Old Portraits, Part 1, From Volume VI.,
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John Greenleaf Whittier >> Old Portraits, Part 1, From Volume VI.,
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16 This eBook was produced by David Widger [widger@cecomet.net]
OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES
HISTORICAL PAPERS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS
OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES.
JOHN BUNYAN
THOMAS ELLWOOD
JAMES NAYLER
ANDREW MARVELL
JOHN ROBERTS
SAMUEL HOPKINS
RICHARD BAXTER
WILLIAM LEGGETT
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS
ROBERT DINSMORE
PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES.
THE FUNERAL OF TORREY
EDWARD EVERETT
LEWIS TAPPAN
BAYARD TAYLOR
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD
LYDIA MARIA CHILD
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
LONGFELLOW
OLD NEWBURY
SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE
HISTORICAL PAPERS.
DANIEL O'CONNELL
ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II.
THE BORDER WAR OF 1708
THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT
THE BOY CAPTIVES
THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812
THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS
THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH
GOVERNOR ENDICOTT
JOHN WINTHROP
OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES
Inscribed as follows, when first collected in book-form:--
To Dr. G. BAILEY, of the National Era, Washington, D. C., these
sketches, many of which originally appeared in the columns of the
paper under his editorial supervision, are, in their present form,
offered as a token of the esteem and confidence which years of
political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, on
the part of his friend and associate,
THE AUTHOR.
JOHN BUNYAN.
"Wouldst see
A man I' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?"
Who has not read Pilgrim's Progress? Who has not, in childhood,
followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City? Who
has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the
walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill
of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair,
the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and
the wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to dream over
the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the
House Beautiful, and the song of birds from the window of that "upper
chamber which opened towards the sunrising?" And who, looking back to
the green spots in his childish experiences, does not bless the good
Tinker of Elstow?
And who, that has reperused the story of the Pilgrim at a maturer age,
and felt the plummet of its truth sounding in the deep places of the
soul, has not reason to bless the author for some timely warning or
grateful encouragement? Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste
and feeling, who does not, with Cowper,
"Even in transitory life's late day,
Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road,
And guides the Progress of the soul to God!"
We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple
but wonderful piece of autobiography, entitled Grace abounding to the
Chief of Sinners, from the pen of the author of Pilgrim's Progress. It
is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim;
"truth stranger than fiction;" the painful upward struggling of a spirit
from the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of
Hope and Faith. More earnest words were never written. It is the entire
unveiling of a human heart; the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of
its sin. The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so
much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the
last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as
the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the
Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to
self-gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to
convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his
inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give
glory to Him who had mercifully led him through all, and enabled him,
like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the terrors of Doubting Castle,
and to reach the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant,
and the birds sang and the flowers sprang up around him, and the Shining
Ones walked in the brightness of the not distant Heaven. In the
introductory pages he says "he could have dipped into a style higher than
this in which I have discoursed, and could have adorned all things more
than here I have seemed to do; but I dared not. God did not play in
tempting me; neither did I play when I sunk, as it were, into a
bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell took hold on me; wherefore, I may
not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the
thing as it was."
This book, as well as Pilgrim's Progress, was written in Bedford prison,
and was designed especially for the comfort and edification of his
"children, whom God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by his
ministry." In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken from
them, and tied up, "sticking, as it were, between the teeth of the lions
of the wilderness," he once again, as before, from the top of Shemer and
Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain of leopards, would
look after then with fatherly care and desires for their everlasting
welfare. "If," said he, "you have sinned against light; if you are
tempted to blaspheme; if you are drowned in despair; if you think God
fights against you; or if Heaven is hidden from your eyes, remember it
was so with your father. But out of all the Lord delivered me."
He gives no dates; be affords scarcely a clue to his localities; of the
man, as he worked, and ate, and drank, and lodged, of his neighbors and
contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world about him, we have
only an occasional glimpse, here and there, in his narrative. It is the
story of his inward life only that he relates. What had time and place
to do with one who trembled always with the awful consciousness of an
immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and
the splendors of heaven? We gather, indeed, from his record, that he was
not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for
freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament, in his young years, among the
praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts
whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion which he
makes to this portion of his experience is by way of illustration of the
goodness of God in preserving him on occasions of peril.
