but having either in London or Edinburgh, or in some continental University taken his diploma of Doctor of Medicine-search and research far and wide, in which I have been generously aided, have failed to come on his name anywhere he began his "practice" in the town of Brecon.

Such is the imperfect Story of the outer Life of Henry Vaughan. None can mourn our scanty materials more than ourselves, fuller though they be relatively to our precursor's. Yet we have done our fruitless best to get more.-GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1871, ed., Works in Verse and Prose Complete of Henry Vaughan, Silurist; Memorial Introduction, vol. I, pp. xxxiv, xxxv, xxxix, xlvi.

Constrained by promptings of thy ancient race, Thy gown and books thou flungst away, To meet the sturdy Roundhead face to face On many a hard-fought day,

Till thy soft soul grew sick, and thou didst turn

To our old hills; and there, ere long, Love for thy Amoret, at times, would burn In some too fervid song.

But soon thy wilder pulses stayed, and, life
Grown equable, thy sweet muse mild,
Sobered by tranquil love of child and wife,
Flowed pure and undefiled.

A humble healer thro' a life obscure,
Thou didst expend thy homely days;
Sweet Swan of Usk! few know how clear

and pure

Are thy unheeded lays.

One poet shall become a household name
Into the nation's heart ingrown;

One more than equal miss the meed of fame,
And live and die unknown.
-MORRIS, SIR LEWIS, 1874, To An Un-
known Poet, Songs of Two Worlds, Second
Series, p. 72.

He was an affectionate husband and father, by all inference and indication. He was twice married, but we only know that there were two sons and three daughters by the first marriage, and one daughter by the second. No names are left; but the youngest daughter married John Turberville, and "her grand-daughter died single in 1780, aged ninety-two." Otherwise the family of Henry Vaughan has been as modest and retiring as himself. . . . On his tomb, as though he were indeed the pioneer of other poets, journeying palmerwise, humbly and prayerfully to lead them and their singing upward through night to light, was cut this motto:

SERVUS INUTILIS, PECCATOR MAXIMUS,

HIC JACEO.

Gloria! Miserere!

It might have been set over the bosom of some patient knight, who had fought his last fight with his face toward Jerusalem, and whose gloria and miserere were the chariot of fire, and the dropping mantle, of a prophetic rapture. He rests sweetly in that land of his own vision

"Where growes the flower of peace, The rose that cannot wither," and where he now is

"More and more in love with day." -DUFFIELD, SAMUEL W., 1880, Henry Vaughan, the Poet of Light; Presbyterian Review, vol. 1, pp. 302, 303.

In his own person, Henry Vaughan left no trace in society. His life seemed to slip by like the running water on which he was forever gazing and moralizing, and his memory met early with the fate which he hardly foresaw. Descended from the royal chiefs of southern Wales whom Tacitus mentions, and whose abode, in the day of Roman domination, was in the district called Siluria, he called himself the Silurist upon his title-pages; and he keeps the distinctive name in the humblest of epitaphs, close by his home in the glorious valley of the Usk and the little Honddu, under the shadow of Tretower, the ruined castle of his race, and of Peny-Fan and his kindred peaks.—GUINEY, LOUISE IMOGEN, 1894, A Little English Gallery, p. 55.

GENERAL

Silex Scintillans: | or | Sacred Poems | and Private Eiaculations by Henry Vaughan Silurist. London: Printed by T. W. for H. Blunden at y Castle in Cornehill, 1650.-TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1650.

"The God of the spirits of all flesh" hath granted me a further use of mine than I did look for in the body; and when I expected, and had by His assistance prepared for a "message of death," then did he answer me with life; I hope to His glory and my great advantage, that I may flourish not with leaf only, but with some fruit also; which hope and earnest desire of His poor creature, I humbly beseech Him to perfect and fulfil for His dear Son's sake, unto Whom, with Him and the

This little volume has long lain hid in undeserved oblivion. Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, as he loved to be called, appears to have been a very accomplished individual, though given, as we learn from Anthony Wood, to be "singular and humoursome. He has not, indeed, scaled the highest heaven of invention, nor even succeeded in bestowing fame and celebrity on his favourite river of Isca;

but if a considerable command of forcible language, and an occasional richness of imagery, be sufficient to arrest a poet fast falling into total oblivion, we think we shall be justified in selecting the "Olor Iscanus" as the subject of an article. This little production is moreover peculiarly adapted to our purposes. We could not recommend a reprint of the whole, though the poetry only runs to sixty-four small octavo pages, for there are many parts in which the author falls into dulness or obscurity, or where, following the cold and vapid taste of the times, he spends his strength on frigid and bombastic conceits; but, at the same time, Vaughan possessed both feeling and imagination, flowers which not unfrequently shew themselves above the weeds which the warped judgment of the age encouraged to grow up in too great luxuriance. Added to this, he is a translator of no little skill; and has succeeded in turning many of the metrical pieces of Boëtius, and some of the odes of Casimir, into free and forcible English. It is very much to be lamented, that he did not give more of his attention to this good service. -SOTHERN, H., 1821, Vaughan's Olor Iscanus, Retrospective Review, vol. 3, p. 336.

