Varying Arrangements: Observations on Some Copies of Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans (1655)

Abstract

It has generally not been recognized that the extant copies of Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans (1655) are bound in different orders and that some copies lack the interpolated later version of one of Vaughan's earlier sacred poems, "Isaacs Marriage." The existence of these variant copies calls into question the widespread belief that Vaughan willfully suppressed the emblematic introduction to the first edition of Silex Scintillans.