Ebook Centuries of Meditations

I have named, I cannot doubt that with the publi cation of the present volume all question as to his claim to rank with them in force Of intellect and power Of expression must be finally set at rest. When I published the Poems I prefixed to them an introduction in which I gave all the facts about the author's life and works which I had then been able to discover. I need not travel again over this ground, since most of my present readers will have seen the previous volume. What I said in that preface I do not now see any reason to modify or withdraw. About the present work there is much to be said: and I at first intended to attempt to say all that needed saying. But after some endeavour to do this, I came to see that w1th all my admiration for Traherne as a literary artist, I was so far out of sympathy with many Of his ideas that I could not deal with them from the proper standpoint without exposing myself to some risk of misapprehension. Though it is certainly not necessary that any one who writes about Traherne should believe all that he did, it is yet desirable that he should be generally in sympathy with the faith Of which our author was so earnest a professor. For myself then all I now propose to do is, firstly, to make some remarks on the characteristics Of Traherne as a man and an author; and secondly, to endeavour to bring out, by comparison with the most famous work of the same kind, the peculiar merits Of his Centuries Of Meditations.