Centuries of Meditations

Name: Centuries of Meditations
Author: Thomas Traherne

Annotated Edition · With an Introduction, Notes and an Outline.

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English Edition · Branch 14 of 454

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Centuries of Meditations

p. 14

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This book unto the friend of my best friend As of the wisest Love a mark I send, That she may write my Maker’s prais therin And make her self therby a Cherubin.

1.The dedicatee is a woman, unnamed here and throughout. She had given Traherne the blank notebook (I.1), and the verse seems to send it back to her to go on filling, which would suit the fifty or so leaves still empty at the end of the manuscript (Bodleian MS Eng. th. e. 50). The traditional candidate is Susanna Hopton (1627-1709) of Kington, Herefordshire, a devotional writer whose niece married Traherne’s brother Philip in 1670; nothing in the manuscript confirms it. The best friend is most naturally Christ.

2.A token or pledge. The manuscript shows that Traherne first wrote “As the true Token” and then revised the line. These four lines alone keep the spelling of the manuscript (“prais therin” for praise therein, and so on), as Dobell printed them; the meditations are in his modernised spelling.

3.A cherub. Cherubin was an old English singular, though it came from the Hebrew plural (Shakespeare’s Prospero calls Miranda one). A Prayer Book reader would hear the Te Deum at Morning Prayer, “To thee Cherubin and Seraphin continually do cry”, so that to write God’s praise is to join the angels who never cease from praising. In the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite (VII) the cherubim are the angels of knowledge, their name read as fullness of knowledge, which suits a book to be filled with truths.

About This Reading Edition

Thomas Traherne’s Centuries explore felicity, childhood vision, love, and the soul’s capacity to enjoy the world. This annotated English edition presents all 410 meditations across five Centuries, with an introduction, explanatory notes, an outline, and textual apparatus.

Historical Text

The Centuries survive in Traherne’s manuscript and were first published by Bertram Dobell in London in 1908. The supplied edition follows the corrected Dobell text, with manuscript readings documented in its Note on the Text and Textual Notes. The four complete Centuries contain one hundred meditations each; the unfinished Fifth contains ten.

About This Edition

Diotimos Editions prepared the introduction, explanatory notes, glossary, reading guide, outline, and textual apparatus for this English original. Century and meditation numbers preserve the work’s structure, while verse line breaks, italics, and struck-through manuscript cancellations remain visible. Notes accompany their passages in the reader and Book Mode.

Rights

Thomas Traherne’s historical text and Bertram Dobell’s 1908 printing are in the public domain. The introduction, notes, and apparatus are © 2026 Diotimos Editions. Historical printing and transcription links identify the edition’s copy-text; manuscript corrections and unresolved readings are documented in the supplied editorial apparatus.