Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695) was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author, translator and physician, writing in English. He is chiefly known for religious poetry published in "Silex Scintillans" in 1650, with a second part in 1655. In 1646 his poems, with the "Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished", were published, followed by a second volume in 1647. Meanwhile, he had been persuaded by reading the religious poet George Herbert to give up "idle verse". The prose "Mount of Olives" or "Solitary Devotions" (1652) shows the depth of his religious convictions and authenticity of his genius. Two more volumes of secular verse followed, ostensibly without his sanction, but it is his religious verse that has been acclaimed. He also translated short moral and religious works and two medical works in prose. In the 1650s he began a lifelong practice of medicine.
Early life.
Henry Vaughan was born at Newton by Usk in the parish of Llansantffraed (St. Bridget's), Brecknockshire, the eldest known child of Thomas Vaughan (c. 1586–1658) of Tretower, and Denise Jenkin (born c. 1593) only daughter and heir of David and Gwenllian Morgan of Llansantffraed. Vaughan had a twin brother called Thomas Vaughan, who became a philosopher and alchemist.
Vaughan could claim kinship with two powerful Welsh families, one Catholic and one Protestant. His paternal grandfather, William, owned Tretower Court. His paternal grandmother, Frances, was the natural daughter of Thomas Somerset, who spent some 24 years in the Tower of London for his adherence to Catholicism. As she survived into Vaughan's boyhood, there may have been some direct Catholic influence upon his early nurturing. Vaughan shared ancestry with the Herbert family through the daughter of the famous warrior of Agincourt, Dafydd ap Llywelyn, the "Davy Gam, esquire" of Shakespeare's "Henry V". He is not known to have claimed kinship with George Herbert, but may have been aware of the connection.
Education.
Thomas Vaughan later remarked that "English is a Language the Author was not born to." Both boys were sent to school under Matthew Herbert, Rector of Llangattock, to whom both wrote tributes. Matthew Herbert may have reinforced a devotion to church and monarchy that the boys would have learned at home. Like several others among Vaughan's clerical acquaintances, he later proved uncompromising during the interregnum. He was imprisoned, his property was seized, and he narrowly avoided banishment.
The buttery books of Jesus College, Oxford show Thomas Vaughan being admitted in May 1638, and it has long been assumed that Henry went up at the same time, although Anthony Wood states, "He made his first entry into Jesus College in Michaelmas term 1638, aged 17 years. There is no clear record to establish Henry's residence or matriculation, but the assumption of his association with Oxford, supported by his inclusion in "Athenae Oxoniensis", is reasonable enough." Recent research in the Jesus College archives, however, suggests that Henry did not enter Jesus College before 1641, unless he did so in 1639 without matriculating or paying an admission fee, and left before the record in the surviving buttery books resumes in December of that year. It has been suggested that Henry went to Oxford later, after Thomas, on the basis of a comparison of the poems each wrote for the 1651 edition of the "Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with Other Poems" of William Cartwright, who had died in 1643. Thomas had clearly attended Cartwright's lectures, which were a great draw at the time: "When He did read, how did we flock to hear!" Henry, however, apparently had not, since he begins his poem "Upon the poems and plays of the ever-memorable Mr William Cartwright" with the words, "I did but see thee." This and the 1647 poem "Upon Mr Fletcher's plays" are both celebrations of Royalist volumes that implied "a reaffirmation of Cavalier ideals and a gesture of defiance against the society which had repudiated them."
As the Civil War developed, he was recalled home from London, initially to serve as a secretary to Sir Marmaduke Lloyd, a chief justice on the Brecknockshire circuit and staunch royalist. Vaughan is thought to have served briefly in the Royalist army and, upon his return, began to practise medicine.
By 1646, he had married Catherine Wise, with whom he reared a son, Thomas, and three daughters, Lucy, Frances, and Catherine. His courtship with his first wife is reflected in "Upon the Priory Grove", in his first volume of poetry, "Poems with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished" (1646). After his first wife's death, he married her sister, Elizabeth, probably in 1655.
Secular works.
Vaughan took his literary inspiration from his native environment and chose the descriptive name "Silurist", derived from his homage to the Silures, a Celtic tribe of pre-Roman south Wales that strongly resisted the Romans. The name reflects the love Vaughan felt for the Welsh mountains of his home in what is now part of the Brecon Beacons National Park and the River Usk valley, where he spent most of his early and professional life.
