Time has dealt less harshly with his rhymes than with those of more gifted bards. His poems have been twice reprinted within a few years; by Chalmers, in the British Poets, and separately, by C. A. Elton, at Bristol. His own opinion of their merits was very humble. They were at first privately circulated among his friends, and the press afterwards bound "together what fancy had scattered into many loose papers." "Had I slept," he says, "in the silence of my acquaintance, and affected no study beyond what the chase or field allows, poetry had then been no scandal upon me, and the love of learning no suspicion of ill husbandry. If these lines want that courtship which insinuates itself into the favour of great men, best, they partake of my modesty; if satire, to win applause with the envious multitude, they express my content, which maliceth none the fruition of that they esteem happy. The great charm of his writings is their purity and domestic tenderness; the religion of his fancy is never betrayed into any unbecoming mirth, or rapturous enthusiasm. He is always amiable, simple, and unaffected: if he has not the ingenuity of some of his rivals, he is also free from their conceits. Gold ceases to be of any real value when it is only fashioned into baubles. His prose, however, excels his verse. The character of a Holy Man will be accepted by all Christians as a delightful portrait of sincere and tolerant piety. A HOLY MAN Is only happy, for infelicity and sin were born twins; or rather, like some prodigy with two bodies, both draw and expire the same breath. Catholic faith is the foundation on which he erects Religion, knowing it a ruinous madness to build in the air of a private spirit, or on the sands of any new schism. His impiety is not so bold as to bring divinity down to the mistake of reason, or to deny those mysteries his apprehension reacheth U not. His obedience moves still by direction of the magistrate; and should conscience inform him that the command is unjust, he judgeth it nevertheless high treason, by rebellion, to make good his tenets; as it were the basest cowardice, by dissimulation of religion, to preserve temporal respects. He knows human policy but a crooked rule of action, and, therefore, by a distrust of his own knowledge, attains it; confounding with supernatural illumination, the opinionated judgment of the wise. In prosperity he greatly admires the bounty of the Almighty Giver, and useth, not abuseth, plenty; but in adversity he remains unshaken, and, like some eminent mountain, hath his head above the clouds. For his happiness is not meteorlike, exhaled from the vapours of this world, but it shines a fixt star, which when by misfortune it appears to fall, only casts away the slimy matter. Poverty he neither fears nor covets, but cheerfully entertains, imagining it the fire which tries virtue; nor how tyrannically soever it usurp on him doth he pay to it a sigh or wrinkle; for he who suffers want without reluctancy, may be poor, not miserable. He sees the covetous prosper by usury, yet waxeth not lean with envy; and when the posterity of the impious flourish, he questions not the Divine justice; for temporal rewards distinguish not ever the merits of men. * * * Fame he weighs not, but esteems a smoke, yet such as carries with it the sweetest odour, and riseth usually from the sacrifice of our best actions. Pride he disdains, when he finds it swelling in himself, but easily forgiveth it in another. He doth not malice the over-spreading growth of his equals, but pities, not despiseth, the fall of any man; esteeming yet no storm of fortune dangerous, but what is raised through our own demerit. * In conversation, his carriage is neither plausible to flattery, nor reserved to rigour, but he so demeans himself as created for society. In solitude he remembers his better part is angelical, and, therefore, his mind practiseth the best discourse without assistance of inferior organs! He is never merry, but still modest; not dissolved into indecent laughter, or tickled with wit, scurrilous or injurious. He cunningly searcheth into the virtues of others, and liberally commends them; but buries the vices of the imperfect in a cha * * * * * * * ritable silence, whose manners he reforms, not by invectives, but example. In prayer he is frequent, not apparent; yet as he labours not the opinion, so he fears not the scandal of being thought good. He every day travels his meditations up to Heaven, and never finds himself wearied with the journey; but when the necessities of nature return him down to earth, he esteems it a place he is condemned to. * * * * Το live he knows a benefit, and the contempt of it ingratitude, and therefore loves, but not dotes on life. Death, how deformed soever an aspect it wears, he is not frighted with, since it not annihilates but unclouds the soul. He, therefore, stands every moment prepared to die; and though he freely yields up himself when age or sickness summon him, yet he with more alacrity puts off his earth when the profession of faith crowns him a martyr. HENRY VAUGHAN was born in Wales, in 1621, and in his seventeenth year was entered of Jesus College, Oxford, from whence, after a residence of two years, he was removed by his father to one of the Inns of Court in London, where he studied the law, until the commencement of the civil war, when, we are told by Anthony Wood, "he was taken home by his friends, and followed the pleasant paths of poetry and philology." He afterwards applied himself to physic, and became an eminent practitioner in his native place. Thus his life glided harmlessly and beneficially away, at a distance from the miseries under which so many of his fellow-creatures were suffering. He lived in the neighbourhood of Brecknock; and in the Olor Iscanus are frequent invitations to his friends to partake of his rustic pleasures. He died, Wood thinks, on the 29th of April, 1695, and was buried in the parish-church of Llansenfried, about two miles from Brecknock. Vaughan's poetry has never received the praise it deserves. Mr. Campbell pronounces him one of the harshest of the inferior order of the school of conceit; but to his sacred poems, a milder criticism is due: they show considerable originality and picturesque grace. He was an imitator of Herbert, of whom he makes affectionate mention, and whom he resembles in the negligence of his versification, and the inappropriateness of his imagery. But he occasionally swept the harp with a master's hand: what an affecting solemnity runs through these stanzas:: They are all gone into the world of light! And I alone sit lingering here; It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest, I see them walking in an air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days: O holy Hope! and high Humility, High as the heavens above: These are your walks, and you have show'd them me Dear beauteous Death! the jewel of the just, Shining no where but in the dark; What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could man outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest, may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair well, or grove, it sings in now, That is to him unknown. O, Father of eternal life, and all Created glories under thee! Resume thy spirit from this world of thrall Either disperse these mists which blot and fill My perspective as they pass, Or else remove me hence unto that Hill Where I shall need no glass. The image of the bird, in the 6th stanza, is very charming. The last verse is imitated from Herbert's poem on Grace. THE RETREAT. HAPPY those early days, when I Oh, how I long to travel back, These lines will find an echo in many bosoms, for the same aspiration must have risen to the lips of every But we know that "the enlightened spirit" be one. |