nce, dropped at haphazard, the secret might never have
been resolved. As it was, the clue--that the author of _Devout and
Sublime Thanksgivings_ was private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman--had
only to be followed up; and it led to the name of Thomas Traherne.
This information was obtained from Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_, which
mentioned Traherne as the author of two books, _Roman Forgeries_ and
_Christian Ethicks_.

The next step was to get hold of these two works and examine them,
if perchance some evidence might be found that Traherne was also the
author of the manuscripts, which as yet remained a guess, standing on Mr.
Dobell's conviction that the verses in the manuscripts and those in
_Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings_ must be by the same hand.

By great good fortune that evidence was found in _Christian Ethicks_, in a
poem which, with some variations, occurred too in the manuscript
_Centuries of Meditations_. Here then at last was proof positive, or as
positive as needs be.

The most of us writers hope and stake for a diuturnity of fame; and some
of us get it. _Sed ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata
perierunt?_ "That bay leaves were found green in the tomb of St. Humbert
after a hundred and fifty years was looked upon as miraculous," writes Sir
Thomas Browne. But Traherne's laurel has lain green in the dust for close
on two hundred and thirty years, and his fame so cunningly buried that
only by half a dozen accidents leading up to a chance sentence in a dark
preface to a forgotten book has it come to light.

I wonder if his gentle shade takes any satisfaction in the discovery?
His was by choice a _vita fallens_. Early in life he made, as we learn
from a passage in _Centuries of Meditations_, his election between worldly
prosperity and the life of the Spirit, between the chase of fleeting
phenomena and rest upon the soul's centre:--

"When I came into the country and, being seated among silent trees and
woods and hills, had all my time in my own hands, I resolved to spend
it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of Happiness, and to
satiate the burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from my
youth; in which I was so resolute that I chose rather to live upon
ten pounds a year, and to go in leather clothes, and to feed upon
bread and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself,
than to keep many thousands per annum in an estate