India.
BUNGAY,a market-town in the Lowestoft parliamentary division of Suffolk, England; 113 m. N.E. from London on a branch from Beccles of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 3314. It is picturesquely placed in a deep bend of the river Waveney, the boundary with Norfolk. Of the two parish churches that of St Mary has a fine Perpendicular tower, and that of Holy Trinity a round tower of which the lower part is Norman. St Mary's was attached to a Benedictine nunnery founded in 1160. The ruins of the castle date from 1281. They are fragmentary though massive; and there are traces of earth-works of much earlier date. The castle was a stronghold of the powerful family of Bigod, being granted to Roger Bigod, a Norman follower of the Conqueror, in 1075. A grammar school was founded in 1592. There are large printing-works, and founding and malting are prosecuted. There is a considerable carrying trade on the Waveney.
BUNION(a word usually derived from the Ital.bugnone, a swelling, but, according to theNew English Dictionary, the late and rare literary use of the word makes an Italian derivation unlikely; there is an O. Eng. word "bunny," also meaning a swelling, and an O. Fr.buigne, modernbigne, showing a probable common origin now lost, cf. also "bunch"), an inflamed swelling of thebursa mucosa, the sac containing synovial fluid on the metatarsal joint of the big toe, or, more rarely, of the little toe. This may be accompanied by corns or suppuration, leading to an ulcer or even gangrene. The cause is usually pressure; removal of this, and general palliative treatment by dressings, &c. are usually effective, but in severe and obstinate cases a surgical operation may be necessary.
BUNKER HILL,the name of a small hill in Charlestown (Boston), Massachusetts, U.S.A., famous as the scene of the first considerable engagement in the American War of Independence (June 17, 1775). Bunker Hill (110 ft.) was connected by a ridge with Breed's Hill (75 ft.), both being on a narrow peninsula a short distance to the north of Boston, joined by a causeway with the mainland. Since the affair of Lexington (April 19, 1775) General Gage, who commanded the British forces, had remained inactive at Boston awaiting reinforcements from England; the headquarters of the Americans were at Cambridge, with advanced posts occupying much of the 4 m. separatingCambridge from Bunker Hill. When Gage received his reinforcements at the end of May, he determined to repair his strange neglect by which the hills on the peninsula had been allowed to remain unoccupied and unfortified. As soon as the Americans became aware of Gage's intention they determined to frustrate it, and accordingly, on the night of the 16th of June, a force of about 1200 men, under Colonel William Prescott and Major-General Israel Putnam, with some engineers and a few field-guns, occupied Breed's Hill—to which the name Bunker Hill is itself now popularly applied—and when daylight disclosed their presence to the British they had already strongly entrenched their position. Gage lost no time in sending troops across from Boston with orders to assault. The British force, between 2000 and 3000 strong, under (Sir) William Howe, supported by artillery and by the guns of men-of-war and floating batteries stationed in the anchorage on either side of the peninsula, were fresh and well disciplined. The American force consisted for the most part of inexperienced volunteers, numbers of whom were already wearied by the trench work of the night. As communication was kept up with their camp the numbers engaged on the hill fluctuated during the day, but at no time exceeded about 1500 men. The village of Charlestown, from which a galling musketry fire was directed against the British, was by General Howe's orders almost totally destroyed by hot shot during the attack. Instead of attempting to cut off the Americans by occupying the neck to the rear of their position, Gage ordered the advance to be made up the steep and difficult ascent facing the works on the hill. Whether or not in obedience—as tradition asserts—to an order to reserve fire until they could see the whites of their assailants' eyes, the American volunteers with admirable steadiness waited till the attack was on the point of being driven home, when they delivered a fire so sustained and deadly that the British line broke in disorder. A second assault, made like the first, with the precision and discipline of the parade-ground met the same fate, but Gage's troops had still spirit enough for a third assault, and this time they carried the position with the bayonet, capturing five pieces of ordnance and putting the enemy to flight. The loss of the British was 1054 men killed and wounded, among whom were 89 commissioned officers; while the American casualties amounted to 420 killed and wounded, including General Joseph Warren, and 30 prisoners. (SeeAmerican War of Independence.)
The significance of the battle of Bunker Hill is not, however, to be gauged by the losses on either side, heavy as they were in proportion to the numbers engaged, nor by its purely military results, but by the moral effect which it produced; and when it is considered from this standpoint its far-reaching consequences can hardly be over-estimated. "It roused at once the fierce instinct of combat in America ..., and dispelled ... the almost superstitious belief in the impossibility of encountering regular troops with hastily levied volunteers ... No one questioned the conspicuous gallantry with which the provincial troops had supported a long fire from the ships and awaited the charge of the enemy, and British soldiers had been twice driven back in disorder before their fire."[1]The pride which Americans naturally felt in such an achievement, and the self-confidence which it inspired, were increased when they learnt that the small force on Bunker Hill had not been properly reinforced, and that their ammunition was running short before they were dislodged from their position.[2]Had the character of the fighting on that day been other than it was; had the American volunteers been easily, and at the first assault, driven from their fortified position by the troops of George III., it is not impossible that the resistance to the British government would have died out in the North American colonies through lack of confidence in their own power on the part of the colonists. Bunker Hill, whatever it may have to teach the student of war, taught the American colonists in 1775 that the odds against them in the enterprise in which they had embarked were not so overwhelming as to deny them all prospect of ultimate success.
