After a long period of neglect the English Mystics of the fourteenth century are coming again to the light. Patient workers have provided us with accurate texts and greatly helped to show how valuable are the writings of these mystics. One may perhaps apply to their re-birth the words that St. Ambrose used of the birth of St. John the Baptist: ‘Habet sanctorum editio laetitiam plurimorum, quia commune bonum est.’ This is especially the case with the most original writer of the whole school, the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing and of the Epistles connected with it. It is true that Father Henry Collins, so long ago as 1870, edited the Cloud and the Epistle of Privy Counsel; but his text, though sufficient for devotional use, was not very exact, chiefly as regards the Epistle, and it was not till 1912 that the Cloud was issued for the first time in all its genuineness and originality. We must remain very grateful to Miss Evelyn Underhill for her work.

There is room, however, for other editions—as Miss Underhill herself would acknowledge—and Catholics will welcome the news that a new one, containing— I hope—the Cloud and all the Epistles, is now being prepared for the ‘Orchard Books’ by Dom Justin McCann. It will do a great service to contemplative souls, and I believe that there may still be many such among the countrymen of St. Bede, Rolle, Hilton, and Father Baker.

Will this new edition throw light on the question of the authorship of the Cloud and its attendant treatises? That is perhaps to hope too much, for the problem is one that has hitherto baffled every investigator.