A Meditation on the Incarnation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

A new critical text of the “Omnia Opera” of Thomas à Kempis is being edited by Dr. M. Joseph Pohl, of Bonn, in seven volumes, of which four have already appeared, and the remainder are to be issued in the course of 1907. An eighth volume is to contain a life of the author, a dissertation on his various writings, and a vindication of his title to the “Imitation” by the same industrious hand. The publishers, Messrs. Herder, are doing their work in a way worthy of the subject matter, and of the painstaking toil of the editor; their volumes are a pleasure to behold and handle, a masterpiece of the printer’s and the bookbinder’s art, a contrast indeed to the unwieldy tomes and cramped letterpress, to which, apart from the “Imitation,” students of the Ven. à Kempis have hitherto been accustomed. From this edition is taken Dr. Duthoit’s translation, “Prayers and Meditations on the Life of Christ,” published in 1904 by Messrs. Kegan Paul, as also the present volume and the remainder, five in all yet to appear, of this series, embracing, with the exception of the “Imitation,” the complete works of à Kempis. Various parts, in fact quite a large proportion of these writings have been already rendered into English, and in many cases well, but at various times, by various hands, in various forms; and it was felt that even a thorough supplement of the portions not yet translated or not translated satisfactorily could in no wise compare with the advantages of a complete, uniform edition, one in fact to rival in English the work so admirably done by Dr. Pohl and Messrs. Herder in the original.