Introduction

The six works in this volume are taken from two manuscripts. One, held at the Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford, MS Eng. th. e. 50, contains Centuries of Meditations ; the other, held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Osborn MS b. 308, comprises three works by Thomas Traherne, Select Meditations and two brief untitled treatises, ‘Being a Lover of the world’ and ‘The best principle whereby a man can Steer his course’. It includes also ‘A Prayer for Ash Wednesday’ and ‘A Meditation’, which are not of Traherne's making and the identity of the author is unknown. Centuries of Meditations and Select Meditations are probably the best known of Traherne's works ;1 they are both written as Centuries, short, numbered passages, often designated as ‘chapters’ or ‘texts’, arranged into sets of one hundred.

The Century as a literary form

The literary form of the Century emerged with the monastic writers and collectors of spiritual and moral sentences for the purpose of teaching and meditation during the fourth and fifth centuries.