In 1843 a monument, 221 ft. high, in the form of an obelisk, of Quincy granite, was completed on Breed's Hill (now Bunker Hill) to commemorate the battle, when an address was delivered by Daniel Webster, who had also delivered the famous dedicatory oration at the laying of the corner-stone in 1825. Bunker Hill day is a state holiday.
See R. Frothingham,The Centennial: Battle of Bunker Hill(Boston, 1895), andLife and Times of Joseph Warren(Boston, 1865); Boston City Council,Celebration of Centen. Aniv. of Battle of Bunker Hill(Boston, 1875); G.E. Ellis,Hist. of Battle of Bunker's(Breed's)Hill(Boston, 1875); S. Sweet,Who was the Commander at Bunker Hill?(Boston, 1850); W.E.H. Lecky,History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii (London, 1883); Sir George O. Trevelyan,The American Revolution(London, 1899); Fortescue,History of the British Army, vol. iii. pp. 153 seq. (London, 1902).
(R. J. M.)
[1]W.E.H. Lecky,History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 428.[2]General Gage's despatch.American Remembrancer, 1776, part 11, p. 132.
[1]W.E.H. Lecky,History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 428.
[2]General Gage's despatch.American Remembrancer, 1776, part 11, p. 132.
BUNN, ALFRED(1796-1860), English theatrical manager, was appointed stage-manager of Drury Lane theatre, London, in 1823. In 1826 he was managing the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, and in 1833 he undertook the joint management of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, London. In this undertaking he met with vigorous opposition. A bill for the abolition of the patent theatres was passed in the House of Commons, but on Bunn's petition was thrown out by the House of Lords. He had difficulties first with his company, then with the lord chamberlain, and had to face the keen rivalry of the other theatres. A longstanding quarrel with Macready resulted in the tragedian assaulting the manager. In 1840 Bunn was declared a bankrupt, but he continued to manage Drury Lane till 1848. Artistically his control of the two chief English theatres was highly successful. Nearly every leading English actor played under his management, and he made a courageous attempt to establish English opera, producing the principal works of Balfe. He had some gift for writing, and most of the libretti of these operas were translated by himself. InThe Stage Before and Behind the Curtain(3 vols., 1840) he gave a full account of his managerial experiences. He died at Boulogne on the 20th of December 1860.
BUNNER, HENRY CUYLER(1855-1896), American writer, was born in Oswego, New York, on the 3rd of August 1855. He was educated in New York City. From being a clerk in an importing house, he turned to journalism, and after some work as a reporter, and on the staff of theArcadian(1873), he became in 1877 assistant editor of the comic weeklyPuck. He soon assumed the editorship, which he held until his death in Nutley, N.J., on the 11th of May 1896. He developedPuckfrom a new struggling periodical into a powerful social and political organ. In 1886 he published a novel,The Midge, followed in 1887 byThe Story of a New York House. But his best efforts in fiction were his short stories and sketches—Short Sixes(1891),More Short Sixes(1894),Made in France(1893),Zadoc Pine and Other Stories(1891),Love in Old Cloathes and Other Stories(1896), andJersey Street and Jersey Lane(1896). His verses—Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere(1884), containing the well-known poem,The Way to Arcady; Rowen(1892); andPoems(1896), edited by his friend Brander Matthews—display a light play of imagination and a delicate workmanship. He also wrote cleververs de sociétéand parodies. Of his several plays (usually written in collaboration), the best wasThe Tower of Babel(1883).
BUNSEN, CHRISTIAN CHARLES JOSIAS,Baron von(1791-1860), Prussian diplomatist and scholar, was born on the 25th of August 1791 at Korbach, an old town in the little German principality of Waldeck. His father was a farmer who was driven by poverty to become a soldier. Having studied at the Korbach grammar school and Marburg university, Bunsen went in his nineteenth year to Göttingen, where he supported himself by teaching and later by acting as tutor to W.B. Astor, the American merchant. He won the university prize essay of the year 1812 by a treatise on theAthenian Law of Inheritance, and a few months later the university of Jena granted him the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy. During 1813 he travelled with Astor in South Germany, and then turned to the study of the religion, laws, language and literature of the Teutonicraces. He had read Hebrew when a boy, and now worked at Arabic at Munich, Persian at Leiden, and Norse at Copenhagen. At the close of 1815 he went to Berlin, to lay before Niebuhr the plan of research which he had mapped out. Niebuhr was so impressed with Bunsen's ability that, two years later, when he became Prussian envoy to the papal court, he made the young scholar his secretary. The intervening years Bunsen spent in assiduous labour among the libraries and collections of Paris and Florence. In July 1817 he married Frances Waddington, eldest daughter and co-heiress of B. Waddington of Llanover, Monmouthshire.