His poems display much originality of thought, and frequently likewise much felicity of expression. The former is,

indeed, at times condensed into obscurity, and the latter defaced with quaintness. But Vaughan never degenerates into a smooth versifier of commonplaces. One, indeed, of his great faults as a poet, is the attempt to crowd too much of matter into his sentences, so that they read roughly and inharmoniously, the words. almost elbowing each other out of the lines. His rhymes, too, are frequently defective; and he delights in making the sense of one line run over into the line following. . . . His faults are in a great measure those of the age he lived in, and the matter he imitated, while his beauties are all his own. . . Among those who can prize poetic thought, even when clad. in a dress somewhat quaint and antiquated, who love to commune with a heart over

flowing with religious ardour, and who do

not value this the less because it has been

lighted at the earlier and purer fires of Christianity, and has caught a portion of their youthful glow, poems like those of Henry Vaughan's will not want their readers, nor will such readers be unthankful to have our author and his works introduced to their acquaintance.-LYTE, H. F., 1847, ed., Poetical Works of Henry Vaughan, Biographical Sketch.

He is very often dull and obscure, and spends his strength on frigid and bombastic conceits; but occasionally, and especially in his sacred poems, he exhibits considerable originality and picturesque grace, and breathes forth a high strain of morality and piety.-CLEVELAND, CHARLES D., 1848, A Compendium of English Literature, p. 339.

We have said little about the deep godliness, the spiritual Christianity, with which every poem is penetrated and quickened. Those who can detect and relish this best, will not be the worst pleased at our saying little about it. Vaughan's religion is deep, lively, personal, tender, kindly, impassioned, temperate; "it sits i' the centre." His religion grows up, effloresces into the ideas and forms of poetry as naturally, as noiselessly, as beautifully as the life of the unseen seed finds its way up into the "bright consummate flower." BROWN, JOHN, 1849, Vaughan's Poems, North British Review, vol. 11, p. 59.

Let every one who is well-acquainted with Wordsworth's grand ode that on

the Intimations of Immortality-turn his mind to a comparison between that and this: he will find the resemblance remarkable. Whether "The Retreat" suggested the form of the "Ode" is not of much consequence, for the "Ode" is the outcome at once and essence of all Wordsworth's theories; and whatever he may have drawn from "The Retreat" is glorified in the "Ode." Vaughan's poem is the more definite of the two, and gives us in its close, poor as that is compared with the rest of it, just what we feel is wanting in Wordsworth's-the hope of return to the bliss of childhood. -MACDONALD, GEORGE, 1868, England's Antiphon.

I thought of dear Henry Vaughan.LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1869, On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners.

I have another reason for presenting "The Retreate," that will appear immediately but apart from that and inevitable memories of Wordsworth, surely we have there some very remarkable scrutiny and interrogation of subtleties of our deepest spiritual being, such as were not frequent two hundred and fifty years ago or thereby. I ask the Reader to mark the intense yearning and feeling away back to child-time in the poem: the resolute and almost awesome getting back again in maturity, thinkings and feelings and instinct-aspirations long vanished, as of a lost tune returning in a dream. I don't know that anywhere in our elder Literature (out of "Hamlet" with which comparison were simply idle) you can put your finger on finer utterance of what most Iwould have found un-utterable or utterable alone by music. -GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1871, ed., Works in Verse and Prose Complete of Henry Vaughan, Silurist; Essay, vol. II, p. lv.

He is in various respects diverse from Herbert, and in some even superior to him he has a larger range, and, in point of thought and of perception, a certain subtlety mingled with intensity which brings him into specially close relation to the modern tone in poetry. .

Of

course a volume of Humorous Poetry is not the place where the deservings of Vaughan can be shown forth in any sufficient measure.-ROSSETTI, WILLIAM MICHAEL, 1872-78, ed., Humorous Poems, p. 144.

As a sacred poet, Vaughan has an intensity of feeling only inferior to Crashaw. -CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Carruthers.

It would, indeed, be difficult to find a true and lofty singer who has been so seriously underrated as Vaughan. It is his glory as it has been his literary shamethat his entire works are purely and consistently devout. He dared, among Cavaliers and as a Cavalier, to borrow the verse of Herrick, in which to praise the God of the Commonwealth. Hence it has needed the long purgation of these centuries, to eliminate passion and prejudice from the sentence which we can now safely pronounce, upon his contemporaries and himself. Old Longinus said, that he called that alone poetry which permanently pleased and was suitable to any age. By this severest of tests Henry Vaughan is at last vindicated and held in honor. DUFFIELD, SAMUEL W., 1880, Henry Vaughan the Poet of Light, Presbyterian Review, vol. 1, p. 292.

