Whatever is known of his life in the period between his leaving Oxford and his death, which occurred on 23rd April 1695, has to be inferred from his own poems. The inscription on his tomb, doubtless prepared by himself, is full of meaning and character : Henricus Vaughan, M.D. Siluris, Servus inutilis, Peccator maximus, Hic jaceo. Gloria! Miserere. From Vaughan's works much may be confidently divined as to the influences which determined the course of his genius. There is, however, a superficial difficulty in following this method of interpretation, owing to the order in which his poems were published. In 1646 appeared a small volume containing a few original poems and a translation of the tenth Satire of Juvenal. There is no trace in this of the serious and religious vein of thought in which Vaughan's most striking poems are conceived. He celebrates, in the semi-pagan amorous style, characteristic of the disciples of Ben Jonson, the charms of his mistress, and indulges in a "Rhapsody" on the pleasures of the Globe Tavern. Silex Scintillans, which includes all his best poems, appeared in 1650; but this was followed, in 1651, by Olor Iscanus, in which the subject of the opening poem-the praises of the Uskas well as the style in which the subject is treated, are as different as possible from the deeply religious matter and manner of Silex Scintillans. There are references in the book to London usurers, and frequent addresses to the friends of his youth, which, far from breathing a devotional spirit, point clearly to tastes of recklessness and dissipation in the past. The letter "To his Retired Friend, an invitation to Brecknock," calls on some old companion to come and visit him, that they may mock at the troubles of the age : Come, then and while the slow icicle hangs Benumb the year, blithe—as of old—let us An age that thus hath fooled itself, and will— Spite of thy teeth and mine—persist so still. That he should have published a poem containing such sentiments in 1651 is the more remarkable, because in the previous year he says (in the preface to Silex Scintillans), after attacking the love poetry of the day, and with a plain reference to his own volume of 1646: And here because I would prevent a just censure by my free confession, I must remember that I myself have, for many years together, languished of this very sickness; and it is no long time since I have recovered. But-blessed be God for it-I have by His saving assistance suppressed my greatest follies, and those which escaped from me are-I think-as innoxious as most of that vein use to be; besides they are interlined with many virtuous and some pious mixtures. To account for the comparatively worldly tone running through Olor Iscanus, it is perhaps reasonable to suppose that the various poems in this volume had been written and prepared for publication before the great inward change in their author spoken of in the above passage, and that the poet thought he might give them to the world as a reflection of his past life, for which in the address" Ad Posteros" at the close of the volume, he seems to offer a kind of Apologia. From the many autobiographical allusions in the book, it is permissible plausibly to conjecture that, after leaving Oxford, he spent some time in London, mixing with the jovial society that carried on the tradition of Ben Jonson. On the outbreak of the Civil War he would appear to have taken some part in it-of course on the side of the King for in one of his poems he says, on returning to a friend a cloak which he had borrowed from him : O that thou hadst it when this juggling fate Of soldiery first seized me. It contains an Epistle Dedicatory to the Lord Kildare Digby, dated 17th December 1647. The publisher in 1651 says the volume is issued without the author's "approbation." But neither these lines, nor those inviting his friend to Brecknock, argue any enthusiasm for a cause; and in his address "Ad Posteros" he claims credit for having abstained from shedding innocent blood in those troublous times.1 In 1646 we know that he was residing near Brecknock, in which town his earliest poems were printed, and here he no doubt began to practise medicine. Between this date and 1650 he experienced those spiritual influences which changed his whole view of life, but probably his conversion was gradual. It is not unlikely that a more serious temper may at first have been produced in him by his practice as a physician, causing him to reflect on the vanity of the world. Certain it is that a poem called "The Charnel House "-in Olor Iscanus-is far removed from the spiritual mode of conception which characterises Silex Scintillans, for it concludes in the spirit of pagan philosophy : Henceforth with thought of thee I'll season all succeeding jollity, Yet damn not mirth, nor think too much is fit; But should wild blood swell to a lawless strain, He was led to a more spiritual way of thought by reading The Temple of George Herbert, whom (though he never have seen him) he addresses in one of his poems-"The Match "- -as can Dear friend, whose holy ever-living lines Have done much good To many, and have checked my blood, My fierce wild blood that still heaves and inclines, But is still tamed By those bright fires which thee inflamed; and he so far departed from his early direct classical style as to copy, almost with servility, the external form and structure of his master's verse. In the following lines he not only avows his adherence to Herbert's method 1 Duret ut integritas tamen et pia gloria, partem of interpreting Nature, but he does so in precisely the same kind of quaint rhythm and abrupt syntax as Herbert uses in The Temple : Search well another world; who studies this But though Vaughan was thus taught by Herbert to "search another world," the wings on which he learned to mount thither were furnished by a different kind of genius. With less power of metaphysical thought, and Ness variety of scholastic reading, he had a finer sense of natural beauty, which he was by no means content to confine within church walls. The thoughts that were stimulated in Herbert by the font, the altar, the light that streamed through the coloured glass of the windows, and the consecrated bread and wine, were aroused in Vaughan by the contemplation of rocks, woods, rivers, and solitudes. Absorbed by the spirit of natural piety, Vaughan reads spiritual lessons in the various objects around him. Sometimes, wandering by his native Usk,2 he meditates near the deep pool of a waterfall, and finds in the stream, as it seems to linger beneath the banks. and then to shoot onward in swifter course, an image of life beyond the tomb. Sometimes, looking on a rainbow, 1 The Search. 2 Dear stream! dear bank! where often I The Waterfall. he reflects on its first appearance in the world, in lines which recall Keats' image of Ruth listening to the song of the nightingale amid "the alien corn": How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye For thy new light, and trembled at each shower! 1 Gazing out upon the night, he thinks of Nicodemus :- Through that pure virgin shrine, That sacred veil, drawn o'er thy glorious noon, That men might look and live as glowworms shine, Wise Nicodemus saw such light As made him know his God by night Dear Night! this world's defeat, The stop to busy fools; Care's check and curb; Christ's progress, and his prayer-time; The hours to which high heaven doth chime; God's silent searching flight; When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all His knocking-time; the soul's dumb watch, In his religious contemplation of Nature, Vaughan, who was by his own confession the poetical. descendant of George Herbert, is seen to be also the lineal progenitor of Wordsworth; and it is often possible to trace the progress of a thought through the three imaginations, and to mark its metamorphosis by the changes of time and genius. Thus George Herbert, in a poem on Decay, starts a sentiment of regret at the disappearance of visible angels from the world: 1 The Rainbow. 2 The Night. |