By 1647 Henry Vaughan, with his wife and children, had chosen life in the country. This was the setting in which Vaughan wrote "Olor Iscanus" (The Swan of Usk). However, it was not published until 1651, over three years after it was written, which presumably reflects some crisis in Vaughan's life. During those years, his grandfather William Vaughan died and he was evicted from his living in Llansantffraed. Vaughan later decried the publication, having "long ago condemned these poems to obscurity."
"Olor Iscanus" is filled with odd words and similes that beg attention, despite its dark and morbid cognitive appeal. It is founded on crises felt in Vaughan's homeland, Brecknockshire. During the Civil War there was never a major battle fought there, but the effects of the war were deeply felt by Vaughan and his community. The Puritan Parliament visited misfortune, ejecting Anglicans and Royalists. Vaughan also lost his home at that time.
There is a marked difference in the atmosphere Vaughan attempts to convey in this work and in his most famous work, "Silex Scintillans". "Olor Iscanus" directly represents a specific period in Vaughan's life, which emphasises other secular writers and provides allusions to debt and happy living. A fervent topic of Vaughan throughout the poems is the Civil War, and it reveals Vaughan's somewhat paradoxical thinking, which ultimately fails to indicate whether he participated or not. Vaughan states his complete satisfaction at being clean of "innocent blood", but also provides seemingly eyewitness accounts of battles and his own "soldiery". Although Vaughan is thought to have been a royalist, these poems express contempt for all current authority and lack of zeal for the royalist cause. His poems generally reflect a sense of severe decline, which may mean he lamented the effects of the war on the monarchy and society. His short poem "The Timber", ostensibly about a dead tree, concludes: "thy strange resentment after death / Means only those who broke – in life – thy peace."
"Olor Iscanus" includes translations from the Latin of Ovid, Boethius, and the Polish poet Casimir Sarbiewski.
Conversion and sacred poetry.
It was not until the writing of "Silex Scintillans" that Vaughan received significant acclaim. The period shortly preceding the publication of the first volume of this work (1650) marked an important period of his life. Certain indications in the first volume and explicit statements in the preface to the second volume (1655) suggest that Vaughan suffered a prolonged sickness that inflicted much pain. Vaughan interprets this experience to be an encounter with death that alerted him to a "misspent youth". Vaughan believed he had been spared to make amends and start a new course not only in his life but in the literature he would produce. He described his previous work as foul and a contribution to "corrupt literature". Perhaps the most notable mark of Vaughan's conversion is how much it is credited to George Herbert. Vaughan claims he is the least of Herbert's many "pious converts". It was during this period of Vaughan's life, around 1650, that he adopted the saying "moriendo, revixi" – "by dying, I gain new life".
The first volume of "Silex Scintillans" was followed by "The Mount of Olives, or Solitary Devotions" (1652), a prose book of devotions. It provides prayers for different stages of the day, for prayer in church, and for other purposes. It is written as a "companion volume" to the Book of Common Prayer, to which it alludes frequently, though it had been outlawed under the Commonwealth. The work was also influenced by Lancelot Andrewes's "Preces Privatae" (1615) and John Cosin's "Collection of Private Devotions" (1627). "Flores Solitudinis" (1654) contains translations from the Latin of two works by the Spanish Jesuit Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, one by a 5th-century Bishop of Lyon, Eucherius, and by Paulinus of Nola, of whom Vaughan wrote a prose life.
Vaughan practised medicine, perhaps as early as the 1640s, and attached to the second volume of "Silex Scintillans" (1655) a translation of Henry Nollius's "Hermetical Physick". He went on to produce a translation of Nollius's "The Chymists Key" in 1657.
Poetic influences.
Vaughan was greatly indebted to George Herbert, who provided a model for Vaughan's newly founded spiritual life and literary career, in which he displayed "spiritual quickening and the gift of gracious feeling" derived from Herbert.
Archbishop Trench took the view, "As a divine Vaughan may be inferior [to Herbert], but as a poet he is certainly superior." Critics praise Vaughan's use of literary elements. Vaughan's use of monosyllables and long-drawn alliterations, and his ability to compel the reader place him as "more than the equal of George Herbert". Yet others say the two are not even comparable, because Herbert is in fact the Master. While these commentators admit that Henry Vaughan's use of words can be superior to Herbert's, they believe his poetry is, in fact, worse. Herbert's profundity as well as consistency are said to be the key to his superiority.
