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A POET'S TEMPORAL CONSOLATION:

HENRY VAUGHAN'S MORAL AND

METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY

Richard M. Summers "Sk.

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

June 1970 ABSTRACT

Most critics of Henry Vaughan have strongly emphasized the mystical element in his sacred poetry but neglected his concern for the physical world, which he expresses in both the sacred and secular poems. That such neglect does less than justice to his work is evident from an examination of the com­ plete canon of his poetry, with particular regard to his meta­ physics, as it relates to classical thought and to his ethical awareness.

A study of Vaughan's relationship to classical thought helps to clarify and to define his metaphysics, which largely informs his ethics. The conception of the single source from which all flows and to which all returns, for example, empha­ sizes the soul's descent to this world and ascent to the world beyond; that of dualistic worlds points up the instability and imperfection of the one and the absoluteness of the other; that of emanations, the most significant, stresses the importance of the soul's sojourn on earth to gain a limited perfection in preparation for ascent. Conduct, therefore, becomes a point of serious concern. Indeed, much of Vaughan's poetry attempts to bring this world into closer conformity with the other. His moral consciousness involves both personal and social ethics: in the one case, a preoccupation with moderation, temperance, order, courage, and justice; in the other, a fear of anarchy and oppression as well as a call for submission to the proper authority. The study makes clear that this moral preoccupation, which is strongest in Olor Iscanus (dedicated 1648), actually begins in Poems (1646) and continues throughout Silex Sciritillana (1650 and 1655) and Thalia Rediviva (1678). Thus, Vaughan's "conversion" of the late 1640's and early 1650's does not rep­ resent a fundamental change in either metaphysics or ethics. The apparently new ideas of grace, repentance, and faith, which are fully developed in the sacred poems and which define the extent of Vaughan's religious conversion, actually are alluded to in his first collection. In fact, the religious poetry of Silex Sciritillans and Thalia Rediviva is a development and ful­ fillment of his earlier work. » t ' It!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER I. A NEW PERSPECTIVE ...... 11

CHAPTER II. BACKGROUND ...... 29

CHAPTER III. POEMS (1646): TWO RELATED JOURNEYS ...... 50

CHAPTER IV. OLOR ISCANUS (DEDICATED 1648): A SPECIFIC SOCIAL CONTEXT ...... 84

CHAPTER V. SILEX SCINTILLANS (1650 and 1655): CONVERSION AND A CONTINUING PREOCCUPATION . . 112

CHAPTER VI. THALIA REDIVIVA (1678): RETIREMENT AND A LIMITED SOCIAL AWARENESS . . 142

CONCLUSION ...... 156

NOTES ...... 164

LIST OF WORKS CITED 191 INTRODUCTION

While involved in discussions about ethereal flights

and Hermetic influence, critics tend to lose sight of the simple

fact that throughout his poetical career Henry Vaughan saw man

as a fallen creature. This theme is a constant burden of his

composition, and such a poem as "I Walked the Other Day," in which

the speaker struggles in despair to free himself from the world

through tears and contemplation, brings the vision of fallenynan/,

to the fore. Most of Vaughan's critics would agree that this vision is a fact of human life acknowledged by Vaughan, but very few see him challenging the view that a fallen state is an ir­ revocable dilemma in this life, and no one, except perhaps Helen 1 White and James Roy King, recognizes the temporal consolation

Vaughan continually seeks to find for himself and for his age.

Much of his poetry, in fact, seems to take its effect from the tensions generated between the two thematic poles—the human condition of fallen man and the consolation in man's moral growth, which is partly made possible through mental states of withdrawal.

Yet, while insight into man’s physical and spiritual condition is gained during withdrawal, the inspiration and even formulation in a great part responsible for Vaughan’s moral philosophy appear to have their origin deep in classical thought. -2-

The first modern editor of Vaughan’s poetry in 1847

hints at the presence of mysticism, which involves the mental process 2 of awakening, purgation, and illumination. But only after the turn

of the twentieth century did the notion begin to be accepted and

modified with frequency. The point that must be borne in mind is

that with few exceptions the commonly accepted approach to Vaughan

invariably places the poet in the context of a transcendent world,

whether the poetry is seen to reflect the mystical experience of il­

lumination or, on the other hand, to reject this world and all that

is in it. In 1911 Evelyn Underhill in her widely acclaimed book

on mysticism was not at all convinced of the presence of mysticism

in Vaughan's poetry, and yet she singled out for comment the sus- 3 tained vision which enables Vaughan to catch a glimpse of eternity.

Carolyn Spurgeon in 1913 placed Vaughan and Wordsworth in the same

category, telling us that both are "almost exclusively occupied 4 with one theme, the mystical interpretation of nature." For the 5 next three decades, criticism does not differ on this point.

Generally speaking, the last fifty years have been spent

placing Vaughan solidly in the tradition of the world's great il-

luminati. By 1945 Bush can say that what T.S. Eliot thought to be fa "adolescent retrogressiveness" in the childhood motif (which sees

Vaughan very much a part of this world) was instead the major theme

of the "exiled soul’s longing to return to its heavenly home, the world of the light."'57 *T his viewxwas elaborated by Itrat Husain who turned it into an archetypal journey, composed of the three -3-

mystical steps of awakening, purgation and illumination. In trac- g ing these stages in Silex Scintillans, Vaughan’s major work of re­

ligious poetry, Husain accurately concludes that the poet did not

attain to complete union, as far as the poems themselves reveal.

Even though Husain’s work dealt with fragments (unfortunately he

made few applications to whole poems), its significant value to

Vaughan’s religious/mystic poetry is twofold: 1) because he saw

the central theme as a journey to another world, Silex Scintillans

for perhaps the first time took on a sharply defined unity of theme

and subject hitherto merely implied, and 2) because of this, Husain

clearly helped to set the direction in Vaughan criticism, as will 9 be seen in Mahood and Durr, for the next twenty years.

If Husain's study lacked thoroughly developed specifics,

Margaret Mahood missed few. In Poetry and Humanism, she worked

very hard to place Vaughan among the seventeenth-century humanists;

he becomes a "theocentric humanist" who believes that the center for

man is God, that man is at once a sinner and redeemed, and that 10 "the Christian concept of grace and freedom is operative." She

explained that Vaughan sees in nature the "signature of the Creator

and that this signature symbolizes union with all planes of being."

But, though her study worked to place Vaughan back in the physical world of sense, she made frequent allusions to the theme of es­

trangement anfl/ exile. Moreover, the qualities which separate Vaughan

from such humanists as Milton or Herbert—his strong belief that the

"body impedes and corrupts the soul," his failure to share in the -h-

"baroque delight in the body and the senses," and his lack of con­

cern for the tension between "being and becoming"—seem to outweigh

the delight we are told Vaughan does have in the life of this world.

Furthermore, she went beyond Husain in her pronouncement that

Vaughan experiences divine union, pointing out the frequent veil

images (clouds, darkness, storms, and the trivial distractions of

the world) and stone images as symbols of the limited physical world

that can obstruct complete transcendence. It never becomes clear whether he is a humanist, a part-time humanist, or a mystic with

some misgivings. What is obvious is that Miss Mahood more fully developed what Husain first presented, but added the experience of union to a poet already involved in transcendence.

In 1960, with more than a century of critical inertia behind him, Pettet devoted his entire first chapter to the "ex­ periential nature" of Vaughan’s poetry.^ He discerned in Vaughan's emotional experience three pervasive moods and themes—two of which already have been discussed by Bush, Husâin and Miss Mahood: estrangement and exile, a sense of otherworldliness, and a "vibrant exhilaration," generating from "moments of visitation and divine 12 presence." This last goes beyond mere withdrawal and suggests the final mystical state of illumination^

In one sense R.A. Durr’s study in 1962, On thé Mystical

Poetry of Henry Vaughan, is an outgrowth of earlier views. For two reasons in particular the book requires closer examination in con- nextion with mystically oriented criticism. For almost the first -5-

time, Durr has gone outside the internal evidence and beyond the biographical material in an attempt to understand what 'Vaughan was responding to and the kind of response he was making. Durr looks to other mystics—those who have experienced conversion, such as

St. Paul, Francis of Assisi, Suso, Fox—and finds an "essential pertinence" to Vaughan’s life and poetry. To answer those skep­ tical of Vaughan’s mysticism, for instance, on the ground that he wrote secular or occasional poetry after his sacred publications in the 1650’s, Durr simply compares Suso’s lament with Vaughan’s

"Disorder and Frailty": both attest to the fact that "the flesh 13 is weak, and relapses sadly inevitable."