As secretary to Niebuhr, Bunsen was brought into contact with the Vatican movement for the establishment of the papal church in the Prussian dominions, to provide for the largely increased Catholic population. He was among the first to realize the importance of this new vitality on the part of the Vatican, and he made it his duty to provide against its possible dangers by urging upon the Prussian court the wisdom of fair and impartial treatment of its Catholic subjects. In this object he was at first successful, and both from the Vatican and from Frederick William III., who put him in charge of the legation on Niebuhr's resignation, he received unqualified approbation. Owing partly to the wise statesmanship of Count Spiegel, archbishop of Cologne, an arrangement was made by which the thorny question of "mixed" marriages (i.e.between Catholic and Protestant) would have been happily solved; but the archbishop died in 1835, the arrangement was never ratified, and the Prussian king was foolish enough to appoint as Spiegel's successor the narrow-minded partisan Baron Droste. The pope gladly accepted the appointment, and in two years the forward policy of the Jesuits had brought about the strife which Bunsen and Spiegel had tried to prevent. Bunsen rashly recommended that Droste should be seized, but thecoupwas so clumsily attempted, that the incriminating documents were, it is said, destroyed in advance. The government, in thisimpasse, took the safest course, refused to support Bunsen, and accepted his resignation in April 1838.
After leaving Rome, where he had become intimate with all that was most interesting in the cosmopolitan society of the papal capital, Bunsen went to England, where, except for a short term as Prussian ambassador to Switzerland (1830-1841), he was destined to pass the rest of his official life. The accession to the throne of Prussia of Frederick William IV., on June 7th, 1840, made a great change in Bunsen's career. Ever since their first meeting in 1828 the two men had been close friends and had exchanged ideas in an intimate correspondence, published under Ranke's editorship in 1873. Enthusiasm for evangelical religion and admiration for the Anglican Church they held in common, and Bunsen was the instrument naturally selected for realizing the king's fantastic scheme of setting up at Jerusalem a Prusso-Anglican bishopric as a sort of advertisement of the unity and aggressive force of Protestantism. The special mission of Bunsen to England, from June to November 1841, was completely successful, in spite of the opposition of English high churchmen and Lutheran extremists. The Jerusalem bishopric, with the consent of the British government and the active encouragement of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London, was duly established, endowed with Prussian and English money, and remained for some forty years an isolated symbol of Protestant unity and a rock of stumbling to Anglican Catholics.
During his stay in England Bunsen had made himself very popular among all classes of society, and he was selected by Queen Victoria, out of three names proposed by the king of Prussia, as ambassador to the court of St James's. In this post he remained for thirteen years. His tenure of the office coincided with the critical period in Prussian and European affairs which culminated in the revolutions of 1848. With the visionary schemes of Frederick William, whether that of setting up a strict episcopal organization in the Evangelical Church, or that of reviving the defunct ideal of the medieval Empire, Bunsen found himself increasingly out of sympathy. He realized the significance of the signs that heralded the coming storm, and tried in vain to move the king to a policy which would have placed him at the head of a Germany united and free. He felt bitterly the humiliation of Prussia by Austria after the victory of the reaction; and in 1852 he set his signature reluctantly to the treaty which, in his view, surrendered the "constitutional rights of Schleswig and Holstein." His whole influence was now directed to withdrawing Prussia from the blighting influence of Austria and Russia, and attempting to draw closer the ties that bound her to Great Britain. On the outbreak of the Crimean War he urged Frederick William to throw in his lot with the western powers, and create a diversion in the north-east which would have forced Russia at once to terms. The rejection of his advice, and the proclamation of Prussia's attitude of "benevolent neutrality," led him in April 1854 to offer his resignation, which was accepted.
Bunsen's life as a public man was now practically at an end. He retired first to a villa on the Neckar near Heidelberg and later to Bonn. He refused to stand for a seat, in the Liberal interest, in the Lower House of the Prussian diet, but continued to take an active interest in politics, and in 1855 published in two volumes a work,Die Zeichen der Zeit: Briefe, &c., which exercised an immense influence in reviving the Liberal movement which the failure of the revolution had crushed. In September 1857 Bunsen attended, as the king's guest, a meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Berlin; and one of the last papers signed by Frederick William, before his mind gave way in October, was that which conferred upon him the title of baron and a peerage for life. In 1858, at the special request of the regent (afterwards the emperor) William, he took his seat in the Prussian Upper House, and, though remaining silent, supported the new ministry, of which his political and personal friends were members.
Literary work was, however, his main preoccupation during all this period. Two discoveries of ancient MSS. made during his stay in London, the one containing a shorter text of theEpistles of St Ignatius, and the other an unknown workOn all the Heresies, by Bishop Hippolytus, had already led him to write hisHippolytus and his Age: Doctrine and Practice of Rome under Commodus and Severus(1852). He now concentrated all his efforts upon a translation of the Bible with commentaries. While this was in preparation he published hisGod in History, in which he contends that the progress of mankind marches parallel to the conception of God formed within each nation by the highest exponents of its thought. At the same time he carried through the press, assisted by Samuel Birch, the concluding volumes of his work (published in English as well as in German)Egypt's Place in Universal History—containing a reconstruction of Egyptian chronology, together with an attempt to determine the relation in which the language and the religion of that country stand to the development of each among the more ancient non-Aryan and Aryan races. His ideas on this subject were most fully developed in two volumes published in London before he quitted England—Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History as applied to Language and Religion(2 vols., 1854).
In 1858 Bunsen's health began to fail; visits to Cannes in 1858 and 1859 brought no improvement, and he died on November 28th, 1860. One of his last requests having been that his wife would write down recollections of their common life, she published hisMemoirsin 1868, which contain much of his private correspondence. The German translation of theseMemoirshas added extracts from unpublished documents, throwing a new light upon the political events in which he played a part. Baron Humboldt's letters to Bunsen were printed in 1869.
Bunsen's English connexion, both through his wife (d. 1876) and through his own long residence in London, was further increased in his family. He had ten children, including five sons, Henry (1818-1855), Ernest (1810-1903), Karl (1821-1887), Georg (1824-1896) and Theodor (1832-1892). Of these Karl (Charles) and Theodor had careers in the German diplomatic service; and Georg, who for some time was an active politician in Germany, eventually retired to live in London; Henry, who was an English clergyman, became a naturalized Englishman,and Ernest, who in 1845 married an Englishwoman, Miss Gurney, subsequently resided and died in London. The form of "de" Bunsen was adopted for the surname in England. Ernest de Bunsen was a scholarly writer, who published various works both in German and in English, notably on Biblical chronology and other questions of comparative religion. His son, Sir Maurice de Bunsen (b. 1852), entered the English diplomatic service in 1877, and after a varied experience became minister at Lisbon in 1905.
See also L. von Ranke,Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms IV. mit Bunsen(Berlin, 1873). The biography in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia, which has been drawn upon above, was by Georg von Bunsen.
BUNSEN, ROBERT WILHELM VON(1811-1899), German chemist, was born at Göttingen on the 31st of March 1811, his father, Christian Bunsen, being chief librarian and professor of modern philology at the university. He himself entered the university in 1828, and in 1834 becamePrivat-docent. In 1836 he became teacher of chemistry at the Polytechnic School of Cassel, and in 1839 took up the appointment of professor of chemistry at Marburg, where he remained till 1851. In 1852, after a brief period in Breslau, he was appointed to the chair of chemistry at Heidelberg, where he spent the rest of his life, in spite of an urgent invitation to migrate to Berlin as successor to E. Mitscherlich. He retired from active work in 1889, and died at Heidelberg on the 16th of August 1899. The first research by which attention was drawn to Bunsen's abilities was concerned with the cacodyl compounds (seeArsenic), though he had already, in 1834, discovered the virtues of freshly precipitated hydrated ferric oxide as an antidote to arsenical poisoning. It was begun in 1837 at Cassel, and during the six years he spent upon it he not only lost the sight of one eye through an explosion, but nearly killed himself by arsenical poisoning. It represents almost his only excursion into organic chemistry, and apart from its accuracy and completeness it is of historical interest in the development of that branch of the science as being the forerunner of the fruitful investigations on the organo-metallic compounds subsequently carried out by his English pupil, Edward Frankland. Simultaneously with his work on cacodyl, he was studying the composition of the gases given off from blast furnaces. He showed that in German furnaces nearly half the heat yielded by the fuel was being allowed to escape with the waste gases, and when he came to England, and in conjunction with Lyon Playfair investigated the conditions obtaining in English furnaces, he found the waste to amount to over 80%. These researches marked a stage in the application of scientific principles to the manufacture of iron, and they led also to the elaboration of Bunsen's famous methods of measuring gaseous volumes, &c., which form the subject of the only book he ever published (Gasometrische Methoden, 1857). In 1841 he invented the carbon-zinc electric cell which is known by his name, and which conducted him to several important achievements. He first employed it to produce the electric arc, and showed that from 44 cells a light equal to 1171.3 candles could be obtained with the consumption of one pound of zinc per hour. To measure this light he designed in 1844 another instrument, which in various modifications has come into extensive use—the grease-spot photometer. In 1852 he began to carry out electrolytical decompositions by the aid of the battery. By means of a very ingenious arrangement he obtained magnesium for the first time in the metallic state, and studied its chemical and physical properties, among other things demonstrating the brilliance and high actinic qualities of the flame it gives when burnt in air. From 1855 to 1863 he published with Roscoe a series of investigations on photochemical measurements, which W. Ostwald has called the "classical example for all future researches in physical chemistry." Perhaps the best known of the contrivances which the world owes to him is the "Bunsen burner" which he devised in 1855 when a simple means of burning ordinary coal gas with a hot smokeless flame was required for the new laboratory at Heidelberg. Other appliances invented by him were the ice-calorimeter (1870), the vapour calorimeter (1887), and the filter pump (1868), which was worked out in the course of a research on the separation of the platinum metals. Mention must also be made of another piece of work of a rather different character. Travelling was one of his favourite relaxations, and in 1846 he paid a visit to Iceland. There he investigated the phenomena of the geysers, the composition of the gases coming off from the fumaroles, their action on the rocks with which they came into contact, &c., and on his observations was founded a noteworthy contribution to geological theory. But the most far-reaching of his achievements was the elaboration, about 1859, jointly with G.R. Kirchhoff, of spectrum analysis, which has put a new weapon of extraordinary power into the hands both of chemists and astronomers. It led Bunsen himself almost immediately to the isolation of two new elements of the alkali group, caesium and rubidium. Having noticed some unknown lines in the spectra of certain salts he was examining, he set to work to obtain the substance or substances to which these were due. To this end he evaporated large quantities of the Dürkheim mineral water, and it says much both for his perseverance and powers of manipulation that he dealt with 40 tons of the water to get about 17 grammes of the mixed chlorides of the two substances, and that with about one-third of that quantity of caesium chloride was able to prepare the most important compounds of the element and determine their characteristics, even making goniometrical measurements of their crystals.