He was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in 1628; and, to use his own
words, his "father's house was of that rank which is the meanest and most
despised of all the families of the land." His father was a tinker, and
the son followed the same calling, which necessarily brought him into
association with the lowest and most depraved classes of English society.
The estimation in which the tinker and his occupation were held, in the
seventeenth century, may be learned from the quaint and humorous
description of Sir Thomas Overbury. "The tinker," saith he, "is a
movable, for he hath no abiding in one place; he seems to be devout, for
his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes, in humility, goes
barefoot, therein making necessity a virtue; he is a gallant, for he
carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all
his substance with him. He is always furnished with a song, to which his
hammer, keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder of the kettle-
drum; where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crotchets.
The companion of his travel is some foul, sun-burnt quean, that, since
the terrible statute, has recanted gypsyism, and is turned pedlaress. So
marches he all over England, with his bag and baggage; his conversation
is irreprovable, for he is always mending. He observes truly the
statutes, and therefore had rather steal than beg. He is so strong an
enemy of idleness, that in mending one hole he would rather make three
than want work; and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults
behind him. His tongue is very voluble, which, with canting, proves him
a linguist. He is entertained in every place, yet enters no farther than
the door, to avoid suspicion. To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and
Banbury, he dies a beggar."
Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was the youth of John
Bunyan. As might have been expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing
boy, as his father doubtless was before him. "It was my delight," says
he, "to be taken captive by the Devil. I had few equals, both for
cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming." Yet, in his ignorance and
darkness, his powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches of
conscience. He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of hell and
apparitions of devils. Troubled with fears of eternal fire, and the
malignant demons who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that he
often wished either that there was no hell, or that he had been born a
devil himself, that he might be a tormentor rather than one of the
tormented.
At an early age he appears to have married. His wife was as poor as
himself, for he tells us that they had not so much as a dish or spoon
between them; but she brought with her two books on religious subjects,
the reading of which seems to have had no slight degree of influence on
his mind. He went to church regularly, adored the priest and all things
pertaining to his office, being, as he says, "overrun with superstition."
On one occasion, a sermon was preached against the breach of the Sabbath
by sports or labor, which struck him at the moment as especially designed
for himself; but by the time he had finished his dinner he was prepared
to "shake it out of his mind, and return to his sports and gaming."
"But the same day," he continues, "as I was in the midst of a game of
cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to
strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my
soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy
sins and go to hell?' At this, I was put to an exceeding maze;
wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and it
was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus
look down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He
did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and
other ungodly practices.
"I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but suddenly this conclusion
fastened on my spirit, (for the former hint did set my sins again before
my face,) that I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that it was
now too late for me to look after Heaven; for Christ would not forgive me
nor pardon my transgressions. Then, while I was thinking of it, and
fearing lest it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding
it was too late; and therefore I resolved in my mind to go on in sin;
for, thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable;
miserable if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can
but be damned; and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins
as be damned for few."
The reader of Pilgrim's Progress cannot fail here to call to mind the
wicked suggestions of the Giant to Christian, in the dungeon of Doubting
Castle.
"I returned," he says, "desperately to my sport again; and I well
remember, that presently this kind of despair did so possess my soul,
that I was persuaded I could never attain to other comfort than what I
should get in sin; for Heaven was gone already, so that on that I must
not think; wherefore, I found within me great desire to take my fill of
sin, that I might taste the sweetness of it; and I made as much haste as
I could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should die before I
had my desires; for that I feared greatly. In these things, I protest
before God, I lie not, neither do I frame this sort of speech; these were
really, strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good Lord, whose
mercy is unsearchable, forgive my transgressions."
One day, while standing in the street, cursing and blaspheming, he met
with a reproof which startled him. The woman of the house in front of
which the wicked young tinker was standing, herself, as he remarks, "a
very loose, ungodly wretch," protested that his horrible profanity made
her tremble; that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever
heard, and able to spoil all the youth of the town who came in his
company. Struck by this wholly unexpected rebuke, he at once abandoned
the practice of swearing; although previously he tells us that "he had
never known how to speak, unless he put an oath before and another
behind."