The second distinguishing mark is a statement in the preface that brings into sharp focus an underlying assumption about

Vaughan which has grown and developed since the middle of the nine­ teenth century. The entire remark is worth quoting:

I should not like to see Vaughan labeled a meditative poet. For the term does more than distinguish the begin­ ning from the advanced levels of the mystic life. It de­ notes a mental exercise, a kind of syllogistic priming of the pump of piety, a formal regulation and arrange­ ment of devotion, a goal of dutifulness and good works.... They [Vaughan’s sacred poems] are not working up to the state of devotion...and they make no real issue of good deeds. They celébrate the joy of grace infused, the gift of awakening to light and life; or they lament the lapses of illumination deprecating man*s foul corruptions that deprive him of that joy and light. (my underlining)^^

Two things that Durr fails to do here are disturbing. The first -6-

involves total disregard of Vaughan's secular poetry, which has

long since been ignored as a source of relevant experience in

attempts to determine the nature of the poet's response to his

world, either physical or spiritual. This is disturbing because

much of the secular poetry is as intensely religious as much of

the poetry in Silex Scintillans. The second omission, however, is more serious than the first, for it affects all of Vaughan's work,

the poetry and the prose. It amounts to a serious distortion, which occurs the moment Durr permits himself to see only the in­

fusion of grace, the awakening soul, and the sad lament over the

corruption of this world as Vaughan's total area of concern. Both omissions do much to explain the kind of poet Vaughan has become

for the modern reader—one whose separation from this world is virtually complete.

This prevailing view overlooks a significant portion of

Vaughan's work. Scholarship that limits a poet to a world beyond without regard for possible antithetical positions tends to limit the reader to two responses: 1) on occasions when the poet is not mystical or meditative, we tend to judge these poems as being not the product of the real poet, and 2) very often, except in the case of Blake and Wordsworth, we stubbornly cling to the idea that if one is to be mystical or meditative ’he cannot therefore be critical of society—one by necessity negates the other. This trend in scholarship has become a source of possible misinterpre­ tation of his poetry. It is, in point of fact, responsible for -7-

current distortions, which are emphasized when we recognize that

most explications of Vaughan's poems today work with one of two

assumptions: 1) Vaughan is a poet of a world without time and

space or 2) he is a poet who is always struggling to set his soul 15 free from the flesh. Except for slight mention by Miss White and

King, mostly in discussing Vaughan's prose, scholarship has failed

to recognize that his mysticism is only part of his 'world' and,

if overemphasized, always distorts. Scholarship has overlooked the

evidence that Vaughan also struggles to find a practical, moral

consolation for a world fraught with political conflict and spiritual

doubt.

This sketch of Vaughan criticism, though by no means ex­

haustive, does suggest the possibility that at best there has been

an imbalance and at worst a serious distortion in our view of his work. The present study therefore aims at determining the extent

to which Vaughan is part of our world, the extent to which he speaks

to his age and ours about this life and, specifically, about moral 16 conduct. James Roy King's observation that Vaughan's "sense of social corruption" has not received adequate treatment is an understatement.I? This study will examine his prose translations, in which Miss White has noted the presence of a "moral complexion" and "the passion of social criticism" that turns him against "the 18 corruption of wealth and arrogance and folly."

More importantly, this study will examine the poetry as it speaks to the question of the good life. It is unwise to dismiss, -8-

as does Durr, the judgment by one of Vaughan's contemporaries who,

in "To My Worthy Friend, Mr. Henry Vaughan thé Silüfist"(p. 620),

praised the poetry as a "manual," a guide book to good conduct.

If the reader assumes that Vaughan's temporal concern is limited

to "deprecating man's foul corruption," then entire poems in the first collection, Póéms (1646), and in Olor Iscanus (1651) and

Thalia Rediviva (1678), must somehow be explained away, for they clearly outline the attributes which make up the good soldier, the good statesman, the good friend, and the truly good life. In spite of Vaughan's conversion in the late 1640's and early 1650's, his interest in morality seems to continue into the sacred verse and to pervade all of his writing.

To whatever extent he is preoccupied with moral problems of his age, this interest in social criticism appears in part to 19 be inspired by classical thought. The close link Miss White finds between classical thought and the "social morality of his time" is a point well,taken. It is also a point virtually for­ gotten since her wellknown book on the metaphysicals appeared some thirty years ago.

The extent to which classical thought permeated the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century immediately com­ plicates attempts to locate a single source. Furthermore, Chris­ tianity had become Platonized at least since Augustine; as Ross warns, "in theology the line is hard to fix; in ethics it is im­ perceptible." And the religious writers of the seventeenth -9- century in addition to Vaughan—Herbert, Donne, Browne, Tra­ herne, to mention only a few—were not only affected by these same forces but were in turn influencing one another.

Whether classical thought reached Vaughan directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously—or in all of these ways at once—it exerted an influence that at the very least parallels and reinforces Vaughan’s search for the good life. It would be inaccurate to say that Vaughan is a thorough-going clas­ sicist, but it does appear that his thought is classical—that is, his metaphysics closely parallels that of Plato and Plotinus and his ethics interfuse classical and Christian moral concepts.

To better understand Vaughan's ethical and metaphysical philosophy it must be recognized that the lines of influence begin in clas­ sical thought. Some of the classical ideas with which Vaughan is working are separate from the main stream of Christian tradition.

Other ideas originating in the Greek tradition are taken up whole by Augustine and used without modification. Still other ideas found in Vaughan were modified by Christian thinkers to suit con­ cepts of the Trinity, for example: nevertheless, they have their 21 roots deep in Plato and Plotinus. All of this points up the necessity of examining the tradition within which Vaughan was writing, if we are to understand the scope of his thought.

Moreover, by working with both the secular and sacred poetry and by attempting to find philosophical ties between them, this dissertation should suggest the fact that Vaughan’s work -10- deserves to be read in its entirety, since much of his later poetry appears to be the development and fulfillment of his earlier work. We should, therefore, be able to gain a more balanced view”' of his poetry. This study should also give additional insight into the whole of Vaughan’s work, for, in Rosemond Tuve’s words: "A poem is most beautiful and most meaningful when it is read in the 22 terms of the tradition which gave it birth."

The task of establishing a new perspective initially re­ quires a twofold examination: of the nature and extent of his in­ volvement with his social environment and of the nature and degree of his relationship to classical thought. -11-

CHAPTER I

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Even though the majority of Vaughan’s readers see pri­ marily his mystical tendencies—especially his interest in the other world—, it is well to remember E.N.S. Thompson’s observa­ tion that "everywhere among the greater English mystics, from

Walter Hilton’s time to our own, one finds this concern for conduct and ordinary duties of life.""^ The truth of this is borne out in such mystics as Master Eckhart, Juan de Valdes, and the earliest

Platonist, Pico della Mirandola. Vaughan appears to be no dif­ ferent. And Thompson’s point is as relevant to Vaughan’s sacred poetry as it is to his sacred prose. Reading through Mount of

Olives of Solitary Devotions (1655), written at the same time as his religious poetry and at the height of his religious fervor, we do not find what Percy Osmond would lead us to expect—"detachment, meditation... a state of inward calm and lucidity." On the con­ trary, Vaughan is vehement in his attacks upon Puritan "Persecution and Heresie" and the "trouble occasioned by our Enemies" (p. 166).

Frequently he deplores the religious adversaries who have "grown mighty" and prosperous, have waged civil war and "washed their hands in blood of my friends, my dearest and nearest relatives," and have stolen food out of the mouths of the poor. The underlying theme of the dedication of Mount of Olives is itself typical of his concern for things of this world; he condemns the contemporary -12- persecution of the Anglican Church. It is not clear why Osmond failed to mention Vaughan’s accusation of regicide (pp. 170-171) in "Man in Darkness"; he seems to have overlooked it along with all of the other references to the secular world.

Vaughan's concern for the temporal world in these de­ votions is carried over into the sacred poetry. Strong evidence supports E.L. Marilla’s observation that "during the 1650’s he con­ sidered himself virtually enslaved by those who, in his opinion, had wantonly overthrown the long established political and ecclesi­ astical order of the nation....He never tired of casting thrusts at what he regarded as their false ideals, hypocritical designs, 3 and policies born of self-ends." The "Authors Preface" to Silex

Scintillans (1655) is a good case in point. It is popular among those who regard Vaughan as a mystic, for they see in it his avowed renunciation of the "idle verse" he himself wrote earlier in life.

