SOURCE: "The Mysticism of Henry Vaughan: A Reply," in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. LIII, No. 3, July, 1954, pp. 352-60.

In the following excerpt, Oliver takes issue with Frank Kermode's 1950 essay on Vaughan, contending that "Vaughan makes a mystic's use of the poet's language." (Kermode had held that Vaughan "is from the beginning a poet with his roots in poetry rather than in religious experience….")

In an article published in The Review of English Studies in 1950 Mr. Frank Kermode has stated in its extreme form a belief that has been held by an increasing number of scholars in the last few years and has argued that Henry Vaughan "is in no sense at all a mystic; he makes a poet's use of the mystic's language":

Vaughan is from the beginning a poet with his roots in poetry rather than in religious experience, his interest in theological...