Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/71

Rh and the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress (1684). B. was now widely known as a popular preacher and author, and exercised a wide influence. In 1688 he set out on a journey to mediate between a father and son, in which he was successful. On the return journey he was drenched with rain, caught a chill and d. in London on August 31. He is buried in Bunhill Fields. B. has the distinction of having written, in The Pilgrim's Progress, probably the most widely read book in the English language, and one which has been translated into more tongues than any book except the Bible. The charm of the work, which makes it the joy of old and young, learned and ignorant, and of readers of all possible schools of thought and theology, lies in the interest of a story in which the intense imagination of the writer makes characters, incidents, and scenes alike live in that of his readers as things actually known and remembered by themselves, in its touches of tenderness and quaint humour, its bursts of heart-moving eloquence, and its pure, nervous, idiomatic English, Macaulay has said, "Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road on which he has been backwards and forwards a hundred times," and he adds that "In England during the latter half of the seventeenth century there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other The Pilgrim's Progress." B. wrote about 60 books and tracts, of which The Holy War ranks next to The Pilgrim's Progress in popularity, while Grace Abounding is one of the most interesting pieces of biography in existence.

There are numerous Lives, the most complete being that by Dr. John Brown of Bedford (1885 new 1888): others are Southey's (1830), on which Macaulay's Essay is based, Offor (1862), Froude (1880). On The Pilgrim's Progress, The People of the Pilgrimage, by J. Kerr Bain, D.D.

 Author:John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817).—Traveller, b. at Lausanne and ed. in Germany, came to England in 1806 and wrote his books of travel in English. He travelled widely in Africa and in Syria, and the adjoining countries, became a great oriental scholar, and, disguising himself, made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and obtained access to places not open to Christians. He wrote accounts of his travels, and a book on Arabic proverbs. He d. of dysentery at Cairo when about to start on a new journey into the interior of Africa.

 Author:Edmund Burke (1729-1797).—Statesman, orator, and political philosopher, was the s. of an attorney in Dublin, where he was b. His f. was a Protestant, but his mother, whose maiden name was Nagle, was a Roman Catholic. He received his early ed. at a Quaker school at Ballitore, and in 1743 proceeded to Trinity Coll., Dublin, where he graduated in 1748. His f. wished him to study for the law, and with this object he, in 1750, went to London and entered the Middle Temple. He, however, disliked law and spent more time in literary pursuits than in legal study. In 1756 his first pub. work appeared, A Vindication of Natural Society, a satire on the views of, but so close was the imitation of that writer's style, and so grave the irony, that its point as a satire was largely missed.