It is generally interpreted as testimony to the intensification of

Vaughan’s religious commitment and to a growing distaste for the temporal world. But if this can be granted, it must also be ack- nowledged that his interests remained firmly fixed upon this world.

He is intensely concerned about false ideals, designs and policies born of self-ends, just as, in Mount of Olives^ he was conscious of the current political and ecclesiastical discord. In the

"Preface" he condemns the false ideals of popular "Wits" of his day those who search for "idle words" to put into "idle Poems" ——and is especially concerned about what they are doing to the present -13-

generation and to future generations. "All well it were for them,'

Vaughan warns, "if those willingly-studied and wilfully-published vanities could defile no spirits, but their own; but thé case is

far worse. These Vipers survive their Parents, and for many ages after (like Epidemic diseases) infect whole Generations" (p. 388).

Particularly Jack Donne and his school seem to be under attack—

those who "dash Scriptures...with their impious conceits" (p. 390).

Further, he strikes out at the corruption of the Stationers, who should in good conscience refuse publication to the wits. Trans­ lators are also attacked, especially those who "naturalize" French and Italian Romances, which flooded England about that time.

In light of this it is difficult to accept French Fogle’s observation about Vaughan's religious work:

The most frequent note is one of...withdrawal into an inner realm of peace and light and unity. Vaughan's deepest im­ pulse is toward a retirement from confusions of the temporal to a point from which all things can be seen in the light of eternity.

The number of instances in which Vaughan is drawn into the con­ fusions of the temporal and away from retirement—in his allusions to regicide, to Puritan corruption, to the metaphysical wits— suggests anything but a fugitive and cloistered virtue. Nor is it an indication of retirement from the temporal world when Vaughan casually links physical health with spiritual well-being, as he does in Of Hermetic Physics, a free translation written in the

1650's, the same period in Vaughan's life to which Fogle makes -14- reference. As in Browne's Religid Medici, the introduction written by Vaughan attached to Hermetic Physics is in the spirit of Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, seriously questioning the ab­ solute authority of the ancients by stressing the necessity of the 6 empirical approach. Vaughan will honor truth wherever he can find it.

Had Vaughan stopped here, had he gone no further than the attack on current social abuses, he would still have to be seen as concerned about the social order, however negatively, and Fogle’s interpretation, "a rejection of the contemporary world," would be only partly true and therefore somewhat misleading. Vaughan, how­ ever, does not stop here. He presents, in the 1655 "Preface," a

Christian theory of poetry with a definite ethical orientation.

Once the "Preface" is considered in the light of the Christian tra­ dition, especially of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the close similarity in subject matter and the unstated, though under­ lying, intention become clear. This tradition, which has for its basis a particular theory of Christian poetry, came into vogue in

England some sixty years before Vaughan wrote his "Preface.'"? Es­ sentially the theory defines the one necessary quality of the poet as virtue; and the poems he writes must be about virtuous subjects.

Echoes from Du Bartas’ "Urania" (translated by Joshuah Sylvester in 1574) are not coincidental. Though the tradition reaches as far back as Horace, the immediate lines of influence probably be­ gin with Du Bartas and reach England through Sylvester, are -15-

O transmitted to both Sidney and Spenser, and finally reach Herbert.

Both Vaughan and Du Bartas mourn the defilement of sacred ideas by

writers of verse, both reject authors who use poetry to gain sel­

fish ends, both are disgusted with fables, romances and lewd and

lascivious verse, and both castigate the idle wits of their time; both condemn the foul delights of the poet more for what he does

to the "heedles Readers" and the generation that follows than for

self-corruption, and both see a necessary fusion of aesthetics and moral values. The lines in Du Bartas,

Base Argument, a base stile ever yields: But (of it selfe) a loftie subject raises Grave stately works, and (of it selfe) it guilds It selfe; and crownes the Authors Penne with praises, are restated in Vaughan’s prose: "It is true indeed, that to give up our thoughts to pious themes and Contemplations (if it be done for pieties sake) is a great step towards perfection" (p. 391)— that is, perfecting poetry and moral conduct. This fusion places responsibility on the poet to instruct the reader in moral conduct and the duties of ordinary life.

The vogue is of course passed on through Sidney's Defense, and in Spenser's "The Tears of the Muses Post," "The Mutability

Cantos," and the "Dedicatory Epistle" to thé Fôùrè Hÿmhes. By the time Herbert expresses these ideas--that is, the aesthetic-moral fusion, the corruption caused from the misuse of poetry, the neces­ sity of the poet's scorning his youthful performances, the moral responsibility of the poet—they have become part of the intellectual -16-

air of the seventeenth century. However they may have been trans­

mitted to Herbert, Vaughan clearly acknowledges in the "Preface" his

own source: "Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained

many pious converts, (of whom I am the least)" (p. 391).Vaughan

has become not only the instructed but the instructor, one who will

speak to his age.

Additional support for what we have just implied about

Vaughan’s aesthetic philosophy in the light of literary tradition,

comes from what the poet himself has said about the intentions of

his "Sacred Poems." His own position is made explicit in "To the

Reader," which introduces Mount of Olives. While explaining what

we should not expect to find in this collection of devotions, he

also comments upon his intentions in the religious poetry:

Neither did I_ thiriké it necessary that thé ordinary Instructions for a regular life (of which théréàré infinité Volumes already extant) should be inserted into this small manuall, lest in­ stead of Devotion, I should trouble thee with a. peece of Ethics. Besides, thou hast them already as briefly delivered as possibly I could, in my Sacred Poems (p. 140).

The ambiguity here is characteristic. The statement can be under­

stood to mean that he has presented in Silex Scintillans "ordinary

Instructions for a regular life" in a limited number of poems (as briefly as he could) or that the moral instructions are presented briefly throughout the 1650 collection. Without going into the

sacred poetry (the subject of later chapters), it is fair to say

that the second interpretation is the more accurate, for there is -17-

strong evidence throughout of the presence of a moralistic or

ethical preoccupation. Evidence is present in "Rules and Lessons"

(pp. 436-39), "The World" (p. 466), "Corruption" (p. 440), "Disorder

and Frailty," (p. 444), "The Burial of the Infant" (p. 450),

"Affliction" (p. 459), "Idle Verse" (p. 446), and "The Passion"

(p. 430), to suggest that Vaughan was frequently attentive to the

"regular life."

In viewing Vaughan’s preoccupation with ethical consid­

erations in the sacred poetry, it is not surprising to find the

same concern in what is primarily secular verse: in Poems (1646),

Olor Iscanus (dedicated 1648), and in Thalia Rediviva (1678). As we might expect from the very nature of secular poetry, the range

of social order considered is greater than that expressed in the

sacred; yet a great many of the same moral concerns are repeated.

The one element fundamental to Vaughan’s thought throughout his life, whether in his original work or in his translated work, is a strong moral commitment to the social order and to the indi­ viduals who compose that order.

Of the commendatory poems found in the L.C. Martin edition, those attached to Thalia Rediviva have special significance, for they have the vantage point of time and can look back and re­ flect upon the whole body of Vaughan's poems. In these verses, one of the qualities which are repeatedly praised is moral in­ struction. We are told that his poetry "instructed us," appeased -18-

the "Civil Rage," and served as a "manuall" for conduct. And let

us keep in mind that these statements were written by some of

Vaughan’s closest friends, who presumably knew him well and who had,

in all probability, first-hand information about his poetic intent­

ions. The praise very likely reflects what Vaughan himself felt to be admirable—the friend writing what Vaughan wanted to hear.

The subject of the commendatory poems is generally the

secular poetry. And yet, they are equally applicable to the prose translations included in the Olor Iscanus collection. The first two translations—-Of the Benefit We may Get by óuf Enemies and

Of the Disease of the Mind and Body—are both writings of ! Plutarch. Miss White suggested the point of view and tone:

They present the reasonableness of the Stoic point of view with a good deal of the warmth and shrewdness, very much the sort of treatment of practical moral problems to commend itself to the mind of the English Renaissance.

But she did not go far enough, especially in the first of the two selections. The closest parallels in the seventeenth century to

Vaughan’s essays are Bacon’s moral essays. Warmth is present in

Plutarch, but "politic" is the key word. How to act, think, react for self-improvement—this is the benefit to be gained from con­ tact with the enemy. The reward is, generally speaking, a more virtuous character; but the reason underlying virtuous action is not always commendable. The desire to lead a "blameles and in­ calumniable" life (p. 100) is, for example, a virtuous goal, until -19- we learn that behind it is the hope that the enemy will have little grounds for attack. Self-reform is praised, not especially because it is inherently good, but because we should not find faults in others that we ourselves possess. Similarly, the value gained from giving equal justice to the enemy and the friend is that one’s friend will not worry about how he will be treated.

