The next step was to get hold of these two works and examine them, if perchance some evidence might be found that Traherne was also the author of the manuscripts, which as yet remained a guess, standing on Mr. Dobell's conviction that the verses in the manuscripts and those in _Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings_ must be by the same hand. By great good fortune that evidence was found in _Christian Ethicks_, in a poem which, with some variations, occurred too in the manuscript _Centuries of Meditations_. Here then at last was proof positive, or as positive as needs be. The most of us writers hope and stake for a diuturnity of fame; and some of us get it. _Sed ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata perierunt?_ "That bay leaves were found green in the tomb of St. Humbert after a hundred and fifty years was looked upon as miraculous," writes Sir Thomas Browne. But Traherne's laurel has lain green in the dust for close on two hundred and thirty years, and his fame so cunningly buried that only by half a dozen accidents leading up to a chance sentence in a dark preface to a forgotten book has it come to light. I wonder if his gentle shade takes any satisfaction in the discovery? His was by choice a _vita fallens_. Early in life he made, as we learn from a passage in _Centuries of Meditations_, his election between worldly prosperity and the life of the Spirit, between the chase of fleeting phenomena and rest upon the soul's centre:-- "When I came into the country and, being seated among silent trees and woods and hills, had all my time in my own hands, I resolved to spend it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of Happiness, and to satiate the burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from my youth; in which I was so resolute that I chose rather to live upon ten pounds a year, and to go in leather clothes, and to feed upon bread and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself, than to keep many thousands per annum in an estate of life where my time would be devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to accept of that desire that from that time to this I have had all things plentifully provided for me without any care at all, my very study of Felicity making me more to prosper than all the care in the whole world. So that through His blessing I live a free and kingly life, as if the world were turned again into Eden, or, much more, as it is at this day."