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These “inexpressible Felicities,” (qtd. in Margoliouth 1: xxxi–xxxii) which he found deep within his own consciousness, provide the impetus for Traherne’s sublime but rational art.
At the time of this book’s publication, four of eight volumes of The Works of Thomas Traherne, edited by Jan Ross, were published. However, volumes containing Traherne’s Centuries, Select Meditations, Dobell and Burney poems, and Christian Ethicks—all of which figure importantly in this study—have not yet been published. Consequently, I have used excellent existing editions of these texts, including H. M. Margoliouth’s two-volume edition of the Centuries and Traherne’s poetry, Julia Smith’s edition of Select Meditations, and Carol L. Marks and George Robert Guffey’s edition of Christian Ethicks. I should point out that I have retained Traherne’s original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, in keeping with the practice of Traherne’s modern editors. Finally, to avoid cumbersome citations I have identified poems that Traherne included within his prose works by pages without line numbers.