Plutarch’s tone, however, is not generally Machiavellian, for he is postulating a truly virtuous life. But in either case, whether we see in the essay the cold calculation or the warmth and shrewd­ ness, it is obvious .that Vaughan's orientation is toward morality in the world, practical rather than theoretical.

Suggestions of Baconian shrewdness completely disappear in the devout humanism of Guevara’s Praise and Happiness of Countrie

Life, the last of the five prose translations in Olor Iscanus. Of the Benefit and Praise and Happiness share the theme of retirement.

Both have a country setting and advocate this quiet, less confused life over that of the court or city. This same theme carries over into Silex Scintillans, frequently setting the tone and often de­ termining the subject. This, it should be stressed, must not be mistaken for withdrawal, in any stage of temporal rejection which that word might imply. In Vaughan's retirement to nature, equal significance is attached to the sacred and physical life; actually, one tends to complement the other, much the same as in Of Hermetic 13 Physics. If anything, the essay is more involved with the physi­ cal and the ordinary duties of living — selection of the proper -20-

food for a strong body, the extent of freedom granted in rearing

children, the choice of friends, customs and manners—frequently represented as superior to life in the court and the city.

This search for the good life here on earth, the major

theme in the prose translations, is also the preoccupation in

Vaughan’s translations of poetry. The beginning of "Juvenals

Tenth Satyre" (1646) is a clear example of Vaughan's early interest in the motif of the search or journey, which has a horizontal direction:

In all parts of Earth from Farthest West, And the Atlanticke Isles, unto the East And famous Ganges; Few there be that know What's truly good, and what is good in show Without mistake (p. 18).

The remaining fourteen pages of this poem discuss the extent to which past ages have misjudged "What’s truly good." Particularly in the last part of the poem, the speaker emphasizes those quali- 14 ties that actually comprise the good life.

If the reader finds the quest slow and occasionally dull as he works his way through one example after another in "Satyre," the pace of the journey quickens and becomes intensely dramatic in the translations of Boethius. Much of the intensity is gen­ erated by the situation. Boethius is a man separated from his wife and children, imprisoned, condemned, stripped of his high rank, his wealth, and fame, and waiting for "death at the hands of a half-civilized occupying army....Boethius had literally noth­ ing left to live for," Gilbert Highet explains, "but to find the -21-

truth that will make him whole." With this weight on his mind,

he sits down to compose thé Consolation of Philosophy, Philosophy,

an allegorical figure who visits Boethius in his cell, Socratically

argues through the course of five books, each broken into at least

seven subdivisions, each subdivision concluding with a lyric that

either summarizes, reinforces, or extends the subject being dis­

cussed. Vaughan has translated all but one of the lyrics in the

first book, all in the second, two each in the third and fourth.

, The headings of the subdivisions suggest the nature of the philo­

sophical context of which Vaughan was obviously aware and out of

which he was working: "Philosophy chides his lack of Courage,"

"Philosophy Examines more carefully the value of Things highly

praised by men," "Philosophy begins to examine true happiness,"

and "Philosophy examines...riches, fame, and noble blood." These

suggest the nature of the arguments in the first three books and

of course give a clear idea of Vaughan’s continuing moral pre­

occupation. One indication that the translator actually supplied

part of the material is suggested by the entire last stanza of

Metrum 6 Lib. 3, which comes whole from the translator.And

this is not to mention the great number of word and phrase sub­ stitutions, of which L.C. Martin recognizes but a few.^?

Some years ago Helen White placed Vaughan in proper per­

spective in saying, "Above all, he shows himself preoccupied very

much as Herbert seems to have been, with social morality of his

time." Though her comment was made primarily in reference to -22-

the prose translations, it can be applied with as much validity

to the poetry. The 1646 prefatory remark by Vaughan says as much

in alluding to the classical age and to Juvenal, who "had as much

true passion, for the infermities of that state, as we should have

pitty to the destractions of our own" (p. 2).

What distinguishes this preoccupation from that found

in Herbert’s Church Porch, or, for that matter, in Donne’s sermons,

or even in Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, though here the 19 similarity is strongest, .is the classical thought that at times

provides Vaughan with subject matter; the classical parallels and

echoes often determine the tone and point of view. Already we

have sensed that, through his contact with Juvenal, Plutarch and

Boethius, Vaughan expresses a Certain amount of sympathy with the

classics. Yet, the modern student, who easily overlooks the pos­

sibility of erudition in Vaughan, is often caught up in currently

fashionable mystical and archetypal criticism, which require of

the author under examination a mind more associated with activities

of intuition or imagination, than ratiocination. This kind of

interest, alerted to one area, easily obstructs a view of the

other. Vaughan’s contemporaries, more open-minded, found what must have been in plain view: a man known best as one knowledge­

able about great classical writers and their philosophy, not as mystic, or nature lover, or even devout Anglican. Philip Cheek

concluded a more recent examination of Vaughan’s scholarly in­

terests with a reference to this often-neglected aspect of the -23-

poet's temperament:

it should be remembered that there was distinctly another aspect to his temperament and another angle to his literary activities; for he was also a man of scholarly interests and pursuits, versed in much practical as well as esoteric learning, and honoured by those who knew him for his erudition.

It is significant that Anthony a Wood, Vaughan’s contemporary

biographer, favored Olor Iscanus above Silex Scintillans and

singled out for praise Vaughan's "ingenuity," not his relig- 21 iosity. Elsewhere, Wood referred to Vaughan by the name Olor

Iscanus, suggesting, as Cheek pointed out, the kind of secular

association the biographer could rely on among the poet's con-

22 temporaries. It would be inaccurate to suggest that Vaughan

came close to fame in his age, but it is noteworthy that in the

scattered attempts during the seventeenth and the eighteenth cen­

turies to popularize the poems, it is the secular, not the sacred, 23 that were published and made available to the public.

Vaughan simply was not known as a religious poet in his own lifetime, or, for that matter, in the following century.

His friends, including his close neighbor and intimate literary confidant, Thomas Powell, concur with Wood's high praise of his

"ingenuity" and also compliment his learning, which in the seven­ teenth century presupposed a classical foundation. It should not be surprising that in one of the commendatory poems of Thalia

Rediviva, Thomas Powell associates Vaughan with the classical -24-

world; describing him as the "young Tyrtaeus," calling him to 24 charm our "Civil Rage" (p. 618). The title given to the poem

by Powell clearly praises the poet's eruditions'"Upon the Ingenious

Poems of his Learned Friend, Mr. Henry Vaughan the Silurist." 25 The commendatory poem signed "Orinda" suggests the same associa­

tion that Powell makes through his repeated allusions to the clas­

sical muse. In the two remaining poems in this group and in most of the commendatory poems in Olor Iscanus, the points consistently

singled out for praise are Vaughan's learning, or classical knowledge, and his ingenuity—in addition to, of course, the didacticism previously discussed. Of all of these poems, perhaps the one

initialed "N.W." emphasizes best the classical and intellectual associations commonly made by Vaughan's contemporaries. The poem begins with the statement that Vaughan has replaced "Reverend

Bards of old"; the second stanza favorably compares Vaughan to

Virgil; and the third stanza reassures the reader that the present age has produced in the "Silurist" a wit comparable to those of past ages.

The exact extent to which Vaughan was exposed to the classics is difficult to determine. But there is specific evidence of direct and fairly extensive exposure, which helps to emphasize the seriousness with which we can accept the compliments addressed to Vaughan in what is often thought to be the rather conventional commendatory poems. It is clear that the Vaughan twins had an -25-

excellent pre-university training in Wales under a distinguished

schoolmaster Matthew Herbert, and there is evidence that Vaughan himself spent a few years at the University of Oxford between 1638 and 1640.26

During these years the Oxford statutory curriculum, along with generally minor appendages proposed by each of the 27 separate colleges, is a matter of record. A glance at the cur­ riculum suggests the extent of classical learning to which Vaughan was exposed as a student. The classical, medieval foundation of the system should of course be emphasized:

Teaching at the university level remained as it had been during the medieval period, laid down as to method and curriculum in the statutes of the university, which, through subject during the sixteenth century to successive scrutiny... could not be regarded as curricular changes to any great degree.