Bunsen founded no school of chemistry; that is to say, no body of chemical doctrine is associated with his name. Indeed, he took little or no part in discussions of points of theory, and, although he was conversant with the trend of the chemical thought of his day, he preferred to spend his energies in the collection of experimental data. One fact, he used to say, properly proved is worth all the theories that can be invented. But as a teacher of chemistry he was almost without rival, and his success is sufficiently attested by the scores of pupils who flocked from every part of the globe to study under him, and by the number of those pupils who afterwards made their mark in the chemical world. The secret of this success lay largely in the fact that he never delegated his work to assistants, but was constantly present with his pupils in the laboratory, assisting each with personal direction and advice. He was also one of the first to appreciate the value of practical work to the student, and he instituted a regular practical course at Marburg so far back as 1840. Though alive to the importance of applied science, he considered truth alone to be the end of scientific research, and the example he set his pupils was one of single-hearted devotion to the advancement of knowledge.
See Sir Henry Roscoe's "Bunsen Memorial Lecture,"Trans. Chem. Soc., 1900, which is reprinted (in German) with other obituary notices in an edition of Bunsen's collected works published by Ostwald and Bodenstein in 3 vols. at Leipzig in 1904.
BUNTER,the name applied by English geologists to the lower stage or subdivision of the Triassic rocks in the United Kingdom. The name has been adapted from the GermanBuntsandstein, Der bunte Sandstein, for it was in Germany that this continental type of Triassic deposit was first carefully studied. In France, the Bunter is known as theGrès bigarré. In northern and central Germany, in the Harz, Thuringia and Hesse, the Bunter is usually conformable with the underlying Permian formation; in the south-west and west, however, it transgresses on to older rocks, on to Coal Measures near Saarbruck, and upon the crystalline schists of Odenwald and the Black Forest.
The German subdivisions of the Bunter are as follows:—(1)Upper Buntsandstein, orRöt, mottled red and green marls and clays with occasional beds of shale, sandstone, gypsum, rocksalt and dolomite. In Hesse and Thuringia, a quartzitic sandstone prevails in the lower part. The "Rhizocorallium Dolomite" (R. Jenense, probably a sponge) of the latter district contains the only Bunter fauna of any importance. In Lorraine and the Eifel and Saar districts there are micaceous clays and sandstones with plant remains—theVoltziasandstone. The lower beds in the Black Forest, Vosges, Odenwald and Lorraine very generally contain strings of dolomite and carnelian—the so-called "Carneol bank." (2)Middle Buntsandstein-Hauptbuntsandstein(900 ft.), the bulkof this subdivision is made up of weakly-cemented, coarse-grained sandstones, oblique lamination is very prevalent, and occasional conglomeratic beds make their appearance. The uppermost bed is usually fine-grained and bears the footprints ofCheirotherium. In the Vosges district, this subdivision of the Bunter is called theGrès des Vosges,or theGrès principal, which comprises: (i.) red micaceous and argillaceous sandstone; (ii.) theconglomérat principal; and (iii.)Grès bigarré principal(=grès des Vosges, properly so-called). (3)Lower Buntsandstein, fine-grained clayey and micaceous sandstones, red-grey, yellow, white and mottled. The cement of the sandstones is often felspathic; for this reason they yield useful porcelain clays in the Thuringerwald. Clay galls are common in the sandstones of some districts, and in the neighbourhood of the Harz an oolitic calcareous sandstone,Rogenstein, occurs. In eastern Hesse, the lowest beds are crumbly, shaly clays,Brockelschiefern.
The following are the subdivisions usually adopted in England:—(1) Upper Mottled Sandstone, red variegated sandstones, soft and generally free from pebbles. (2) Bunter Pebble Beds, harder red and brown sandstones with quartzose pebbles, very abundant in some places. (3) Lower Mottled Sandstone, very similar to the upper division. The Bunter beds occupy a large area in the midland counties where they form dry, healthy ground of moderate elevation (Cannock Chase, Trentham, Sherwood Forest, Sutton Coldfield, &c.). Southward they may be followed through west Somerset to the cliffs of Budleigh Salterton in Devon; while northward they pass through north Staffordshire, Cheshire and Lancashire to the Vale of Eden and St Bees, reappearing in Elgin and Arran. A deposit of these rocks lies in the Vale of Clwyd and probably flanks the eastern side of the Pennine Hills, although here it is not so readily differentiated from the Keuper beds. The English Bunter rests with a slight unconformity upon the older formations. It is generally absent in the south-eastern counties, but thickens rapidly in the opposite direction, as is shown by the following table:—
Lancashire andW. Cheshire.
