In a first selection of extracts (P·N·R 85) I described the latest discovery of Traherne material, in the shape of a manuscript volume retrieved from a bonfire in about 1967, only slightly damaged. Like Traherne's other work, it carries no signature, but experts who have examined the MS agree that it is in his own handwriting, and the style is unmistakeably his.

The volume contains an alphabetical encyclopedia, compiled with a particular moral purpose. The elaborate title page explains what this was, as follows: 'Commentaries of Heaven, wherein the mysteries of Felicity are opened, and all things discovered to be objects of happiness.'

By showing everything in the light of glory, Traherne means to make us understand the perfection of God's creation, and our limitless capacities: thus even such emotions as Abhorrence and Anger are shown as 'working together for good'; the quotation from St Paul is in fact used by Traherne in one of the articles printed below.

At the outset of this introduction I should explain that in describing the manuscript and its contents I am quoting the work of others, and for knowledge of the prose it contains I am dependent on the extracts published by Dr Julia Smith¹ and Professor Allan Pritchard².

To quote from Julia Smith's description³: 'The manuscript itself is a large one, measuring about twelve and a half by eight inches, and it contains nearly four hundred pages of small writing in double columns.' Although it has been calculated that the encyclopedia is about 350,000 words long, Traherne had only reached the letter B when the MS breaks off (after the word Bastard), leaving 140 blank pages. Eighty-two articles were completed under letter A, and eight under B, and there are reasons for thinking that the work was cut short by Traherne's death, rather than by any discouragement at the size of the task he had set himself.

References to books published after 1670 date the MS to the last years of Traherne's life, and another unsigned MS (known as the Commonplace Book, and now in the Bodleian Library) shows part of his extensive preparation for the work: it contains extracts from a number of authors under the same headings as those of the encyclopedia. Traherne remained nominally Rector of Credenhill until his death, but we know that he also acted as chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and died in his house at Teddington in Middlesex.

It requires some fortitude for contemporary minds to stay with Traherne when he is at his most prolix, and, perhaps, to accept his all-embracing approach. By his own account, even his contemporaries complained at his torrent of words. But the rewards we meet at his inspired moments are great. Moreover, as Professor Louis Martz has pointed out⁴, the prolixity is to some extent part of a deliberate method, which derives from St Augustine: the unapprehended Platonic idea of something is to be reached by conjuring up the forms of things already known.

All descriptions of the encyclopedia stress the breadth of interests it exemplifies, not only in the philosophical questions explored in Traherne's other writings, but in the scientific speculations preoccupying his contemporaries. Some of these are illustrated by vivid observations of his own - see the article 'Appetite' below. There are also passages which add to the impressions we have acquired, from the Centuries and Select Meditations, of Traherne's personality. Such are the essays 'Ancestor' printed below, and 'Babe', printed by Allan Pritchard⁵. Here Traherne marvels that 'a new creature which begun but yesterday, must continue for ever; that a little slimy seed should be capable of being an emperor over the whole world'. This, he says, is a wonder great enough to 'astonish even men of years, when they give their minds to the meditation of it.' But, he continues (the unillusioned voice of the experienced pastor breaking in), 'the most of them are Babes in like manner: old Babes, that will never be men'.

Six prose pieces, and one separate poem, have been chosen for this article, to give a fair idea of the work. 'Abhorrence', which opens the encyclopedia, though it is certainly typical of Traherne's ingenuity in discovering his admired Felicity wherever he chose to look, seemed unlikely to recommend him to readers not already converted to his genius, and so it is not included in our selection.

'Of Abridgement I shall speak but little' are the opening words of an entry which runs to the ample length of about 1500 words. Traherne uses the noun in its sense of epitome, or abstract, not in the sense more common now, which implies a shortening, or omission of some parts. The main argument explores one of Traherne's recurrent themes: that the exercise of enumerating the glories of existence will, by making us aware of them, enable us to possess them. And by contemplating them, we shall 'converse no more with titles (merely) but with realities, feeling the influence of the things themselves'. Traherne illustrates this with an apt simile, comparing a child's observation of the labels on a cabinet with a physician's understanding of their uses.