The same can be said, Kenneth Charlton observes, for the first half of the seventeenth century. The required lectures covered most of the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics or logic, arithmetic and music) and three philosophies, moral, natural, and metaphysical. The statutory curriculum begins with grammar:

The lecturer in grammar, whom he [the student] was supposed to hear for two terms, used Linacre's Rudiments supplemented by readings from Virgil, Horace, or Cicero’s Epistles. For four terms the scholar attended the lectures in rhetoric which explained Aristotle's Rhetoric or Cicero's Pradceptiones or the rhetorical qualities of Cicero's Orations....He read and heard expositions of Porphyry's Institutions or Aristotle's Dialectics. -26-

Of the remaining terms he studied arithmetic and music. When

Vaughan entered Oxford, this would have been the standard cur­

riculum—with the one exception of Greek, which had been added to

30 the statutes a few years before 1638. It is not altogether certain

what was being offered in these Greek lectures, but a partial list

in moral philosophy included "Aristotle's Ethics and Politics and 31 Plato's Republic; and in metaphysics, Aristotle's Metaphysics.

There is every indication that the curriculum of the first half of

the seventeenth century was basically the same as that throughout

the sixteenth; in both, moral philosophy made up a substantial part,

and a substantial part of this philosophy was Latin as well as

Greek—not very different in fact from the otherwise innovative

program ^offered in Milton's Of Education.

One effect that this collegiate experience had on Vaughan

is fairly well attested to by the classical echoes found in his

first collection of poems, published in 1646 but actually began 32 in 1644, two years after he left Oxford. The two years of clas­

sical exposure at the university was sufficient to give Vaughan a

first-hand knowledge of several classical writers; this alone would justify the references made to his learning and perhaps to his wit.

And this is not to forget about Vaughan’s early direct contact under the schoolmaster Matthew Herbert, from whom he says he re­ ceived the double treasure of "learning and love" (pp.32 & 93).

Although Cheek acknowledged the influence only of Latin writers, and that only in the secular poems and prose, at least -27-

he did recognize the influence and something of its intensity.

He listed not less than ten with whom Vaughan has had first-hand

knowledge:

The satirists being represented by Horace, Persius, and Juvenal; the lyrists by Horace and Catullus; the epic by Virgil and Lucan; the elegists by Ovid and Nemesianus: and the dramatic poets by Plautus and Seneca. In addition to these he has quotations from or references to Cicero, Pe- tronius, Livy, Pliny and Manilius.^^

To these should be added the Latin poet Claudian, often referred

to as the last of the classical Latin writers, and Boethius, known

not only for his moral Consolation but also his treatise "On Music,

a basic text at Oxford which was required for two terms.

The list of Roman writers is impressive, but it over­

emphasizes somewhat Vaughan’s debt to the Roman world, especially

in his original poetry; a good many of these writers appear only

in the translations. Vaughan’s own poetry is not as thoroughly pre occupied with Roman thought as Cheek might seem to suggest. The significance of Cheek's list for this study is that it calls at- 35 tention to Vaughan’s interest in the classical world; elsewhere in his examination, Cheek calls attention to the great number of

Roman writers—especially Horace, Virgil, and Seneca—who are 3 6 seriously concerned with morality. This concern, which is shared by Vaughan, largely justifies the poet's interest in these writers.

A study of Greek philosophy is actually more important than a study of Roman in a consideration of Vaughan's original -28- poetry. An examination of Greek writers, particularly Plato,

Aristotle, and Plotinus, can contribute much in determining and clarifying the poet’s metaphysical conceptions, which in turn in­ form his moral philosophy. What is called for is an examination of the extent of Vaughan’s moral preoccupation—the specific areas of moral concern and his own moral reaction to these areas. And before this can be accomplished it is necessary to examine the relevant classical conceptions—both Greek and Roman—that helped make up the main intellectual stock upon which he drew. -29-

CHAPTER II

BACKGROUND

As a religious writer influenced directly by the ancients, Henry Vaughan does not stand alone in the seventeenth century. The Cambridge Platonists, most of whom were writing during the busiest years of Vaughan’s literary production, are perhaps the most obvious examples. Henry More published his

Psychózóia a year after the printing of Vaughan's first collection.

More’s poetical treatise reveals his spiritual beliefs, formulated on the basis of Platonic philosophy; it was written at a time when traditional faith had already been thrown into question by the new mechanistic cosmology."'' Very much in the tradition of the Greek animistic world-view, More describes the soul’s journey from and its return to God. He finds comfort in Plato’s "first Good," at least partly as a reaction to the current violent national strife:

But yet my Muse, still take an higher flight, Sing of Platonick faith in the first Good, That faith that doth our souls to God unite So strongly, tightly, that the repid floud of this swift flux of things, nor with the foul mud can stain, nor strike us off from th’ unity, Wherein we steadfast stand, unshak’d, unmov'd, Engrafted by deep vitality. The prop and stay of things is Gods benignity.

The concepts alluded to here—divine emanations, partial absorption into the One, a world at once of flux and stability—and the tra­ ditions out of which they grew, were commonly discussed in the seventeenth century. -30-

Nevertheless, the kinds of associations and the nature 3 of assumptions a writer could make then are no longer possible and

it becomes necessary, perhaps for this reason alone, to clarify

those four classical conceptions which are fundamental to Vaughan’s

own world-view: 1) a single source from which all flows and to

which all returns,2) the emanation of the soul, 3) dualistic worlds,

one real, unchanging, eternal, the other unreal, continually in flux,

and finite, and 4) the necessary link between the two worlds—the

close relationship between metaphysics and ethics.

The discussion that follows attempts to examine these

four basic pagan concepts, which will be dealt with later in con­

nection with Vaughan’s poetry. In addition, several related ideas,

such as pre-existence, the natal star, and the continuance of mat­

ter, are examined. And along with the Greek philosophy, which is

treated in connection with the works of Plato, Aristotle, and

Plotinus, the examination deals briefly with Roman Stoicism, when­

ever the ideas seem relevant to Vaughan’s work. In both Greek and

Roman philosophies, the discussion is limited to those ideas that

Vaughan expresses in his metaphysics and ethics. The treatment of

classical thought is by necessity, then, highly selective.

The examination itself concludes with several remarks

about Christian thought, particularly in connection with St.

Augustine, through whom most of the four basic classical ideas

passed into Christian theology. These Graeco-Christian ideas are

examined also in the works of three other thinkers, namely, St. -31-

Bonaventur@ St. Aquinas, and Thomas a’ Kempis; but they are mentioned briefly, with the intention simply of describing several of the concepts as they pass into the seventeenth century. Since it is often impossible to determine how the ideas reached Vaughan— directly from classical thought, indirectly through the Christian thinkers, or through both at once—the examination is limited to a discussion merely of the ideas that are expressed in his poetry; generally, it does not try to determine a single, direct source, though this is attempted with a few ideas.

The first of the four basic concepts—a single source from which all flows and to which all returns--is central to all of Plato’s dialogues, and is presented with particular clarity in thé Timàéus. Here, Plato speaks of the single creator of the world as "the father and maker of all this universe.Furthermore, it becomes clear that his moral teachings are closely linked with this concept of a single God:

Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the mortal nature, and this earthly sphere. Wherefore we ought to f fly;, away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible: and to become like him, is to become holy, just, and wise.

Such a God, Socrates explains in the Symposium, is everlasting, unchanging, and of beauty absolute—a beauty that is "imparted" to the created world.? In fact, one major point which recurs -32- throughout the dialogues has to do with the direction of man's efforts toward discovery of the universal laws. We are told that these laws, though hidden in nature, can be found there and, most a importantly, in man himself. To acquire such knowledge is to be­ come holy, just and wise^—in a word, like God. This of course leads man upward to the real world:

The true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love is to begin from the beauties of the earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty.

In the creation of the heavens and the earth, God de­ sired to fashion a world as much like Himself as possible. In the Timaeus Plato explains that the first good not only tries to reproduce His likeness, but that He has a natural disposition 9 toward his creation, since good naturally seeks good. Quite logically, then, this creation in return seeks its source. This concept, John Smith Harrison observes, has "trained the minds of the poets in conceiving God rather as the object of the mind's speculative quest than as the dread judge of the sinful soul."^

The full relevance this idea has for Vaughan becomes clear further on in the study.

