(ii) Prose Writers.—William Law, Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle.
V. [Devotional and Religious Mystics]
The Early English Writers: Richard Rolle and Julian; Crashawe, Herbert, and Christopher Harvey; Blake and Francis Thompson.
Mysticism in English Literature
Chapter I
Introduction
Mysticism is a term so irresponsibly applied in English that it has become the first duty of those who use it to explain what they mean by it. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911), after defining a mystic as "one who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the understanding," adds, "whence mysticism (n.) (often contempt)." Whatever may be the precise force of the remark in brackets, it is unquestionably true that mysticism is often used in a semi-contemptuous way to denote vaguely any kind of occultism or spiritualism, or any specially curious or fantastic views about God and the universe.
The word itself was originally taken over by the Neo-platonists from the Greek mysteries, where the name of μύστης given to the initiate, probably arose from the fact that he was one who was gaining a knowledge of divine things about which he must keep his mouth shut (μύω = close lips or eyes). Hence the association of secrecy or "mystery" which still clings round the word.