For further particulars of the above works, and of others which I have in contemplation, see a Prospectus which is now ready, and which will be forwarded on application.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] See "Archæologia," vol. xxxvii, p. 204.
[B] "Roman Forgeries" must have had some popularity in its time, for it is, unlike "Christian Ethicks," a tolerably common book. Fifteen years after its publication Dean Comber, a writer of some note in his day, published a work of similar character, and with the same title. As Traherne's book was published anonymously, Dean Comber has usually received credit for that as well as for his own work. The Dean was a man of considerable ability, and he would hardly have been pleased had he been told that he would only be remembered in future times as the writer who helped himself to a striking title at the expense of one who was far superior to himself in character and genius.
[C] See "Nova Solyma": an Anonymous Romance. With Introduction, Translation, &c., by the Rev. Walter Begley. (1903.)
[D] "Nature is the great spendthrift. She will burn up the world some day to attain what will probably seem to us a very inadequate end; and in order to have things stated at their worst, once for all, in English, she took a splendid genius and made him—an army schoolmaster; starved his intellect, starved his heart, starved his body. All the adversity of the world smote him; and that nothing should be wanting to her purpose Nature took care that the very sun should smite him also! Time will avenge him: he is among the immortals."—John Davidson, in the Speaker, June 17, 1899.
[E] This poem is included in the "Oxford Book of English Verse"; and the Rev. Orby Shipley has included two of Traherne's poems in his "Carmina Mariana."
[F] It is not only in "My Spirit" that we find traces of Traherne's Berkeleianism. See the "Hymn on St. Bartholomew's Day," "The Preparative," and various passages in other poems. I do not contend, however, that we have the idea in a clear and unmistakable form anywhere but in "My Spirit."
[G] This title was probably the invention of the publisher—one Samuel Keble—and not of the author.