These little tracts are written by a practical mystic, one who was able
to describe with peculiar accuracy and vividness the physical and
psychological sensations accompanying mystical initiation. _The Cloud of
Unknowing_ is an application in simple English of the Dionysian teaching
of concentration joined to the practice of contemplation taught by
Richard of St Victor, and it describes very clearly the preliminary
struggles and bewilderment of the soul. The _Epistle of Privy Counsel_
(still in MS.) is the most advanced in mystical teaching: the writer in
it tries to explain very intimately the nature of "onehede with God,"
and to give instruction in simple and yet deeply subtle terms as to the
means for attaining this.
There is a mystical strain in other writings of this time, the most
notable from the point of view of literature being in the
fourteenth-century alliterative poem of _Piers the Plowman_.[67] This is
mystical throughout in tone, more especially in the idea of the journey
of the soul in search of Truth, only to find, after many dangers and
disciplines and adventures, that--
If grace graunte the to go in this wise,
Thow shalt see in thi-selve Treuthe sitte in thine herte
In a cheyne of charyte as thow a childe were.
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