It is the soul that struggles toward and ultimately re­ turns to the source. Numerous passages in Plato depict the soul yearning for the upper world. Perhaps he is nowhere clearer about this than in the myths presented in thé Phaedo, Phàedrus, Timaeus, and Republic.H This upward movement is not limited to man alone, -33- for all creation is endowed with life and intelligence—the soul is diffused throughout :

For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best ....The world became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God.^

Once we understand the thoroughness of the soul's dif­ fusion and something of its makeup, two ideas become clearer.

The first is that the unvierse is harmonious, because it has a common source. The second is that Plato's universe is rational.

In théiPhaedo', Socrates spells out exactly what this means in 13 terms of man, the microcosm. He sees the soul as composed of three divisions: reason, will, and desire. How to keep these three in proper relation is the important ethical question for

Plato throughout his works, and the main end of the Republic.

Reason, the noblest faculty because of its divine origin, must rule desire, which is the lowest and was created not directly by God but by lesser gods. This baser part is bound to the body and acted 14 upon by the will, the instrument of reason, which it must obey.

It is enough at this point to say that conduct is determined by whichever faculty rules: if reason controls, justice follows; if desire rules, tyranny. It becomes clear in thé Republie that the proper relation must be maintained both in the individual and in the body politic.

To place significance on social conduct in a world that is essentially unreal, seems somewhat contradictory. Yet for -34-

Plato, in a very real sense, life becomes a proving ground for the soul.15 We are told in thé Timàéus that each soul is assigned

to a separate star and resides there before creation of the body, where it will be housed temporarily. The existence of the soul precedes life on earth in a purer form closer to its source. It is immortal, for it existed before life on our planet and will exist afterward, at which time it moves back to its astral home.

The one assurance that the soul has of successfully completing the circuit of descent and ascent is the quality of its life on , 16 earth.

The whole concept of prior existence is obviously funda­ mental to Plato’s doctrine of recollection, which involves à prior: knowledge acquired in pre-existence and slowly forgotten as we grow older in terrestrial life. Childhood is particularly signifi­ cant because such knowledge—of absolute beauty, of truth, of the whole real world of Ideas—is still somewhat accessible at such time. The unreal world, or the world of imitation, is the place into which the soul descends:

And having been created in this way, the world has been framed in the likeness of that which is apprehended by reason and mind and is unchangeable, and must therefore of necessity, if this is admitted, be a copy of something.

The notion of dualistic worlds recurs frequently in the dialogues. The real world of ideas—-the "eternal archetype" that is related to our world "as a pattern or stamp to its reproduction 18 or impress"—is perceived by the soul, frequently with the aid of -35- the senses. The two kinds of worlds defined by Socrates,

"one seen, the other unseen,are more often than not linked with ethical ideals, such as justice, courage, wisdom, and temp­ erance. Plato's intention, as Irene Samuel observes, was not to 20 create a dichotomy between the two worlds. Nonetheless, some readers of Plato are fooled into thinking that he steadily re­ jected this world, too easily overlooking the fact that Plato's distaste for the physical world, which is expressed, say, in the

Phaedo, is, in other dialogues, combined with a "deep love" of the world here below and that the distaste occurs usually when this world "threatens to conceal instead of reveal the unseen and eternal world behind it." At the same time, it is well to re­ member that for Plato this world shares some qualities with the eternal world of ideas. We are told in the Timaeus, for example, that the physical forms of creation are in flux and change their shape, yet the nature of the object remains without change:

While receiving all things, she [the universe] never departs at all from her nature, and never in any way, or at anytime, assumes a form like that of any of the things which enter her.22

The point that should be made clear is that if someone seriously follows Plato's metaphysics, this does not necessarily mean that the direction always leads upward or that the destination will always be an ascendant world of absolutes. Plato's world is, as 23 both Samuel and Harrison observe, essentially monistic. And this monism, along with the other central concepts under discussion, -36-

was to have a tremendous impact on Augustine, who in turn largely

determined the direction of Christian thought.

While Plato’s metaphysics allows for this world, Aris­

totle’s makes it indispensable. It is not that he rejects the 24 existence of ideas, but that he can not accept them as transcendent.

The relevance of Aristotle’s thinking to Vaughan's poetry is gen­

erally in connection with this emphasis on the phenomenal world.

One concept in particular recurs in Vaughan’s poetry, namely, the

continuance of matter, which explains the material cause of genera­

tion. While Aristotle never goes so far as to say that the world below is actually stable or eternal, he does talk instead about a kind of stability within a world of flux. He explains that the four elements of the sublunary world are in a state of becoming— earth, for example, changes to water and water changes to air. In the sense that the elements are not destroyed but rather regenerated, the cyclical process involves a kind of stability:

The continuity of coming to be, since it gives to sublunary things the only eternity which, owing to their distance from the mainspring of the universe, they can have (i.e. the 25 eternity of species), adds to the perfection of the universe.

The sole cause of the generation of the elements is the sun's in­ fluence on matter. Its movement toward and its retreat from the earth underlies the generative process.

Other than this, Aristotle generally accepts Plato’s metaphysics. He also accepts Plato's approach to ethics. While 26 there are major points of disagreement, the basic similarity lies -37-

in the fact that both emphasize the importance of the soul’s

sojourn on earth and both highly value virtuous conduct during

the sojourn as a means of perfecting the soul in its preparation

for the ultimate ascent. In Aristotelian terms, the soul can

actualize its potential only by means of the body—virtuous conduct

is a fundamental means whereby the soul realizes itself. Aris­

totle’s philosophy is based on action. One leads a good life only when virtue is known and when the actual practice of that virtue becomes habitual.

Plotinus, who has had such a tremendous impact on Christian philosophy through his influence on Augustine, is generally ack­ nowledged as Plato's most influential successor. And yet, to say this is somewhat misleading, for it fails to take into account the Aristotelian synthesis by Plotinus, an influence felt not so much in concept as in emphasis. The Platonic notions of both the soul and the dualistic worlds are strongly modified in Plotinus to allow for the Aristotelian emphasis on the temporal world. Need­ less to say, the concept of the One Supreme Source remains without change and is the central idea of Thé Enriéàds. Here, in The

Enriéàds, recurring images of light and water suggest the circular generative process of descent and ascent. Such images are; often used by Vaughan in his attempts to depict the systole and 27 diastole of creation. The whole process of emanation is most clearly presented by Plotinus in thé Fif th Eririéàd: "Seeking nothing, -38-

possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and...

has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this

product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has

become its contemplation and so an Intellectual Principle." The

Intellectual Principle in turn generates the soul. In this tri­

partite division—the first Good, the Intellectual Principle and

the Soul—Plotinus continually stresses the point that in multi­

plicity there is unity, correspondence and sympathy, and harmony.

The relation of the first Good to the Intellectual Principle is

that the second struggles to attain the Good, and thus the journey motif continues to be central.

Actually, these divine emanations form a hierarchy of

values. The creative overflow from the divine source becomes pro­

portionately weaker as it moves down through the scale of creation:

"The extent to which the contents of the world are animated by

the Soul varies infinitely, so that nature presents us with a divine chain of being, an unbroken series of ascending and de- scending values." Plotinus, unlike his master, followed the soul's diffusion down through the vegetable and mineral levels.

What this chain ultimately means is that here there is a close link between body and soul, or matter and spirit—especially high on the scale, where the soul of man is very pure and yet fused in the body: the feeling of Platonic aloofness is clearly not here.

Existence of the body, in effect, is necessary for the soul to -39- actualize its potential. In the Aristotelian sense, one needs the other:

Never did body subsist with soul away, never was their Matter unelaborate;.... In the absence of body, soul could not have gone forth, since there is no other place to which its nature would allow it to descend. Since go forth it must, it will 30 generate a place for itself; at once body, also, exists.

Nevertheless, the notion of dualistic worlds is funda­ mental in Thé Ennéads. This is especially evident in the discussion of Beauty in the first book: "When he [mankind] perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards 31 That they tell of." However, his concern for the archetypal world of pure forms does not make him a dualist—not at all. Plotinus 32 has a strong conviction about the indestructibility of matter; his is as much an immanent world of Aristotle’s. He is very clear 33 in assuring us that "all is here that is There." In fact, the world of pure forms can be reached by man: mystical union between the soul and the One is now possible. It is interesting that God, as He was conceived by the Greeks, was not a God of Love (this is purely a Christian innovation); and yet, because he was immanent and because union was possible, Platonists in the seventeenth 34 century identified the One with Love.

