Julian,—a woman writing of the Revelations of Love,—the delightfully trenchant, easy address of Hilton in his counsels as to how to scale the Ladder of Perfection—counsels both wise and witty—yet Julian, too, with all her sweetness, is full of this every day vigour and common sense. And sometimes she puts things in a naïve, engaging way of her own, grave and yet light—as if with a little understanding smile to those to whom she is speaking:—"Then ween we, who be not all wise"; "That the outward part should draw the inward to assent was not shewed to me, but that the inward draweth the outward by grace and both shall be oned in bliss without end by the virtue of Christ, this was shewed" (lxi., xix.).
Rolle, Hilton, and more especially the Ancren Riwle, give examples of that custom of allegorical interpretation of Sacred Scriptures that has fascinated many mystical authors, but one can scarcely suppose that this method would ever have been a favourite one with Julian even if she had been in the way of dealing with literary parallels and references. For though she uses "examples," or illustrations (sometimes calling them "shewings," or "bodily examples") and also metaphorically figurative speech, she does not shew any interest in elaborate, arbitrary symbolism. At any rate she is too directly simple, it seems, and too much in the centre of realities, to be a writer that (without constraint of following the lines of others) would take as foundation for an argument or an exposition outward resemblances or verbal
