He told me that the book was not clear, that 'he got no good of it'-- in fact, that it was 'a failure.' It may be a failure, but 'want of clearness' is certainly not the cause.

I fancy he wanted something else which he did not find, and he would not give himself the trouble to examine what he did find." Froude contributed in 1880 to Mr.Morley's English Men of Letters a critical and biographical sketch of Bunyan.

The Pilgrim's Progress, as the work of a Dissenter, had been excluded from the Rectory at Dartington.

But Froude was not long in supplying the deficiency for himself, and his literary appreciation of Bunyan's style was accompanied by a sincere sympathy with the Puritan part of his faith.

All religious people, he thought, might find common ground in Bunyan, a man who lived for religion, and for nothing else.