The character of the translator, as disclosed for us in his prologue, is itself interesting. Clearly he was a contemplative; and the “high ghostly feelings” of which he treats are to him the strictly practical objects of supreme desire, though he modestly disclaims their possession. He appears before us as a gentle, humble, rather timid soul: often frankly terrified by the daring flights of his “French book,” which he is at pains to explain in a safe sense. One would judge him, from the peeps which he gives us into his mind, a disciple of the devout and homely school of Walter Hilton, rather than a descendant of the group of advanced mystics which produced in the mid-fourteenth century _The Cloud of Unknowing_, _The Pistle of Private Counsel_, and other profound studies of the inner life. These books were written under the strong influence of Dionysius the Areopagite; whose _Mystical Theology_, under the title of _Dionise Hid Divinite_, was first translated into English by some member of the school. But to the translator of the _Mirror_ his author’s drastic applications of the Dionysian paradoxes of indifference, passivity, and nescience as the path to knowledge teem with “hard sayings.” His attitude towards them is that of reverential alarm: he fears their probable effect on the mind of the hasty reader. They seem, as he says in one place, “fable or error or hard to understand” until one has read them several times. He is sure that their real meaning is unexceptionable; but terribly afraid that they will be misunderstood. Here, then, is the prologue which sets forth his point of view. “To the worship and laud of the Trinity be this work begun and ended! Amen.