THE name of Henry Vaughan, of Scethrog, is by this time tolerably familiar to all Welshmen who care in any way for the memory of the Cymric dead. But to a great many even of those who desire to learn and to know, he still remains not much more than a name. His works, in a complete form, are virtually inaccessible, except to the curious who will go to the trouble of hunting them up in the British Museum or the Bodleian or some such well-stocked depository. Even professed students of English literature are not well acquainted with what Vaughan wrote, beyond the collection of religious. poems of which we have an Aldine edition by Lyte. The original editions of Vaughan's poems are exceedingly scarce, and the only complete modern edition is an expensive one in four volumes, privately printed for subscribers by Dr. A. B. Grosart. The only collection of his secular poems which, after much diligent search in book-stalls, I myself have been able to secure is a small selection published early last year in a limited edition of 500 copies, by Mr. J. R. Tutin, of Hull. In this little volume a few of the poems of Thomas Vaughan, which have also been edited by Dr. Grosart, are included. It is possible that many who can claim to possess some acquaintance with Henry Vaughan, may not have even as much as heard of Thomas. Students of mystical literature probably know him well, but it may be safely presumed that but very few readers of English poetry know him at all. Thomas Vaughan-"Eugenius Philalethes," as he calls himself in most of his prose works in both Latin and English,was a twin-brother of Henry Vaughan, after the flesh; and a comparison of their poems will show that, after the spirit also, they were indeed twin sons of Arcady, Et cantare pares, et respondere parati. Thomas did not write anything like the same amount of poetry as his brother, but in what he did write we detect the same note and the same inspiration. Had he persevered in his devotion to the Muses, he might have added another to the illustri ous trio of names-John Donne, George Herbert, and Henry Vaughan-which give Wales a place of honour in the English literature of the seventeenth century. The biographical details which we possess about Vaughan and his brother are very probably in 1621, at Newton, in the parish scanty and uncertain. They were born of Llansantffraid, in Brecknockshire. Scethrog was the name of the family seat of the Vaughans, but the grandfather of the two poets appears to have taken up five miles distant from Scethrog, which is his residence at Newton, a mansion about now a farm-house on the road between Crickhowel and Brecon. The river Usk flows close by. All poets, in whom the love of Nature has been strong, have had their favourite streams to sing of, and most of the picturesque rivers of this country have thus had their names "shrined in the amber of immortal verse." The Thames, the Severn, the Wye, the Yarrow, the Duddon-to mention only a few that at once occur to the mind-have had their praises sung in lines that will live as long as the English language. The verses which the two Vaughans have addressed to the Usk are not unworthy of a place side by side with the praises of mightier and more famous streams. Let us first of all hear the tribute of Henry. "Mosella boasts Ausonius, and the Thames Doth murmur Sidney's Stella to her streams; While Severn, swollen with joy and sorrow, wears Castara's smiles mixed with fair Sabrin's tears. Thus poets-like the nymphs, their pleasing themes Haunted the bubbling springs and gliding streams, And happy banks! whence such fair flowers have sprung, But happier those where they have sate and sung! But, Isca, whensoe'er those shades I see, Like Shakespeare in his Sonnets, and like most great poets, Henry Vaughan is confident of the immortality of his verse; and the verdict of the best modern critics is that this confidence was not ill-placed, for the more his poetry is studied the more will its great merits, in spite of obvious. defects, be appreciated. Having thus vaunted that the Usk, like Shakespeare's “Love,” “shall ever in his verse live young," Vaughan breathes out a fervent prayer for blessings upon its streams. "No sullen heats, nor flames that are Shine on thy sands, nor pry to see But noons as mild as Hesper's rays, Thomas Vaughan writes of the river in a more reflective strain, and moralises his song in a way that recalls Denham's famous apostrophe to the Thames in his poem "Cooper's Hill.” "Shall I seek thy forgotten birth, and see Henry and Thomas received their early education under the Rev. Matthew Herbert, one of the Herberts of the Pembroke family, and a relation of George Herbert, the poet. In 1638 they both entered Jesus College, Oxford. During his residence at Oxford, Henry Vaughan seems to have found opportunities of paying occasional visits to London, where he soon managed to join the company of wits and poets who met at the Globe Tavern. Although he praises him in his verse, he cannot have met Ben Jonson, for the "great Ben" died in 1637. But Fletcher he seems to have known intimately, and an edition of the dramatist's plays was published in 1647 with some commendatory verses by Henry Vaughan, in which he speaks of Fletcher as second to Jonson alone. "This or that age may write, but never see A wit that dares run parallel with thee, True, BEN must live! but bate him, and thou hast Undone all future wits, and matched the past." Soon after the close of his university career, Henry Vaughan took the degree of Doctor of Medicine, but where he took it, it is impossible to ascertain. He practised first at Brecon, and then in his native village Scethrog, where he died in 1695. He lies buried in Llansantffraid Churchyard, his epitaph, in which he describes himself as "servus inutilis, peccator maximus," being well known. Thomas Vaughan had a more chequered career. He took orders in the church and got himself presented, soon after leaving Oxford, to the living at Llansantffraid. Like his brother he was a sturdy Royalist, and, at the close of the Civil Wars, was expelled from his living on a number of stock charges, of which, perhaps, that of "having borne arms for the king" had alone any foundation in fact. He then retired to Oxford, and devoted himself to the study of chemistry, and to the pursuit of various occult sciences. The results of his speculations appeared in the form of works in both English and Latin prose written under the name of Eugenius Philalethes. The nature of some of these works may best be gauged from their titles. One reads,"Magia Adamica, or the Antiquity of Magic, and the descent thereof from Adam and full discovery of the true Coelum downward, proved; together with a perfect terrae, or the Magician's Heavenly Chaos, extraordinary title runs, "Euphrates or and first matter of all things." Another the Waters of the East; being a short discourse of that secret fountain, whose water flows from fire, and carries in it the beams of the sun and the moon." He died at Albury, near Oxford, on February 27th, 1665. Thomas Vaughan's poetry, or at least as much of it as has come down to us, is but slight in quantity, and in quality is distinctly unequal. He does not appear to have courted the Muses very seriously, and his work is of greater interest as show ing what he might have done, than as indicating any very brilliant actual achievement. No one but a man gifted with the true poetic faculty could, for instance, have written such lines as these on "The Dawn," "Now had the night spent her black stage, and all Her beauteous twinkling flames grew sick and pale. Her scenes of shades and silence fled; and Day It would be difficult to find in the whole range of English poetry a passage, dealing with the same subject, to beat those last four lines. Almost perfect of their kind, also, are some lines in which he envies the flowers among which his mistress lay, "They found their heaven at hand, and in her eyes Enjoyed a copy of their absent skies. Their weaker paint did with true glories trade, And, mingled with her cheeks, one posy made. And did not her soft skin confine their pride, And with a screen of silk both flowers divide, They had sucked life from thence, and from her heat Borrowed a soul to make themselves complete." I will give one more quotation—a little poem of three verses in a style of which George Herbert, and Henry Vaughan, and Herrick in his pious fits, were masters. It is entitled "A Stone, and the Stony Heart." 'Lord God! This was a stone As hard as any one Thy laws in Nature framed: 'Tis now a springing well, And many drops can tell Since it by art was tamed. My God! my heart is so, Extract of tears will yield: And grow up in my field. Bare tears I'll not entreat, Upon those waters be; Even these short extracts should suffice to make us lament that Thomas Vaughan did not devote to poetry the time he spent in exploring the Magician's Heavenly Chaos, or in describing the fountain whose water carried in it the beams of the sun and the moon. Henry Vaughan's fame has travelled far beyond that of his brother-he has, through his poetry, left behind him that "large, kind light" which he predicted in his address to the Usk. Just now his star is very much in the ascendant, and is likely to remain so with all discerning readers of poetry. Some modern critics,-Mr. Saintsbury, for example, a writer who careers through the field of Elizabethan literature, with a boisterous confidence which consorts ill with the critical temper -are, indeed, apt to depreciate him. The Silurist is not a poet either for the finical or for the feverish. Those who delight in the simpering refinements of the so-called æsthetic poetry of these latter days, or in the wild vagaries of what has been well styled "the Fleshly School" of poetry, will not find much to their taste in Henry Vaughan. He appeals in the main to the constituency of readers among whom Wordsworth finds his greatest admirers. His poems possess, indeed, qualities which should and do recommend him to readers who are inclined to be impatient with altogether without that grace, and that the moralising of Wordsworth. He is not airy play of fancy which the earlier seventeenth century poets, in spite of their fondness for far-fetched conceits and "metaphysical" absurdities, share with the Elizabethans. But what is really great and distinctive in his poetry, is rather an anticipation of the poetry which came in with Cowper and Wordsworth, than an echo of that which died away with Carew and Herrick. Professor Palgrave, of all modern critics, has done most justice to Vaughan, and his article upon the poet in Y Cymmrodor, for 1890-1, should not be neglected by any student of the Silurist. His estimate of Vaughan as a poet of Nature is very high-but that it is not too high will, I think, be borne out by every one whose avocation or inclination has led him to make a critical study of English poetry. "It is indeed, safe to affirm," writes Mr. Palgrave, "that of all our poets until we reach Wordsworth, including here Chaucer, Spenser and Milton, Vaughan affords decidedly the most varied and the most delicate pictures from Nature; that he looked upon the landscape, both in its fine details and in its larger, and, as they might be called, its cosmic aspects, with an insight, an imaginative penetration, not rivalled till we reach our own century .. Depth and delicacy of feeling, the heart speaking and spoken to more than the head, intimate insight into Nature, felicitous touches of description, the eye always upon the object-these are the leading notes. And with these Vaughan has 'the defects of his qualities;' obscurity and abruptness of phrase, though often too concentrated for clearness and melody in words; some defect in form and unity of design-much in short which, in its own way, we must confess to be true of our lately-lost Robert Browning-both requiring close sympathetic attention from their readers, and both rewarding it." In many points Vaughan shows his kinship with the school of poets whom Dr. Johnson labelled "metaphysical." He has their straining after fantastic conceit and remote analogy, but he has a depth of sentiment, and a subtle sympathy with the moods and changes of Nature, which we look for in vain in such poets as Cowley or Crashaw. Nor is it quite correct to classify Vaughan with Herbert, as is generally done. He was not so skilled a metrist as George Herbert, nor do his verses preserve so uniform a level of excellence. But he had far more of the higher poetical qualities, more of "the vision and the faculty divine." It is impossible for me, within the scope of such an article as this, to quote many passages from Vaughan's poems which give evidence of these qualities. An admirable selection from his religious poems is given in Mr. Palgrave's Treasury of Sacred Song, among them being the three or four of Vaughan's poems which various anthologies have made famous. Such are, the poem called "The Retreat," which is popularly supposed to have suggested to Wordsworth portions of his great "Ode on Intimations of Immortality," and the poem on "The World," with its striking opening, "I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, These religious poems contain many a notable image and inspiring thought. Here are one or two, culled at random. "Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest And passage through these looms “Walk with thy fellow-creatures: note the hush In In these sacred poems also, quite as much as in the secular, we find Vaughan's "deep insight into Nature, the heart speaking and spoken to more than the head." particular, I might mention a short poem called "The Timber," and another beginning "I walked the other day, (to spend my hour), Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield as striking examples of this insight and sympathy. But of all the poems in which he treats of natural objects, that which exhibits at once the most daring flights of imagination and the most varied play of fancy, is one addressed to "The Eagle. The poem is worth quoting in full, but I must content myself with giving what is, perhaps, the most remarkable passage in it, "Resolved he is a nobler course to try, And measures out his voyage with his eye: trade With spots, and deals most in the dark and shade: Here doth he plume and dress himself, the beams Rushing upon him, like so many streams; And thus from star to star he doth repair I have alluded to the fact that Vaughan is not without the lighter lyrical gift which gives to the songs of the Elizabethan age such indefinable charm and grace; and I conclude with a quotation from a description of "Fida, a Country Beauty," which will rank with the best of the lovepoetry of that prolific era. "Her hair laid out in curious sets Beneath these rays of her bright eyes Like swift salutes-which dull paint scorn'Twixt a white noon and crimson morn." W. LEWIS JONES. University College, Bangor. |