A physician living in his native Wales and calling himself "The Silurist." He is remembered under that name yet with peculiar regard by lovers of rare old English poetry, and was esteemed "an ingenious person, but proud and humorous."MASSON, DAVID, 1880, The Life of John Milton, vol. vi, p. 312.

Vaughan only began to be a poet when Crashaw's career was over; and he did not continue to be a poet to any purpose long. Everything he wrote before or after the two parts of "Silex Scintillans" might be spared. He is a mystic, as Herbert is an ascetic and Crashaw a devotee. Herbert's temptation is the world, Vaughan's temptation is the flesh; the special service that Herbert does him is to lift his mind from profane love to sacred. He is quite pathetic in the preface to "Silex Scintillans" about his early loose love-poetry. He suppressed the worst of it, and adjures his reader to leave the sufficiently harmless collection which escaped him unread. . . . The sanctity and insight of childhood are more to him than even to Wordsworth. In his own translations Henry Vaughan uses Neoplatonists quite as familiarly as Jesuits. His prose is rich and musical; his few Latin poems mostly insignificant, more pointless than Herbert's and quite

without the airy grace of Crashaw's Bubble, of which Mr. Grosart has made a very pretty English poem. His translations from Ovid and Juvenal are rough and cumbrous; he writes decasyllabics very badly compared not only with Sandys but with Crashaw, whose description of a Religious House contains one line, "Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep,' worthy of Pope. His translations in octosyllabics from Casimir and Boethius are excellent, especially the poem on the Golden Age from Boethius.-SIMCOX, G. A., 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. II, pp. 197, 198.

Henry Vaughan's sacred verse, although, like Herbert's, disfigured with the conceits of his time, is yet eminently spiritual, and replete with rare beauty, both of thought and expression.-SAUNDERS, FREDERICK, 1885, Evenings with the Sacred Poets, p. 277.

Among the greatest of childhood's poets. ROBERTSON, ERIC S., 1886, The Children of the Poets, Introduction, p. xxxii.

Like Herbert, and in pretty obvious imitation of him, he set himself to bend the prevailing fancy for quips and quaintnesses into sacred uses, to see that the Devil should not have all the best conceits. But he is not so uniformly successful, though he has greater depth and greater originality of thought. -SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 375.

Eternity has been known to spoil a poet for time, but not in this instance. Never did religion and art interchange a more fortunate service, outside Italian studios. Once he had shaken off secular ambitions, Vaughan's voice grew at once freer and more forceful. In him a marked intellectual gain sprang from an apparently slight spiritual readjustment, even as it did, three centuries later, in one greater than he, John Henry Newman. Vaughan

has very little quaintness, as we now understand that word, and none of the cloudiness and incorrigible grotesqueness which dominated his Alexandrian day. He has great temperance; he keeps his eye upon the end, and scarcely falls at all into "the fond adulteries of art," inversions, unscholarly compound words, or hard-driven metaphors. If he be difficult to follow, it is only because he lives, as it were, in

highly oxygenated air; he is remote and peculiar, but not eccentric. - GUINEY, LOUISE IMOGEN, 1894, A Little English Gallery, pp. 59, 80.

In Vaughan we also find a sense of the lessons Nature has for man, the harmony of the visible world with the invisible,not only in its details, but in its larger, its cosmic aspects, what he styles "the great chime and symphony of Nature," -such as hardly reappear before we reach Wordsworth. Yet Vaughan, whose special aim that of rendering religious sentiment, restricted his landscape, and whose language is often obscure or fanciful, we must confess cannot compare with the largeness, the exquisite refinement, of the later poet.-PALGRAVE, FRANCIS T., 1896, Landscape in Poetry, p. 161.

And

One must not, however, exaggerate the extent of Herbert's influence. When we have allowed that Vaughan owed to him. his religious life, and so the practice of religious poetry, that he followed him in the employment of certain metres and in the treatment of certain topics, that he was content to adopt certain of his tropes and phrases, and to vie with him. in the manufacture of curious conceits, we have perhaps stated the case not unfairly. But there was a radical diversity in the nature of the two men that could not but find expression in their poetry. As Mr. Simcox justly phrases it, Herbert was an ascetic, Vaughan a mystic. it is undoubtedly the mystical element in Vaughan's writing by which he takes rank as a poet. He may occasionally outHerbert Herbert in metaphors and emblems, but in spite of them, and even through them, it is easy to see that he has a passion for Nature for her own sake; that he has observed her moods; that indeed the world is to him no less than a veil of the Eternal Spirit, whose presence may be felt in any, even the smallest, part. Such Such a temper, notwithstanding occasional aberration, is poles apart from one which merely ransacks phenomena for quaint similitudes. Indeed, if truth must be told, Vaughan is very much the poet of fine lines and stanzas, of imaginative intervals. If still more truth must be told (pace Dr. Grosart), it must be allowed that there are far too large a number of the religious poems entirely unrelieved by any spark; and

.