The good name which he gained by this change was now a temptation to him.
"My neighbors," he says, "were amazed at my great conversion from
prodigious profaneness to something like a moral life and sober man.
Now, therefore, they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of
me, both to my face and behind my back. Now I was, as they said, become
godly; now I was become a right honest man. But oh! when I understood
those were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well; for
though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to
be talked of as one that was truly godly. I was proud of my godliness,
and, indeed, I did all I did either to be seen of or well spoken of by
men; and thus I continued for about a twelvemonth or more."
The tyranny of his imagination at this period is seen in the following
relation of his abandonment of one of his favorite sports.
"Now, you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in
ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such
practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my
mind hankered; wherefore, I would go to the steeple-house and look on,
though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion
neither; yet I forced myself, and would look on still. But quickly
after, I began to think, 'How if one of the bells should fall?' Then I
chose to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart the steeple, from
side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again,
should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then,
rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand
in the steeple door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough; for if a bell
should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be
preserved notwithstanding.
"So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any
farther than the steeple-door. But then it came in my head, 'How if the
steeple itself should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I know,
when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I
durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee,
for fear the steeple should fall upon my head."
About this time, while wandering through Bedford in pursuit of
employment, he chanced to see three or four poor old women sitting at a
door, in the evening sun, and, drawing near them, heard them converse
upon the things of God; of His work in their hearts; of their natural
depravity; of the temptations of the Adversary; and of the joy of
believing, and of the peace of reconciliation. The words of the aged
women found a response in the soul of the listener. "He felt his heart
shake," to use his own words; he saw that he lacked the true tokens of a
Christian. He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and
sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his
grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of
uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny
that there was a God, an angel, or a spirit."
"Neither," he continues, "was this man only a temptation to me, but, my
calling lying in the country, I happened to come into several people's
company, who, though strict in religion formerly, yet were also drawn
away by these ranters. These would also talk with me of their ways, and
condemn me as illegal and dark; pretending that they only had attained to
perfection, that they could do what they would, and not sin. Oh! these
temptations were suitable to my flesh, I being but a young man, and my
nature in its prime; but God, who had, as I hope, designed me for better
things, kept me in the fear of His name, and did not suffer me to accept
such cursed principles."
At this time he was sadly troubled to ascertain whether or not he had
that faith which the Scriptures spake of. Travelling one day from Elstow
to Bedford, after a recent rain, which had left pools of water in the
path, he felt a strong desire to settle the question, by commanding the
pools to become dry, and the dry places to become pools. Going under the
hedge, to pray for ability to work the miracle, he was struck with the
thought that if he failed he should know, indeed, that he was a castaway,
and give himself up to despair. He dared not attempt the experiment, and
went on his way, to use his own forcible language, "tossed up and down
between the Devil and his own ignorance."
Soon after, he had one of those visions which foreshadowed the wonderful
dream of his Pilgrim's Progress. He saw some holy people of Bedford on
the sunny side of an high mountain, refreshing themselves in the pleasant
air and sunlight, while he was shivering in cold and darkness, amidst
snows and never-melting ices, like the victims of the Scandinavian hell.
A wall compassed the mountain, separating him from the blessed, with one
small gap or doorway, through which, with great pain and effort, he was
at last enabled to work his way into the sunshine, and sit down with the
saints, in the light and warmth thereof.