Staffordshire.
Leicestershire andWarwickshire.
(1) 500 ft.
50-200 ft.
Absent
(2) 500-750 ft.
100-300 ft.
0-100 ft.
(3) 200-500 ft.
0-100 ft.
Absent
The material forming the Bunter beds of England came probably from the north-west, but in Devonshire there are indications which point to an additional source.
In the Alpine region, most of the Trias differs markedly from that of England and northern Germany, being of distinctly marine origin; here the Bunter is represented by theWerfen beds(from Werfen in Salzburg) in the northern Alps, a series of red and greenish-grey micaceous shales with gypsum, rock salt and limestones in the upper part; while in the southern Alps (S. Tirol) there is an upper series of red clays, theCampil beds, and a lower series of thin sandstones, theSeis beds. Mojsisovics von Mojsvar has pointed out that the Alpine Bunter belongs to the single zone ofNatica costataandTirolites cassianus.
Fossils in the Bunter are very scarce; in addition to the footprints ofCheirotherium, direct evidence of amphibians is found in such forms asTrematosaurusandMastodonsaurus. Myophoria costataandGervillea Murchisoniare characteristic fossils. Plants are represented byVoltziaand by equisetums and ferns.
In England, the Bunter sandstones frequently act as valuable reservoirs of underground water; sometimes they are used for building stone or for foundry sand. In Germany some of the harder beds have yielded building stones, which were much used in the middle ages in the construction of cathedrals and castles in southern Germany and on the Rhine. In the northern Eifel region, at Mechernich and elsewhere, this formation contains lead ore in the form of spots and patches (Knotenerz) in the sandstone; some of the lead ore was worked by the Romans.
For a consideration of the relationship of the Bunter beds to formations of the like age in other parts of the world, seeTriassic System.
(J. A. H.)
BUNTING, JABEZ(1779-1858), English Wesleyan divine, was born of humble parentage at Manchester on the 13th of May 1779. He was educated at Manchester grammar school, and at the age of nineteen began to preach, being received into full connexion in 1803. He continued to minister for upwards of fifty-seven years in Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, London and elsewhere. In 1835 he was appointed president of the first Wesleyan theological college (at Hoxton), and in this position he succeeded in materially raising the standard of education among Wesleyan ministers. He was four times chosen to be president of the conference, was repeatedly secretary of the "Legal Hundred," and for eighteen years was secretary to the Wesleyan Missionary Society. Under him Methodism ceased to be a society based upon Anglican foundation, and became a distinct church. He favoured the extension of lay power in committees, and was particularly zealous in the cause of foreign missions. Bunting was a popular preacher, and an effective platform speaker; in 1818 he was given the degree of M.A. by Aberdeen University, and in 1834 that of D.D. by Wesleyan University of Middletown, Conn., U.S.A. He died on the 16th of June 1858. His eldest son, William Maclardie Bunting (1805-1866), was also a distinguished Wesleyan minister; and his grandson Sir Percy William Bunting (b. 1836), son of T.P. Bunting, became prominent as a liberal nonconformist and editor of theContemporary Reviewfrom 1882, being knighted in 1908.
SeeLivesof Jabez Bunting (1859) and W.M. Bunting (1870) by Thomas Percival Bunting.
BUNTING,properly the common English name of the bird called by LinnaeusEmberiza miliaria, but now used in a general sense for all members of the familyEmberizidae, which are closely allied to the finches (Fringillidae), though, in Professor W.K. Parker's opinion, to be easily distinguished therefrom—theEmberizidaepossessing what none of theFringillidaedo, an additional pair of palatal bones, "palato-maxillaries." It will probably follow from this diagnosis that some forms of birds, particularly those of the New World, which have hitherto been commonly assigned to the latter, really belong to the former, and among them the generaCardinalisandPhrygilus. The additional palatal bones just named are also found in several other peculiarly American families, namely,Tanagridae,IcteridaeandMniotiltidae—whence it may be perhaps inferred that theEmberizidaeare of Transatlantic origin. The buntings generally may be also outwardly distinguished from the finches by their angular gape, the posterior portion of which is greatly deflected; and most of the Old-World forms, together with some of those of the New World, have a bony knob on the palate—a swollen outgrowth of the dentary edges of the bill. Correlated with this peculiarity the maxilla usually has the tomia sinuated, and is generally concave, and smaller and narrower than the mandible, which is also concave to receive the palatal knob. In most other respects the buntings greatly resemble the finches, but their eggs are generally distinguishable by the irregular hair-like markings on the shell. In the British Islands by far the commonest species of bunting is the yellow-hammer (E. citrinella), but the true bunting (or corn-bunting, or bunting-lark, as it is called in some districts) is a very well-known bird, while the reed-bunting (E. schoeniclus) frequents marshy soils almost to the exclusion of the two former. In certain localities in the south of England the cirl-bunting (E. cirlus) is also a resident; and in winter vast flocks of the snow-bunting (Plectrophanes nivalis), at once recognizable by its pointed wings and elongated hind-claws, resort to our shores and open grounds. This last is believed to breed sparingly on the highest mountains of Scotland, but the majority of the examples which visit us come from northern regions, for it is a species which in summer inhabits the whole circumpolar area. The ortolan (E. hortulana), so highly prized for its delicate flavour, occasionally appears in England, but the British Islands seem to lie outside its proper range. On the continent of Europe, in Africa and throughout Asia, many other species are found, while in America the number belonging to the family cannot at present be computed. The beautiful and melodious cardinal (Cardinalis virginianus), commonly called the Virginian nightingale, must be included in this family.
