The Story of the Traherne MSS. by their finder.

The announcement in the columns of our contemporary the ‘Athenæum’ of the approaching publication of a fresh manuscript of the lately discovered poet, Thomas Traherne, recalls the curious story which so respectable an authority as the ‘Quarterly Review’ regarded as ‘one of the most romantic in the annals of English bibliography’.

As the writer of this article was the original discoverer, and many of the details have not yet appeared in print, the following may be of more than passing interest.

It has been my fortune during half a century's study of English poetry, sacred and secular, to make many curious finds. Such was the unique copy of Pope's ‘Ethic Epistles’, 1743, suppressed by Lord Bolingbroke on Pope's death and now, as Dr. Garnett told the writer, justly regarded as the prize of their Pope documents, it having been secured for the British Museum after I had sold it to the late Colonel Grant. Such, also the unique holograph manuscript of Richard Krashaw, containing poems no where else found, and also in the British Museum. Such the unknown first hymnbook of John Wesley issued during his visit to America in 1737, which, bought for half a guinea, has fetched first £20.10p(?) and then in 1905, £106 and which went to America, (though not before a facsimile reprint had been published by the Wesleyans here).

There are minor discoveries, like those of Bishop Ken's unique tracts, but all yield the [poem?] interest and importance to that of the subject of our paper.

Occupied as I have always been in business life, in London, for many years the Saturday half holiday has been spent in the quarters frequented by book lovers and as the volumes purchased from the penny or two penny stall were generally numerous, it follows that they were frequently laid aside for investigation at a more convenient season, and that that season occasionally, was long in coming.

Thus it was, that I had manuscripts which as I was, with scanty leisure, engaged [in?] quite other literary work that two of the Traherne MSS fell quite unknowingly into my hands. One was purchased in Whitechapel, the other in the Farringdon Road.