Henry Vaughan was a child of thirteen when Herbert, a stranger to him, died at Bemerton, and he read him first in the sick-chamber to which the five years’ distresses of his early manhood confined him. The reading could not have been prior to 1647, for _Olor Iscanus_, Vaughan’s second volume, was lying ready for the press that year, as we know from the date of its dedication to Lord Kildare Digby. As no novice poet, therefore, he fell under the spell of a sweet and elect soul, who was also a lover of vanquished royalty, a convert who had looked upon the vanities of the court and the city, a Welshman born, and not unconnected with Vaughan’s own ancient and patrician house. These were slight coincidences, but they served to strengthen a forming tie. The Silurist somewhere thanks Herbert’s “holy ever-living lines” for checking his blood; and it was, perhaps, the only service rendered of which he was conscious. But his endless iambics and his vague allegorical titles are cast thoroughly in the manner of Herbert, and he takes from the same source the heaped categorical epithets, the didactic tone, and the introspectiveness which are his most obvious failings. Vaughan’s intellectual debt to Herbert resolves itself into somewhat less than nothing; for in following him with zeal to the Missionary College of the Muses, he lost rather than gained, and he is altogether delightful and persuasive only where he is altogether himself. Nevertheless, a certain spirit of conformity and filial piety towards Herbert has betrayed Vaughan into frequent and flagrant imitations. It seems as if these must have been voluntary, and rooted in an intention to enforce the same truths in all but the same words; for the moment Vaughan breaks into invective, or comes upon his distinctive topics, such as childhood, natural beauty (for which Herbert had an imperfect sense), friendship, early death, spiritual expectation, he is off and away, free of any predecessor, thrilling and unforgettable. Comparisons will not be out of place here, for Vaughan can bear, and even invoke them. Dryden said in Jonson’s praise that he was “a learned plagiary,” and nobody doubts nowadays that Shakespeare and Milton were the bandit kings of their time. There was, indeed, in English letters, up to Queen Anne’s reign, an open communism of ideas and idioms astonishing to look upon; there is less confiscation at present, because, outside the pale of the sciences, there is less thinking. If any one thing can be closer to another, for instance, than even Drummond’s sonnet on _Sleep_ is to Sidney’s, it is the dress of Vaughan’s morality to that of George Herbert’s. Mr. Simcox is the only critic who has taken the trouble to contrast them, and he does so in so random a fashion as to suggest that his scrutiny, in some cases, has been confined to the rival titles. It is certain that no other mind, however bent upon identifications, can find a likeness between _The Quip_ and _The Queer_, or between _The Tempest_ and _Providence_. Vaughan’s _Mutiny_, like _The Collar_, ends in a use of the word “child,” after a scene of strife; and if ever it were meant to match Herbert’s poem, distinctly falls behind it, and deals, besides, with a much weaker rebelliousness. _Rules and Lessons_ is so unmistakably modelled upon _The Church Porch_ that it scarcely calls for comment. Herbert’s admonitions, however, are continued, but nowhere repeated; and Vaughan’s succeed in being poetic, which the others are not. Beyond these replicas, Vaughan’s structural genius is in no wise beholden to Herbert’s. But numerous phrases and turns of thought descend from the master to the disciple, undergoing such subtle and peculiar changes, and given back, as Coleridge would say, with such “usurious interest,” that it may well be submitted whether, in this casual list, every borrowing, save two, be not a bettering.
HERBERT.
“A throbbing conscience, spurrèd by remorse, Hath a strange force.”
“My thoughts are all a case of knives, Wounding my heart With scattered smart.”
“And trust Half that we have Unto an honest faithful grave.”
“Teach me Thy love to know, That this new light which now I see May both the work and workman show: Then by a sunbeam I will climb to Thee!”
“I will go searching, till I find a sun Shall stay till we have done, A willing shiner, that will shine as gladly As frost-nipt suns look sadly. Then we will sing and shine all our own day, And one another pay; His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine Till even his beams sing, and my music shine.”
(_Of prayer._)
“Heaven in ordinary, man well-drest, The Milky Way, the bird of Paradise.”
“Then went I to a garden, and did spy A gallant flower, The crown-imperial: Sure, said I, Peace at the root must dwell.”
VAUGHAN.
“A darting conscience, full of stabs and fears.”
“And wrap us in imaginary flights Wide of a faithful grave.”
“That in these masks and shadows I may see Thy sacred way, And by these hid ascents climb to that day Which breaks from Thee Who art in all things, though invisibly!”
“O would I were a bird or star Fluttering in woods, or lifted far Above this inn And road of sin! Then either star or bird would be Shining or singing still to Thee!”
(_Of books._)
“The track of fled souls, and their Milky Way.”
“I walked the other day to spend my hour Into a field, Where I sometime had seen the soil to yield A gallant flower.”
HERBERT.
“But groans are quick and full of wings, And all their motions upward be, And ever as they mount, like larks they sing: The note is sad, yet music for a king.”
“Joys oft are there, and griefs as oft as joys, But griefs without a noise; Yet speak they louder than distempered fears: What is so shrill as silent tears?”
“At first Thou gavest me milk and sweetnesses, I had my wish and way; My days were strewed with flowers and happiness; There was no month but May.”
“Only a scarf or glove Doth warm our hands, and make them write of Love.”
“I got me flowers to strew Thy way, I got me boughs off many a tree; But Thou wast up by break of day, And brought Thy sweets along with Thee.”
“O come! for Thou dost know the way: Or if to me Thou wilt not move, Remove me where I need not say, ‘Drop from above.’”
“Sure Thou wilt joy by gaining me To fly home like a laden bee.”
VAUGHAN.
“A silent tear can pierce Thy throne When loud joys want a wing; And sweeter airs stream from a groan Than any artèd string.”
“Follow the cry no more! There is An ancient way, All strewed with flowers and happiness, And fresh as May!”
“feverish souls Sick with a scarf or glove.”
“I’ll get me up before the sun, I’ll cull me boughs off many a tree; And all alone full early run To gather flowers and welcome Thee.”
“Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill My perspective still as they pass; Or else remove me hence unto that hill Where I shall need no glass!”
“Thy grave, to which my thoughts shall move Like bees in storms unto their hive.”
To arraign Vaughan is to vindicate him. In the too liberal assizes of literature, an idea becomes the property of him who best expresses it. Herbert’s odd and fresh metaphors, his homing bees and pricks of conscience and silent tears, the adoring star and the comrade bird, even his famous female scarf, go over bodily to the spoiler. In many an instance something involved and difficult still characterizes Herbert’s diction; and it is diverting to watch how the interfering hand sorts and settles it at one touch, and sends it, in Mr. Matthew Arnold’s word, to the “centre.” Vaughan’s mind, despite its mysticism, was full of despatch and impetuosity. Like Herbert, he alludes to himself, more than once, as “fierce”; and the adjective undoubtedly belongs to him. There is in Vaughan, at his height, an imaginative rush and fire which Herbert never knew, a greater clarity and conciseness, a far greater restraint, a keener sense both of color and form, and so much more deference for what Mr. Ruskin calls “the peerage of words,” that the younger man could never have been content to send forth a line which might mean its opposite, such as occurs in the fine stanza about glory in the beautiful _Quip_. It is only on middle ground that the better poet and the better saint collide. Vaughan never could have written
“O that I once past changing were Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!”
or the tranquil confession of faith:
“Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust, Thy hands made both, and I am there: Thy power and love, my love and trust Make one place everywhere!”