(A. N.)
BUNTING(a word of doubtful origin, possibly connected withbunt, to sift, or with the Ger.bunt, of varied colour), a loosely woven woollen cloth for making flags; the term is also used of a collection of flags, and particularly those of a ship.
BUNYAN, JOHN(1628-1688), English religious writer, was born at Elstow, about a mile from Bedford, in November 1628. His father, Thomas Bunyan,[1]was a tinker, or, as he described himself, a "brasier." The tinkers then formed a hereditary caste, which was held in no high estimation. Bunyan's father had a fixed residence, and was able to send his son to a village school where reading and writing were taught.
The years of John's boyhood were those during which the Puritan spirit was in the highest vigour all over England; and nowhere had that spirit more influence than in Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad to whom nature had given a powerful imagination and sensibility which amounted to a disease, should have been early haunted by religious terrors. Before he was ten his sports were interrupted by fits of remorse and despair; and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly away with him. As he grew older his mental conflicts became still more violent. The strong language in which he described them strangely misled all his earlier biographers except Southey. It was long an ordinary practice with pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of divine grace to rescue the human soul from the lowest depths of wickedness. He is called in one book the most notorious of profligates; in another, the brand plucked from the burning. Many excellent persons, whose moral character from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs Brownrigg. It is quite certain that Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most austerely puritanical circles, would have been considered as a young man of singular gravity and innocence. Indeed, it may be remarked that he, like many other penitents who, in general terms, acknowledge themselves to have been the worst of mankind, fired up, and stood vigorously on his defence, whenever any particular charge was brought against him by others. He declares, it is true, that he had let loose the reins on the neck of his lusts, that he had delighted in all transgressions against the divine law, and that he had been the ringleader of the youth of Elstow in all manner of vice. But when those who wished him ill accused him of licentious amours, he called on God and the angels to attest his purity. No woman, he said, in heaven, earth or hell, could charge him with having ever made any improper advances to her. Not only had he been strictly faithful to his wife; but he had, even before his marriage, been perfectly spotless. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from the railings of his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One bad habit he contracted, that of using profane language; but he tells us that a single reproof cured him so effectually that he never offended again. The worst that can be laid to his charge is that he had a great liking for some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a great respect. The four chief sins of which he was guilty were dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tipcat and reading the history of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A rector of the school of Laud would have held such a young man up to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan's notions of good and evil had been learned in a very different school; and he was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples.
When he was about seventeen the ordinary course of his life was interrupted by an event which gave a lasting colour to his thoughts. He enlisted in the Parliamentary army,[2]and served during the Decisive campaign of 1645. All that we know of his military career is, that, at the siege of some town,[3]one of his comrades, who had marched with the besieging army instead of him, was killed by a shot. Bunyan ever after considered himself as having been saved from death by the special interference of Providence. It may be observed that his imagination was strongly impressed by the glimpse which he had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and fortresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, and regiments arrayed each under its own banner. His Greatheart, his Captain Boanerges and his Captain Credence are evidently portraits, of which the originals were among those martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army.
In 1646 Bunyan returned home and married about two years later. His wife had some pious relations, and brought him as her only portion some pious books. His mind, excitable by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by education, and exposed to the enthusiasm which was then epidemic in England, began to be fearfully disordered. The story of the struggle is told in Bunyan'sGrace Abounding.
In outward things he soon became a strict Pharisee. He was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons. His favourite amusements were, one after another, relinquished, though not without many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tipcat he paused, and stood staring wildly upwards with his stick in his hand. He had heard a voice asking him whether he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell; and he had seen an awful countenance frowning on him from the sky. The odious vice of bell-ringing he renounced; but he still for a time ventured to go to the church tower and look on while others pulled the ropes. But soon the thought struck him that, if he persisted in such wickedness, the steeple would fall on his head; and he fled in terror from the accursed place. To give up dancing on the village green was still harder; and some months elapsed before he had the fortitude to part with his darling sin. When this last sacrifice had been made, he was, even when tried by the maxims of that austere time, faultless. All Elstow talked of him as an eminently pious youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than ever. Having nothing more to do in the way of visible reformation, yet finding in religion no pleasures to supply the place of the juvenile amusements which he had relinquished, he began to apprehend that he lay under some special malediction; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies which seemed likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam. At one time he took it into his head that all persons of Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out that he partook of that blood; but his hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition to be regarded as a Jew. At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange dilemma: "If I have not faith, I am lost; if I have faith, I can work miracles." He was tempted to cry to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford, "Be ye dry," and to stake his eternal hopes on the event. Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bedford and the neighbouring villages was past; that all who were to be saved in that part of England were already converted; and that he had begun to pray and strive some months too late. Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were not in the right and the Christians in the wrong. Then he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which prompted him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the parish bull.
