some fictions die hard. However low the family had sunk, so that in his
own words, "his father's house was of that rank that is meanest and most
despised of all the families in the land," "of a low and inconsiderable
generation," the name, as we have seen, was one of long standing in
Bunyan's native county, and had once taken far higher rank in it. And
his parents, though poor, were evidently worthy people, of good repute
among their village neighbours. Bunyan seems to be describing his own
father and his wandering life when he speaks of "an honest poor labouring
man, who, like Adam unparadised, had all the world to get his bread in,
and was very careful to maintain his family." He and his wife were also
careful with a higher care that their children should be properly
educated. "Notwithstanding the meanness and inconsiderableness of my
parents," writes Bunyan, "it pleased God to put it into their hearts to
put me to school, to learn both to read and write." If we accept the
evidence of the "Scriptural Poems," published for the first time twelve
years after his death, the genuineness of which, though questioned by Dr.
Brown, there seems no sufficient reason to doubt, the little education he
had was "gained in a grammar school." This would have been that founded
by Sir William Harpur in Queen Mary's reign in the neighbouring town of
Bedford. Thither we may picture the little lad trudging day by day along
the mile and a half of footpath and road from his father's cottage by the
brookside, often, no doubt, wet and miry enough, not, as he says, to "go
to school to Aristotle or Plato," but to be taught "according to the rate
of other poor men's children." The Bedford schoolmaster about this time,
William Barnes by name, was a negligent sot, charged with "night-walking"
and haunting "taverns and alehouses," and other evil practices, as well
as with treating the poor boys "when present" with a cruelty which must
have made them wish that his absences, long as they were, had been more
protracted. Whether this man was his master or no, it was little that
Bunyan learnt at school, and that little he confesses with shame he soon