But now a new trouble assailed him. Like Milton's metaphysical spirits,
who sat apart,
"And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate," he grappled with one of
those great questions which have always perplexed and baffled human
inquiry, and upon which much has been written to little purpose. He was
tortured with anxiety to know whether, according to the Westminster
formula, he was elected to salvation or damnation. His old adversary
vexed his soul with evil suggestions, and even quoted Scripture to
enforce them. "It may be you are not elected," said the Tempter; and the
poor tinker thought the supposition altogether too probable. "Why,
then," said Satan, "you had as good leave off, and strive no farther; for
if, indeed, you should not be elected and chosen of God, there is no hope
of your being saved; for it is neither in him that willeth nor in him
that runneth, but in God who showeth mercy." At length, when, as he
says, he was about giving up the ghost of all his hopes, this passage
fell with weight upon his spirit: "Look at the generations of old, and
see; did ever any trust in God, and were confounded?" Comforted by these
words, he opened his Bible took note them, but the most diligent search
and inquiry of his neighbors failed to discover them. At length his eye
fell upon them in the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus. This, he says,
somewhat doubted him at first, as the book was not canonical; but in the
end he took courage and comfort from the passage. "I bless God," he
says, "for that word; it was good for me. That word doth still
oftentimes shine before my face."
A long and weary struggle was now before him. "I cannot," he says,
"express with what longings and breathings of my soul I cried unto Christ
to call me. Gold! could it have been gotten by gold, what would I have
given for it. Had I a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times
over for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state. How
lovely now was every one in my eyes, that I thought to be converted men
and women. They shone, they walked like a people who carried the broad
seal of Heaven with them."
With what force and intensity of language does he portray in the
following passage the reality and earnestness of his agonizing
experience:--
"While I was thus afflicted with the fears of my own damnation, there
were two things would make me wonder: the one was, when I saw old people
hunting after the things of this life, as if they should live here
always; the other was, when I found professors much distressed and cast
down, when they met with outward losses; as of husband, wife, or child.
Lord, thought I, what seeking after carnal things by some, and what grief
in others for the loss of them! If they so much labor after and shed so
many tears for the things of this present life, how am I to be bemoaned,
pitied, and prayed for! My soul is dying, my soul is damning. Were my
soul but in a good condition, and were I but sure of it, ah I how rich
should I esteem myself, though blessed but with bread and water! I
should count these but small afflictions, and should bear them as little
burdens. 'A wounded spirit who can bear!'"
He looked with envy, as he wandered through the country, upon the birds
in the trees, the hares in the preserves, and the fishes in the streams.
They were happy in their brief existence, and their death was but a
sleep. He felt himself alienated from God, a discord in the harmonies of
the universe. The very rooks which fluttered around the old church spire
seemed more worthy of the Creator's love and care than himself. A vision
of the infernal fire, like that glimpse of hell which was afforded to
Christian by the Shepherds, was continually before him, with its
"rumbling noise, and the cry of some tormented, and the scent of
brimstone." Whithersoever he went, the glare of it scorched him, and its
dreadful sound was in his ears. His vivid but disturbed imagination lent
new terrors to the awful figures by which the sacred writers conveyed the
idea of future retribution to the Oriental mind. Bunyan's World of Woe,
if it lacked the colossal architecture and solemn vastness of Milton's
Pandemonium, was more clearly defined; its agonies were within the pale
of human comprehension; its victims were men and women, with the same
keen sense of corporeal suffering which they possessed in life; and who,
to use his own terrible description, had "all the loathed variety of hell
to grapple with; fire unquenchable, a lake of choking brimstone, eternal
chains, darkness more black than night, the everlasting gnawing of the
worm, the sight of devils, and the yells and outcries of the damned."
His mind at this period was evidently shaken in some degree from its
balance. He was troubled with strange, wicked thoughts, confused by
doubts and blasphemous suggestions, for which he could only account by
supposing himself possessed of the Devil. He wanted to curse and swear,
and had to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it. In prayer, he
felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and telling
him to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had better pray to
him, and calling up before his mind's eye the figures of a bull, a tree,
or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.
He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even in this dark and
clouded state, he was enabled to see the "vile and abominable things
fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradually, the shadow wherein he
had so long
"Walked beneath the day's broad glare,
A darkened man,"
passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an "evidence of his
salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his
sight." But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A strange
suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour. His own
account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other
feeling than that of sympathy and sadness.
"I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine
eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell
Christ for this, or sell Christ for that; sell him, sell him.
"Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred times
together, Sell him, sell him; against which, I may say, for whole hours
together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing
my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked
thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and
sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but
then I should be as tortured upon a rack, for whole days together.
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