Centuries of Meditations

Name: Centuries of Meditations
Author: Thomas Traherne

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

Explore the Lexicon

Centuries of MeditationsThe Third Century · Meditation III.9

Swipe or use the arrow keys.

English Edition · Branch 223 of 454

The Third Century · Meditation III.9

Book Mode

Centuries of Meditations

p. 223

9

It was a difficult matter to persuade me that the tinseled ware upon a hobby-horse was a fine thing. They did impose upon me, and obtrude their gifts that made me believe a ribbon or a feather curious. I could not see where [was] the curiousness or fineness: And to teach me that a purse of gold was at any value seemed impossible, the art by which it becomes so, and the reasons for which it is accounted so, were so deep and hidden to my inexperience. So that Nature is still nearest to natural things, and farthest off from preternatural; and to esteem that the reproach of Nature, is an error in them only who are unacquainted with it. Natural things are glorious, and to know them glorious but to call things preternatural, natural, monstrous. Yet all they do it, who esteem gold, silver, houses, lands, clothes, &c., the riches of Nature, which are indeed the riches of invention. Nature knows no such riches: but art and error make them. Not the God of Nature, but Sin only was the parent of them. The riches of Nature are our Souls and Bodies, with all their faculties, senses, and endowments. And it had been the easiest thing in the whole world [to teach me] that all felicity consisted in the enjoyment of all the world, that it was prepared for me before I was born, and that nothing was more divine and beautiful.

180.A hobby-horse is a child’s toy horse, a stick with a horse’s head, here trimmed with tinsel, thin glittering foil. Earle’s character of a child (see the note at I.1) calls him “the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve or the apple” and gives him the same playthings, “his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man’s business”. Earle’s sketch runs close to these meditations throughout; it is a parallel, not a known source.

181.The distinction between natural wealth and the wealth men invent is ancient. Aristotle separates natural acquisition from money-making and says that coin has its value by convention, not by nature (Politics I.9, 1257b; Nicomachean Ethics V.5, 1133a). Seneca, after Epicurus, writes that he who lives by nature is never poor and he who lives by opinion never rich (Epistles 16.7); elsewhere he says that men’s vices are not born with them but heaped on them, and that nature put gold and silver under their feet and turned their faces to the sky (Epistles 94.55-56). In More’s Utopia (1516) gold makes chamber-pots and fetters, and jewels are children’s toys. These are parallels, not demonstrable sources.

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.