E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) +---------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | | this text. For a complete list, please see the end of | | this document. | +---------------------------------------------------------+ THE FORM OF PERFECT LIVING AND OTHER PROSE TREATISES. by RICHARD ROLLE, OF HAMPOLE, A.D. 1300-1349. Rendered into Modern English by Geraldine E. Hodgson, D.Litt., Lecturer in Education in the University of Bristol. London: Thomas Baker, 72, Newman Street, W. 1910. Printed By W. C. Hemmons, St. Stephen Street, Bristol. "Love is a life, joining together the loving and the loved." "Truth may be without love, but it cannot help without it." RICHARD ROLLE (_The Form of Perfect Living_, ch. x.). Preface. This book is not intended for those who are acquainted with Anglo-Saxon and Middle English; but for those who care for the thought, specially the religious and devotional thought, of our forefathers. My one aim has been to make a portion of that thought accurately intelligible to modern readers, with the greatest possible saving of trouble to them. When I could use the old word or phrase, with certainty of its being understood, I have done so. When I could not, I have replaced it with the best modern equivalent I could find or invent. In extenuation of the occasional use of Rolle's expression, "by their lone," I may urge its expressiveness, the absence of an equivalent, and the fact that it may still be heard in remote places. Where possible, I have retained the archaic order of the original Text. Such irregular constructions, as _e.g._, the use of a singular pronoun in the first half of a sentence, and of a plural in the second half, I have left unaltered; for the meaning was perfectly clear. In short, I have endeavoured to make Richard Rolle as he was as significant as possible to English men and women of to-day as they are, when they are not professed students of English language. In such an undertaking, it is obvious that I must have presented endless vulnerable places to the learned. I can only repeat that the book was never meant for them, but for those who will perhaps forgive me if I describe them as specialists in religious thought rather than in English Language. The rendering is made from the texts printed by Professor Horstman in his _Library of Early English Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole an English Father of the Church_. GERALDINE E. HODGSON. _The University, Bristol, S. Mary Magdalene, 1910._ Contents. PAGE. Preface vii.