IT is hoped that the "Library of Spiritual Works for English Catholics," which will comprise translations, compilations, and other works, will meet a need which has long been felt. As the devotional life of the Church of England has increased, so the demand for spiritual treatises has become more and more urgent, and has arisen from all classes of society. This series of books, some well-known, some already oftentimes translated, and others, it may be, yet to be presented for the first time in an English dress, is intended to meet this want.
The aim of the translators is twofold. First, to provide the reader with a fair rendering of the original as far as possible unmutilated. It has been a common complaint of late, that translations have been marred by the absence of parts of the original, the exclusion of which a more intelligent view of Catholic devotion in the present day has rendered unnecessary. In these editions these omissions have been to a great extent supplied; yet at the same time any term or expression which may come under the imputation of being "un-English" has been reduced, as far as may be without destroying the thought, to its equivalent in Anglican phraseology and belief Secondly, to translate the original into ordinary English, and thus to avoid the antiquated and stilted style of writing, which often makes books of this kind distasteful, or even sometimes unintelligible.
