HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
The work which is now again published was theresult of too many years’ steady application, andhas served too great an intellectual use in the specialdepartment of thought of which it treats, to be allowedto fall into oblivion. Certainly the reading which theauthor thought it necessary to accomplish before hepresented his conclusions to the public was vast,and varied. That the fruit of his labours was commensuratemay be gathered from the honest admirationwhich has been expressed by men knowingwhat hard study really means. The first edition ofthe ‘Hours with the Mystics’ appeared in 1856;the second was, to a great extent, revised by theauthor, but it did not appear until after his death.It was edited by his father, though most of the work ofcorrection and verification was done by the author’swidow.
There is no intention of writing a memoir here. Thathas already been done. But it has been suggested thatit might be interesting to trace how Mysticism graduallybecame the author’s favourite study. To do that it maybe well to give a very short sketch of his literarycareer.
From the time he was quite a child he had the fixed1-viidea that he must be a literary man. In his twenty-firstyear (1844) he published a volume of poems,entitled ‘The Witch of Endor, and other Poems.’ Thepoetry in this little volume—long since out of print—washeld to give promise of genius. It was, of course, theproduction of youth, and in after years the authorwas fully conscious of its defects. Bu