THOMAS TRAHERNE.*
OF the life of Thomas Traheme practically all that is known is that he was the son of a Hereford shoemaker, that ho was educated at Brasonose College, that he became private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman, and that he died a few months after his patron in 1674. Three of his prose works were printed and remained neglected for two centuries ; but twenty-four years ago some manuscript poems were discovered which Mr. Bertram Dobell identified as coming from Traheme's pen ; and fifteen years later Mr. Bell found another manuscript, including most of the poems already known and thirty-eight new ones, amongst the Burney Papers in the British Museum. The appeal to the boyish love of treasure-trove which is dormant in every • Traherne. (An Eforgy.) By Oladys E. Willett. Cambridge : W. Heller and Sons. L2s. net.1
right-thinking human being was irresistible, and the poems were elevated at first to a rank which they do not deserve. They possess merit, but not tho highest merit ; they are essentially tho product of an intensely concentrated mind not easily subject to the conditions of verse. But their interest was sufficient to direct attention to Traherne's prose, which boars the character- istic stamp of a master of language. It is free, elastic, rhythmical, and appropriate to the expression of the opposite extremes of spiritual fervour and matter-of-fact reason'ng. Trahemc was a mystic whose fundamental intuition was that the Kingdom of Heaven lies within us. Once that cardinal truth was perceived, all things became equally acceptable to the mind of the believer ; love for God, love for man, and love for Nature were the three essentials for felicity, and when we had learned these we became at one with God.
Two brief quotations will give the reader some notion of the distinctive qualities of Traherna's style. The first is in his workmanlike argumentative manner :-
" He'that revenges an injury seems to do one. For he that did the wrong seems innocent to himself, and seeming innocent takes the revenge as an undeserved injury. . . . ii wild-fire be thrown, I will put it out with my foot, and not by throwing it back give my enemy the advantage of retch ling it upon me."
The second illustrates his command of what the later critics of his century describe as " numerous prose " :-
" Another time, in a lowering and sad evening, being alone in the field, when r.11 things were dead and quiet, a certain want and horror fed upon me, beyond imagination. The unprofitableness and silence of the place dissatisfied me ; its wideness terrified me ; from the utmost ends of the earth fears surrounded me. How did I know but dange.s might suddenly arise from the East and invade me from the unknown regions beyond the seas ? I was a weak and little child, and had forgotten there was a man alive in the earth."
Miss Willett'a little volume is an excellent introduction to the study of Traherne, for it is written with enthusiasm and under- standing. It shows a remarkable insight into the midis of the seventeenth-century mystics, and although the insight is based
rather upon sympathy than analysis it is by no moans indis- criminating or jejune. The pages in which Vaughan and Trahorne are compared and contrasted display a critical acumen which makes us lament the loss to literature brought about by their author's untimely death.
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