mercy is unsearchable, forgive me my transgressions.' The whole
of his career, from childhood to manhood, was, 'According to the
course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience'
(Eph 2:2).

These reminiscences are alluded to in the prologue of the Holy
War:--


'When Mansoul trampled upon things Divine,
And wallowed in filth as doth a swine,
Then I was there, and did rejoice to see
Diabolus and Mansoul so agree.'


The Laureate had read this, and yet considers it the language of
a heart that 'never was hardened.' He says that 'the wickedness
of the tinker has been greatly overcharged, and it is taking the
language of self-accusation too literally to pronounce of John
Bunyan, that he was at any time depraved. The worst of what he was
in his worst days is to be expressed in a single word, the full
meaning of which no circumlocution can convey; and which, though
it may hardly be deemed presentable in serious composition, I shall
use, as Bunyan himself (no mealy-mouthed writer) would have used
it, had it in his days borne the same acceptation in which it is now
universally understood;--in that word then, he had been a blackguard.


The very head and front of his offending