This then is essentially the extent of Greek philosophy that is relevant to an examination of Vaughan’s poetry. Some of the concepts, however, come to him in similar or modified forms ^40-

through Christian hands. But before we discuss these ideas in

connection with Christian.thought, we must acknowledge a second

group of ancients—the Roman Stoics—who were also-^influential,

somewhat more directly influential than the Greeks. They ob­

jected to many of the notions related to the four concepts under

discussion. Their pantheism would have nothing to do with Plato’s

archetypal world of pure forms; more strongly than Aristotle,

they rejected the notion of separate Ideas, and with it the idea of

pre-existence and recollection. The soul must rely totally on

sensation, for it is born without a priori knowledge—the concept

John Locke was to use as keystone in his Essay Concerning Human

Understanding at the end of the seventeenth century. But the metaphysical disparity between the two philosophies belies the

essential affinity. The similarity of spirit and attitude in both creates a common ground to which one might be drawn in search of encouragement and consolation.

Since the Latin writers, who have the greatest impact on Vaughan, represent varying degrees of Stoicism, it is essential 35 to discuss briefly a few of their beliefs. Seneca, after all, is an avowed Stoic; Horace, an Epicurean with Stoical leanings; and both, Boethius and Ovid are frequently discussed within a Stoical context. Given the world-view of Plato and Plotinus, we can easily understand Vaughan's attraction to these writers. To a world es­ sentially composed of eternal absolutes, his reaction might well -41-

be an increased awareness of determinism or inevitability; to a

world in which the soul feels a strong sense of exile, a need to

control excessive emotion is a predictable response. Both of

these elements—determinism and self-control—are central in

Stoical thought.

The Stoics have carried to an extreme Aristotle's fusion of form with matter. The sense of Platonic aloofness is non­ existent: "God has a body, and the world constitutes this body.

The universe is a living being, of which God is thes'oul, the governing intelligence, the sovereign law, the motive principle, 3 6 the animating warmth." In this world, where God working through nature has decreed all things, resignation to fate is essential.

The emphasis the Stoics placed on discovery of self and of nature is reminiscent of the notions held by the three Greek philosophers already under discussion. However, in Stoicism the reason for discovery is to understand God's law and to resign ourselves to it.

Man's reason and natural law are identical—to follow either one is to follow what God has decreed. For the Stoics, nature basically serves a twofold purpose: 1) as a "symbolic standard" it suggests qualities of the good life (such as constancy); and 2) as a "literal standard" man is physically part of it, and is designed to work out

37 his assigned task in it.

The Stoic sense of determinism and the dual significance nf nature, along with the four Greek concepts that we have been -42- discussing, eventually fused with Christianity largely through the efforts of St. Augustine. In De Vera religione liber Urius, he speaks of the Father who both creates and then attracts his creation:

Wherefore, let us adore in Him and with Him that very Truth, which is in no part dissimilar to Him, and is the form of all things, which were created by Him alone, and which strive to attain to Him alone.

The circular process of creation, the basis for close kinship among those created, the dualistic worlds, where truth exists apart from the world of sense—are all here. Nevertheless, the world of sense is important when used as a means of attaining knowledge of God: "From those things which we love here, let us the more long for Him: that by the very love we may purify our

39 hearts by faith." For Augustine, the search for God involves discovery of the external world; but most importantly, it involves movement into the self. The contemplative world is, in fact, central to his thought:

Recognize in thyself something within, within theyself. Leave thou abroad both thy clothing and thy flesh; descend into thyself;...for not in the body but in the mind was man made in the image of God. In his own simili^de let us seek God: in his own image recognize the Creator.

All of this has much in common with Platonism, and 41 Augustine is quick to acknowledge his source. And yet, certain

Greek conceptions have been modified. And a consideration of these is of special importance In connection with an examination of

Vaughan's religious conversion later on. The most obvious -43- rnodification involves the question of innate ideas. : A priori knowledge has not been discounted by Augustine, rather he changes

the means by which this knowledge is acquired. Since there is no prior existende for the soul, it cannot recollect what it has not experienced. Instead, Augustine finds that God endowed the soul at 42 birth with eternal ideas. Another distinguishing notion that separates Augustinian Christianity from Neoplatonism concerns the link between the two worlds. Plato's God created lesser gods to mediate; Augustine finds God's coequal in the mediator of Christ.

Both of these modifications attempt to weaken man's autonomy; they represent Augustine's attempt to make him less self-centered.

He objected to the notion of pre-existence precisely because it suggested the eternality of man. His insistence that man must depend on Christ for salvation further strengthens this theo- centricity. In fact, most of the distinguishing concepts seem to . 43 move m this direction.

In The English Moralists, Basil Willey lists additional distinguishing qualities of Christianity worth mention, because they will have especial relevance for our study of Vaughan's sacred poems. However, with Willey one must be cautious, for his point of view is decidedly Christian, and at times he tends to label as original what is in fact traditional. He isolates three uniquely

Christian concepts: 1) a deep conviction of sin, 2) a technique of redemption, and 3) the belief in historical revelation. The -44-

first teaches that the body is corrupted and that the flesh is

strong and stains the soul. This is precisely the assumption

held by Augustine: "If the soul and the reason serve not God, as

He has taught them how to serve Him, they can never have true

dominion over the body, nor over the passions. No, those things

which [the soul] seems to account virtues, and thereby to sway her

affections, if they be not all referred unto God, are indeed vices 44 rather than virtues." Willey treats the reduction of the ego as

a characteristically Christian process and the dilation of the "45 human "soul to god like proportions as typically Greek. But,

the distinction is more accurately between the Christian and the

Aristotelian. The quotation from Augustine, in fact, sounds rather

Platonic, with its emphasis on the two worlds, along with the as­ sumption that man should naturally move toward his source.

Willey explains further that Christian salvation is unique, for it demands repentance and humility, in contrast to

Aristotle’s "self-effort and self-dilation." Certainly the contrast is valid, but the Platonic nexus should not be overlooked. Both humility and repentance seem naturally to grow out of a general sense of the souj's exile and isolation during its sojourn, which is a pervasive concept in Greek philosophy. Additionally, hu­ mility and repentance are logical reactions to an unstable world composed of reflections, where nothing can be counted on with cer­ tainty except the world above. -45-

The element of revelation is the one distinctive dif­

ference between the two traditions.• Willey observes that "accord­

ing to St. Augustine...the Greeks did teach much of the mysterious

doctrine, and rightly exhorted man to assimilate himself to the

divine nature, but omitted the downward movement whereby God

assimilated himself to human nature." The necessity of God’s

initiative is thoroughly ingrained in the thought of seventeenth-

century religious writers. The speaker in Donne’s "14Sonnet," for

example, is unable to cross the gulf alone between himself and God

conversion is contingent upon divine ravishment. Similarly,

Herbert pleads for "Thyysilk twist" to be lowered before ascent is possible. The introduction of divine intervention in turn brings with it two additional elements. The first is faith—faith in Christ’s redemptive power. The second is love: "The old con­ flict between reason and impulse was to be transcended by turning

/ "7 the affections themselves in the direction of God." Yet even here, with the notion of love and intervention, the roots are deep in Greek soil. Willey himself fails to recognize that two Plot- inian ideas discussed earlier—immanent unity of the One and mystical union of the soul—at the very least set in motion the downward movement. Nowhere is the Graeco-Christian synthesis more clearly stated than in these two ideas, where intervention is an extension of immanence and love an extension of union.

Since Augustine, different Christian thinkers have -46-

alternately stressed the Neoplatonic aspect and the Aristotelian.

While it is not the Intention of this discussion to trace the ideas

through to the seventeenth century, but rather to identify and to clarify the relevant classical, Graeco-Christian and Christian concepts, perhaps three Christian thinkers in particular might be mentioned in passing, in order to give some idea about the form of several Graeco-Christian concepts as they entered the seventeenth century. The three are. St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas, and

Thomas a’ Kempis—Bonaventura and a’ Kempis will be discussed be­ cause each was tremendously influential; Aquinas because his think­ ing was influential and because his Aristotelianism tends to bal­ ance out the Neoplatonism of the other two.