As yet, however, he was only entering the valley of the shadow of death. Soon the darkness grew thicker. Hideous forms floated before him. Sounds of cursing and wailing were in his ears. His way ran through stench and fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all the forms whichhis disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the benefits of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him, sell him." He struck at the hobgoblins; he pushed them from him; but still they were ever at his side. He cried out in answer to them, hour after hour, "Never, never; not for thousands of worlds; not for thousands." At length, worn out by this long agony, he suffered the fatal words to escape him, "Let him go if he will." Then his misery became more fearful than ever. He had done what could not be forgiven. He had forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he had sold his birthright; and there was no longer any place for repentance. "None," he afterwards wrote, "knows the terrors of those days but myself." He has described his sufferings with singular energy, simplicity and pathos. He envied the brutes; he envied the very stones on the street, and the tiles on the houses. The sun seemed to withhold its light and warmth from him. His body, though cast in a sturdy mould, and though still in the highest vigour of youth, trembled whole days together with the fear of death and judgment. He fancied that this trembling was the sign set on the worst reprobates, the sign which God had put on Cain. The unhappy man's emotion destroyed his power of digestion. He had such pains that he expected to burst asunder like Judas, whom he regarded as his prototype.
Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the advisers whom he consulted, were likely to do much good in a case like his. His small library had received a most unseasonable addition, the account of the lamentable end of Francis Spira. One ancient man of high repute for piety, whom the sufferer consulted, gave an opinion which might well have produced fatal consequences. "I am afraid," said Bunyan, "that I have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost." "Indeed," said the old fanatic, "I am afraid that you have."
At length the clouds broke; the light became clearer and clearer; and the enthusiast who had imagined that he was branded with the mark of the first murderer, and destined to the end of the arch-traitor, enjoyed peace and a cheerful confidence in the mercy of God. Years elapsed, however, before his nerves, which had been so perilously overstrained, recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist society at Bedford, and was for the first time admitted to partake of the eucharist, it was with difficulty that he could refrain from imprecating destruction on his brethren while the cup was passing from hand to hand. After he had been some time a member of the congregation he began to preach; and his sermons produced a powerful effect. He was indeed illiterate; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe training through which he had passed had given him such an experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious melancholy as he could never have gathered from books; and his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him not only to exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to extort the half-contemptuous admiration of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter words of horrible impiety in the pulpit.[4]Bunyan was finally relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been five years a preacher when the Restoration put it in the power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over the country to oppress the dissenters. In November 1660 he was flung into Bedford gaol; and there he remained, with some intervals of partial and precarious liberty, during twelve years. The authorities tried to extort from him a promise that he would abstain from preaching; but he was convinced that he was divinely set apart and commissioned to be a teacher of righteousness, and he was fully determined to obey God rather than man. He was brought before several tribunals, laughed at, caressed, reviled, menaced, but in vain. He was facetiously told that he was quite right in thinking that he ought not to hide his gift; but that his real gift was skill in repairing old kettles. He was compared to Alexander the coppersmith. He was told that if he would give up preaching he should be instantly liberated. He was warned that if he persisted in disobeying the law he would be liable to banishment, and that if he were found in England after a certain time his neck would be stretched. His answer was, "If you let me out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow." Year after year he lay patiently in a dungeon, compared with which the worst prison now to be found in the island is a palace.[5]His fortitude is the more extraordinary because his domestic feelings were unusually strong. Indeed, he was considered by his stern brethren as somewhat too fond and indulgent a parent. He had four small children, and among them a daughter who was blind, and whom he loved with peculiar tenderness. He could not, he said, bear even to let the wind blow on her; and now she must suffer cold and hunger; she must beg; she must be beaten; "yet," he added, "I must, I must do it."
His second wife, whom he had married just before his arrest, tried in vain for his release; she even petitioned the House of Lords on his behalf. While he lay in prison he could do nothing in the way of his old trade for the support of his family. He determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned to make long-tagged thread laces; and many thousands of these articles were furnished by him to the hawkers. While his hands were thus busied he had other employments for his mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction to his fellow-captives, and formed from among them a little flock, of which he was himself the pastor. He studied indefatigably the few books which he possessed. His two chief companions were the Bible and Fox'sBook of Martyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might have been called a living concordance; and on the margin of his copy of theBook of Martyrsare still legible the ill-spelt lines of doggerel in which he expressed his reverence for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity to the mystical Babylon.
Prison life gave him leisure to write, and during his first imprisonment he wrote, in addition to several tracts and some verse,Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the narrative of his own religious experience. The book was published in 1666. A short period of freedom was followed by a second offence and a further imprisonment. Bunyan's works were coarse, indeed, but they showed a keen mother wit, a great command of the homely mother tongue, an intimate knowledge of the English Bible, and a vast and dearly bought spiritual experience. They therefore, when the corrector of the press had improved the syntax and the spelling, were well received.