Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/173

 Tyrius, and Guevara—was probably ready for the press in December 1647, the dedication to Lord Digby bearing that date. It did not appear, however, until 1651 (London, 8vo; reissued 1679), when it was published by Thomas Vaughan, with an address to the reader hinting that it would, but for his intervention, have been destroyed by the author. There is nothing objectionable in the book, and it can only be concluded that a revolution had in the meantime occurred in the poet's mind, which had rendered his secular poetry distasteful to him. The nature of this revolution may be deduced from the book he had published in the meantime, ‘Silex Scintillans: or Sacred Poems and private Ejaculations, by Henry Vaughan, Silurist’ (London, 1650, 8vo), which evinces deep traces of the influence of George Herbert, the effect rather than the cause of the spiritual visitation which he had clearly been experiencing. Some allusions in the poems seem to connect this with the death of a brother, which, being also alluded to in the preface to Thomas Vaughan's ‘Anthroposophia Theomagica’ (1650) as having occurred during the composition of that book, must have taken place between 1647 (when Thomas, deprived of his living, removed to Oxford) and 1650. The composition of the whole of the first part of ‘Silex Scintillans’ may thus be fairly placed between 1647 and 1650, and the number, no less than the merit of the poems, indicates the strength of the spiritual influence which had overpowered Vaughan and raised him to a far greater height as a poet than was promised by his early compositions. The impulse continued some time, for in 1655 a second part of ‘Silex Scintillans’ appeared, appended to what professed to be a reprint of the first, but was in fact only a reissue. This second part, though in general scarcely equal to the first, contains the crown of all Vaughan's poetry—‘They are all gone into the world of light.’ Vaughan had published, February 1652, a small volume of devotion, entitled ‘The Mount of Olives … with an excellent discourse of the blessed state of Man in Glory, written by Father Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, and now done into English,’ and in 1654 ‘Flores Solitudinis,’ three religious tracts—two translated from the Jesuit Nierembergius, and another from St. Eucherius, with a life of St. Paulinus of Nola compiled by himself. The title-page speaks of a period of sickness, which seems to have been about 1652. In 1655 Vaughan published ‘Hermetical Physick’ (London, 12mo), a collection of extracts translated from the ‘Naturæ Sanctuarium’ of Henricus Nollius (Frankfort, 1619).

Nothing more is heard of Henry Vaughan until 1678, when ‘J. W.,’ an Oxford M.A. who has not been identified, printed ‘Thalia Rediviva: the pass-times and diversions of a Countrey Muse;’ here, along with poems by the ‘Silurist,’ are pieces by Vaughan's brother Thomas, who had died thirteen years previously. Some of Henry Vaughan's are apparently juvenile compositions; but others, by their subjects and the greater regularity of the versification, seem to be later than ‘Silex Scintillans.’ The friend ‘C. W.’ who is celebrated in a fine poem in ‘Thalia’ was Vaughan's cousin and neighbour, Charles Walbeoffe of Llanhamlach. The existence of three known copies (in the Brit. Mus., in Rowfant Library, and a private library at Brecon) has led to the conjecture that the publication was unauthorised, and that Vaughan suppressed it; but copies of the ‘Mount of Olives’ and ‘Hermeticall Physick’ are hardly less rare than ‘Thalia Rediviva.’ In truth, Vaughan's writings could afford little but waste paper for his own generation. He was a man of the past, as misplaced in the Restoration era as formerly among the puritans. He died, aged 73, according to his epitaph, on 23 April 1695, and was interred in Llansaintffraed churchyard. His neglected gravestone has been recently restored (January 1896).

Vaughan was twice married. His first wife was Catherine, daughter of Charles Wise, by whom he had three daughters—Lucy, Catherine, and Frances—and one son, Thomas. He married, secondly, his first wife's sister Elizabeth, who survived him and administered his estate. By her he had three daughters—Grizel, Lucy, and Rachael—and one son, Henry, rector of Penderyn (Vaughan of Newton pedigree in Harl. MS. 2289). Having died intestate, administration was granted on 29 May 1695 to his widow, ‘Eliza’ (Genealogist, iii. 33–6).

Vaughan's position among English poets is not only high, but in some respects unique. The pervading atmosphere of mystic rapture, rather than isolated fine things, constitutes the main charm of his poems; yet two, ‘The Retreat’ and ‘They are all gone into the world of light,’ rank among the finest in the language, and, except the poems on scripture history and church festivals, there is scarcely one without some memorable thought or expression, though frequently kindling, to use his own simile, like ‘unanticipated sparks from a flinty ground.’ He not unfrequently lapses into absurdity, misled by the affectation of wit and ingenuity which beset the poetry of his time; but his taste is on the whole better than Herbert's, and much better