The entry on 'Account', of which we print part, is related to 'Abridgement' in subject-matter, as Traherne explores the value of a reckoning-up of 'expenses and commodities', an exercise which he considers to be undertaken in heaven as well as on earth. Speaking of extracts taken from parish registers, and supposedly examined by the monarch, he finds an apt image: a king is thus enabled to 'survey his living members', feeling his subjects as parts of his own body. Then Traherne writes of 'divine account'; and explains the purpose of the whole activity, which is satisfaction - communion with God. 'Nothing can be enjoyed but what is numbered.'

The sense of wonder is the strongest element in 'Admiration': wonder which is implanted in the soul. Like Sir Thomas Browne, Traherne loves to lose himself in an 0 Altitudo⁶. 'It is the sweetest of things, when a man loseth himself at the greatness of the good that hath betided him, and is delightfully blind at his own happiness.'

'All things' is taken as a compound word, like Everything, and in this article Traherne is concerned to defend his discovery (not easily achieved by him) that a human being can be considered as possessing all things, not just in a life to come, but here on earth. In the section marked 'Demonstrations, a priori', Traherne reverts to his favourite imagery of fountain (for indwelling love) and stream (for issuing love) on which he enlarges in Centuries of Meditations II, 40, 41. The demonstration 'a posteriori' rises predictably to the conclusion derived from St Paul (8 Romans, 28) that 'all things work together for good, to them that love God'.

'Ancestor' shows Traherne at his most profound and most attractive; he explores all the significance of men's relationship with their forebears, and also, by implication, with each other: an epigraph for the article might be the saying of St Anthony of Egypt (a favourite quotation of Charles Williams): 'Your life and your death are with your neighbour.' Not only are ancestors the root of our being, and we the branches of theirs, they involve us in their own times, for (as Traherne says in the entry 'Babe' quoted above) 'all the matter of the universe' was in our bodies before we were conceived. And though we might think that the sun could not do us any service except directly, yet consider, 'There is not a morsel of bread which they [our ancestors] did ever eat, but it served us in feeding them', and the sun and the other elements 'served us in preparing the corn that made that bread'.

Traherne has observed the special fondness of grandparents for their grandchildren, even greater than that of parents, he thinks, for they 'live in them and feel in them'.

'Appetite', examining the apparent rudiments of reason in beasts, concludes that their actions are governed solely by the wish to avoid unpleasant consequences, and that men's reasoning is for the most part similar, therefore brutish, 'unless their reasonings soar aloft and take a higher compass'. Traherne gives an intriguing example of animal reasoning from his own experience, watching an ape sitting in a chimney corner and filching pieces of broiling fish. Not, surely, in the house of the Lord Keeper?

Although the Notebook contains some quite substantial poems, they are on the whole inferior to the prose (though I note that Dr Chambers⁷ thinks otherwise). The majority are in rhymed couplets, with a few in varying stanza forms, and one disastrous attempt at satirical dactyls ('Affairs'). At one point Traherne addresses a note to himself, as though sharing our doubts: 'Consider whether it be not best leave out some of these poems?'

In addition to the two brief poems which follow the entries chosen, we have included one longer piece, from the entry 'Aspiration'. The imagery of fire and the spirit calls to mind Charles Wesley's great hymn, '0 thou who camest from above', and there is a fine conceit on the need for repentance before exultation: 'Sticks smother first, And weep before they burn'.

The extracts are given in their original spelling, but the quotations in the Introduction have been modernized.

A.R.

NOTES

1. 'Traherne from his Unpublished Manuscripts' in Profitable Wonders by Allchin, Ridler and Smith, Oxford (Amate Press), 1989


2. University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 53, No. 3, 1983


3. Op. cit. p. 45


4. The Paradise Within, New Haven & London, 1964, p. 49


5. Op. cit. p. 19


6. Religio Medici, pt. i, 10


7. Commentaries of Heaven, The Poems, ed. D.D.C. Chanlbers, Salzburg 1989