VAUGHAN, HENRY (1622-1695), called the "Silurist," British poet and mystic, was born of an ancient Welsh family at Newton St. Briget near Scethrog by Usk, Brecknockshire, on April 17, 1622. From 1632 to 1638 he and his twin brother Thomas (see next page) were privately educated by Matthew Herbert, rector of Llangattock. Anthony a Wood says that Henry was entered at Jesus college, Oxford, in 1638, but the statement is uncorroborated. He was sent to London to study law, but turning his attention to medicine, he became a physician, and settled first at Brecon and later at Scethrog to the practice of his art. He was regarded, says Wood, as an "ingenious person, but proud and humorous." It seems likely that he fought on the king's side in the Welsh campaign of 1645, and was present at the battle of Rowton Heath.
In 1646 appeared Poems, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished, by Henry Vaughan, Gent. The poems in this volume are chiefly addressed to "Amoret," and the last is on Priory Grove, the home of the "matchless Orinda," Mrs. Katharine Philips. A second volume of secular verse, Olor Iscanus, which takes its name from the opening verses addressed to the Isca (Usk), was published by a friend, probably Thomas Vaughan, without the author's consent, in 1651. The preface is dated and the reason for Vaughan's reluctance to print the book is to be sought in the preface to Silex Scintillans: or Sacred Poems and Pious Ejaculations (165o). There he says: "The first that with any effectual success attempted a diversion of this foul and over flowing stream (of profane poetry) was the blessed man, Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least." His other works are The Mount of Olives: or Solitary Devotions, with a translation, Man in Glory, from the Latin of Anselm (1652) ; Flores Solitudinis (1654), consisting of two prose translations from Nierembergius, one from St. Eucherius and a life of Paulinus, bishop of Nola;
Hermetical Physick, translated from the Naturae Sanctuarium of Henricus, Nollius; Thalia Rediviva; The Pass-Times and Diver sions of a Country Muse (1678), which includes some of his brother's poems. Henry Vaughan died at Scethrog on April 23, 1695, and was buried in the churchyard of Llansantffraed.
As a poet Vaughan comes latest in the so-called "metaphysical" school of the 17th century. He is a disciple of Donne, but follows him mainly as he saw him reflected in George Herbert. He analyses his experiences, amatory and sacred, with excessive in genuity, striking out, every now and then, through his extreme intensity of feeling and his close observation of nature, lines and phrases of marvellous felicity. By his mystical outlook on Nature he no doubt exercised great influence on Wordsworth, who is known to have possessed a copy of his poems, and it is difficult to avoid seeing in "The Retreat" the germ of the later poet's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality." By this poem, with "The World," mainly because of its magnificent opening stanza, "Be yond the Veil," and "Peace," his fame is assured.
The complete works of Henry Vaughan were edited for the Fuller Worthies Library by Dr. A. B. Grosart in 1871. The Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, were edited in 1896 (reprint i9o5) by E. K. Chambers, with an introduction by Canon H. C. Beeching, for the Muses' Library ; see also an edition by L. C. Martin (Oxford, 1914), and by E. Hulton (19o4) ; R. Sencourt, Outlying Philosophy. A literary study of the religious element . . . in the works . . . of H. Vaughan, etc. (1925) ; H. W. Wells, The Tercentenary of Henry Vaughan (5922).