Certainly Vaughan would have never written the way he did without Herbert's posthumous direction (the latter had died in 1633). The explicit spiritual influence here is undeniable, and is all but proclaimed in the preface to "Silex Scintillans". The prose of Vaughan exemplifies this as well. For instance, "The Temple", by Herbert, is often seen as the inspiration and model on which Vaughan created his work. "Silex Scintillans" is most often classed with this collection of Herbert's. "Silex Scintillans" borrows the same themes, experience, and beliefs as "The Temple". Herbert's influence is evident both in the shape and spirituality of Vaughan's poetry. For example, the opening to Vaughan's poem 'Unprofitableness':
is reminiscent of Herbert's 'The Flower':
Another work of Vaughan's that clearly parallels George Herbert is "Mount of Olives", e. g., the passage, "Let sensual natures judge as they please, but for my part, I shall hold it no paradoxe to affirme, there are no pleasures in the world. Some coloured griefes of blushing woes there are, which look as clear as if they were true complexions; but it is very sad and tyred truth, that they are but painted." This echoes Herbert's "Rose":
Critics have complained that Vaughan is enslaved to Herbert's works, using similar "little tricks" such as abrupt introductions and whimsical titles as a framework for his work, and "failing to learn" from Herbert. Vaughan carried an inability to know his limits and focused more on the intensity of the poem, meanwhile losing the attention of his audience.
However, Alexander Grosart denies that Henry Vaughan was solely an imitator of Herbert. There are moments when the reader can identify Vaughan's true self, rather than an imitation of Herbert. In these Vaughan is seen to show naturalness, immediacy and ability to relate the concrete through poetry. In some instances, Vaughan derives observations from Herbert's language that are distinctly his own. It is as if Vaughan takes proprietorship of some of Herbert's work, yet makes it completely unique to himself. Vaughan takes another step away from Herbert in his manner of presenting his poetry. Herbert in "The Temple", which is most often the source of comparison between the two writers, lays down explicit instructions on its reading. This contrasts with the attitude of Vaughan, who saw the experience of reading as the best guide to his meanings and promoted no special reading method.
In these times he shows himself different from any other poet. Much of his distinction derives from an apparent lack of sympathy with the world around him. His aloof appeal to his surroundings detaches him and encourages his love of nature and mysticism, which in turn influenced other later poets, Wordsworth among others. Vaughan's mind thinks in terms of a physical and spiritual world and the obscure relation between the two. Vaughan's mind often moved to original, unfamiliar and remote places, and this is reflected in his poetry. He was loyal to the themes of the Anglican Church and religious festivals, but found his true voice in the more mystical themes of eternity, communion with the dead, nature, and childhood. He was a "poet of revelation" who uses the Bible, Nature and his own experience to illustrate his vision of eternity. This gives Vaughan's poetry a particularly modern sound.
Alliteration, conspicuous in Welsh poetry, is more extensively used by Vaughan than by most of his contemporaries writing English verse, noticeably in the opening to "The Water-fall".
Vaughan drew on personal loss in two well-known poems: "The World" and "They Are All Gone into the World of Light". Another poem, "The Retreat", combines the theme of loss with the corruption of childhood, which is yet another consistent theme of Vaughan's. Vaughan's new-found personal voice and persona are seen as a result of the death of a younger brother.
This is an example of an especially beautiful fragment of one of his poems entitled 'The World':
Death and legacy.
Henry Vaughan was acclaimed less in his lifetime than after his death, on 23 April 1695, aged 74. He was buried in the churchyard of St Bride's, Llansantffraed, Powys, where he had spent most of his life. The grave is visited by enthusiasts and has been the inspiration for other poets, including Siegfried Sassoon, Roland Mathias and Brian Morris.
Vaughan is recognised as an "example of a poet who can write both graceful and effective prose". He influenced the work of poets such as Wordsworth, Tennyson and Siegfried Sassoon. The American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick also named Vaughan as a key influence.
Musical settings.
Several poems by Vaughan from "Silex Scintillans" have been set to music, including: