Page:John Bunyan's Dream Story.djvu/10

 By and by, he began to write such a story. He wrote it in the easy, simple language of the common people, and, without knowing it, produced one of the most beautiful prose poems ever written. After his release from prison his work was submitted to a printer who corrected its bad spelling and most of its faulty grammar, and in 1677 it was published.

The Pilgrim's Progress came into the world very modestly; but the charm of the story was such that, without advertisement, it soon grew into fame. Edition after edition was called for, and wherever the English language was known it became the subject of daily talk among the common people. For two hundred years or more no other English book was so generally known and read.

No other book of modern times has had a history so remarkable as this simple story "in the similitude of a dream." It has been translated into eighty languages. It has been turned into verse. It has been rewritten in scholarly English. It has been imitated a score of times in short-lived books whose very titles are forgotten. It has been remodeled and adapted to serve the most remarkable and diverse purposes. It has been dramatized and presented upon