SOURCE: "The Unity and Continuity of Silex Scintillans," in Of Paradise and Light: A Study of Vaughan's 'Silex Scintillans, ' Cambridge at the University Press, 1960, pp. 196-207.

Pettet is an English scholar who has written at length on the accomplishments of Shakespeare, Vaughan, and John Keats. In the following chapter from his study Of Paradise and Light, he compares the two editions of Silex Scintillans (which he calls Part I and Part II) to demonstrate their thematic "unity and continuity" as reflections of the poet's spiritual beliefs. Pettet concludes, "Part II is both a continuation from Part I and distinct from it, though we must not exaggerate the differences,"

Though it consists of one hundred and twenty-nine mainly short poems and is divided into two Parts that were separated by five years in publication, Silex Scintillans, like The Temple, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Fleurs du Mal (and we might add...