St. Bonaventura is Neoplatonic in belief. The dominant ideas in The Mind's Road to God involve the First Good, unity, the desire to return to the source and a strong sense of kinship:

"The highest good is above us, none can be made blessed unless he ascend above himself, not by ascent of the body but by that of 48 his heart." Some indication of his strong belief in the dual- istic worlds is suggested by this division between the body and heart. But this division is concomitant with his peculiar brand of mysticism. George Boas calls attention to this somewhat obvious yet significant point in St. Bonaventura*s philosophy: "God may be seen in His traces in the physical world. This is the basis of what sometimes is called natural theology....We can actually see -47-

49 the traces of God about us in the order of natural law." We

will find presently that Thomas a' Kempis has given himself over

totally to the exploration of his own soul. St. Bonaventura, how­

ever, is convinced that

They [God’s creations] are signs divinely bestowed which, I say, are exemplars or rather exemplifications set before our yet untrained minds, limited to sensible things, so that through the sensibles which they see they may be carried forward to the intelligibles which they do no see, as if by signs to the sig­ nified. o

The invisible,, eternal world is clearly the goal, while, at the

same time, the physical means to that goal is important.

St. Thomas, of course, fuses body and soul, making one

dependent upon the other. He distinguishes between real or essential

beings and mere abstractions of thought (such as lameness or cor­

ruption) .51 For St. Thomas, the First Principle created a world

that is potentially perfect and essentially real. And the soul's

journey back to its source is fundamental to the concept of po­

tential; we are all potentially perfect and our purpose is to real- 52 ize that divine potential.

Certainly for Thomas a’ Kempis God can be found in His

creation, but the emphasis is not here, as it was for Aquinas and

Bonaventura. In The Imitation of Christ, the movement is decidedly

away from the temporal world toward contemplation and solitude.

"His voice," Irwin Edman observes, "is that of a man who has re­ nounced the world but feels no loss because he has found a vocation and a goal: the union of the soul with God."^^ Thomas’ work, in

54 effect, is a composite of Platonic, Neoplatonic and Augustine thought. -48-

Any attempt to detèrmine the extent of classical in­

fluence on Vaughan’s poetry is hazardous because of the number of

concepts shared by the two traditions. Vaughan is often influenced

by both the Christian and classical traditions. An idea, such as

nature-as-emblem, which he met directly through Roman writers,

reappears in Silex Sciritillans, but now with an announced biblical

source. When Vaughan deals with one of the four major Graeco-

Christian concepts, the direct influence is probably Christian; but

in the light of Vaughan’s formal education, it is never easy to say

that this influence is entirely biblical. The purely Platonic

ideas about pre-existence and the natal star might have been trans­ mitted to Vaughan through Boethius, who at once expresses Platonic and Christian ideals,55 through Christian-classical writers in the seventeenth century, such as the Cambridge Platonists, or directly through classical readings. Even the poet's interest in purely

Christian ideas expressed in Silex Sciritillans cannot be traced solely to one tradition. The three concepts that represent the extent of Vaughan's religious conversion, for example, closely parallel classical ideas with which he had dealt in preceding col­ lections.

Most of the conceptions under discussion are,regardless of their immediate source, fundamental to Vaughan’s metaphysics and largely responsible for his ethical point of view. The question of how far Vaughan is classical—-which involves determining the -49- relevance of these concepts to his poetry and their relation­ ship to his moral philosophy-—will be explored in the follow­ ing chapters. ¿50-

CHAPTER III

POEMS(1646): TWO RELATED JOURNEYS

The major concepts that inform the metaphysics in Poems,

With thé Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished-—the dualistic worlds,

the single ©ürce to which all returns, the emanations of the soul—

have their origin in the Graeco-Christian tradition. Frequently * ' the immediate influence on Vaughan is the Christian church. At

other times, he seems to be affected directly by classical writers

or indirectly by popular ideas that make up the intellectual milieu

of the first half of the seventeenth century. There is also a kind

of naturalness about these concepts in Vaughan's poems that cannot

be entirely accounted for in external influences. James Notopoulos'

term "Natural Platonism" seems to speak to this point:

It is not identity of their [the writers'] philosophies with that of Plato which determines whether they are Platonists, but rather similar awareness, doubt, question, and intuition into the same problems that Plato first fully discovered.

This "natural" classicism is felt in Vaughan's doubts and questions about the reality of the phenomenal world and its relation to the world beyond, in his strong interest in sentient nature and the soul's sojourn, and in his awareness of corruption and sin as well 2 as virtue and purity. Since the native and acquired ideas often work simultaneously in Vaughan's thogght, an examination of the classical influence on his metaphysics must be limited to showing merely how far Vaughan is classical. -51-

Of the three concepts, that of the dualistic worlds

is the most persistent and most fundamental. And frequently in

the collection the dichotomy is pitched in terms of the body-soul

relationship. This division occurs most clearly in "To Amoret, of

thè difference * twixt him, and : other Lovers ; and what trué Love is

Here, the refined souls, with their "mutual fire," are opposed to

sublunary lovers, who depend solely on physical gratification. In

order clearly to separate the two worlds, and distinguish between

the two kinds of lovers and their experiences, Vaughan appears to

identify the physical lovers with the Aristotelian concept of ter­

restrial generation, a concept which accounts for the instability

of matter in terms of the sun’s influence on the four elements

The perpetual transformation of the elements into one another produced by the sun's approach and retreat explains...how it is that the four elements have not permanently taken up their abode in the four concentric spheres to which they belong and towards which they always move. It is the sun’s movement that produces interchange of element with element and thus holds the sublunary world together.

The sun affects the four elements by continually changing one into

the form of another, such as water into air. Aristotle emphasizes

the cohesive force of the process and the conservation of matter.

Vaughan appears to take the concept and shift the emphasis to his own particular interest;

Marke, when the Evenings cooler wings Fanne the afflicted ayre, how the faint Sunne, Leaving undone, What he begunne Those spurious flames suckt up from slime, and earth To their first, low birth, Ifesignes, and brings. -52-

They shoot their tinsill beames, and vanities, Thredding with those false fires their way; But as you stay And see them stray, You loose the flaming track, and subt'ly they Languish away, And cheate your-Eyes.

Just so base, Sublunarie Lovers hearts....(p. 12. 1-15)

Vaughan describes a moment at dusk when mist rises from the ground

and the last shafts of the sun's light flicker and disappear. The

sun retreats, leaving undone the task of converting the earth to

another element. Instead of stressing the conservation of matter,

Vaughan points up its relative insignificance, as the "false fires"

stray, languish, and "cheat your Eyes." Rather than emphasizing the

cohesive force of the process, he alludes to the hierarchy of crea­

tion, with reference to "low birth," and thus distinguishes be­

tween the physical world of sublunary lovers and the changeless, absolute world of refined lovers, referred to later in the poem.

Similarly, Vaughan appears to be concerned with the dual- istic-world concept in the poem that begins the collection, "To My

Ingenuous Friend, R.W." The first sixteen lines, in fact, seem to set up the world of flux and transience, which consists of "loath'd noise," a "clam'rous barre," and corrupt lawyers. This "base niggard world" is unstable and insignificant; it seems to have much in common with the "tinsill" world in the earlier allusion, and is well suited to the limited, physical aspirations of the sublunary lovers. The other world, changeless and eternal, is represented -53-

here by the Classical Elysian fields. The dissimilarity between

the two is emphasized by the suddenness with which Vaughan shifts

from one to the other—both are juxtaposed within the same stanza.

The means of attaining the Elysian fields rings a fam­

iliar note:

Our soules shall meet, and thence will they (Freed from the tyranny of clay) With equall wings and ancient love Into the Elysian fields remove, Where in those blessed walkes they'le find, More of thy Genius, and my mind (24-29).

The classical overtones arise out of a reference to "ancient love"

and Elysium; more importantly, however, Vaughan deals with ideas

discussed also in Thè Phaedo: "the release of the soul from chains

of the body" and the winging of divinely related souls to a world

beyond where they will meet and converse. Vaughan’s reference to

the "wiser few," who suspect "That spirits after death affect" a 4 communion (21-22), is also paralleled in Thè Phàèdo. Plate makes

reference to it in terms of the "lover of wisdom," who, like the

"wiser few," is in full knowledge of the soul’s activity after its

emancipation from clay. The division of the two worlds is a central

concept to these parallel ideas of the souls' imprisonment, their

union, and the movement beyond. -

One might suppose that in the "Rhapsodie," which seems to be merely a light poem about drunkenness, none of the same ideas would recur. But even here, where the speaker is becoming pro­

gressively drunker and where ironically the sheep, hills and -54- distant stars lose their innocence because they form part of the perpetual landscape of the painted ceiling of the Globe Tavern,

Vaughan suggests the dual-world dichotomy. The division of the two worlds is brought out more clearly farther on when the speaker compares the serenity and simplicity of the rural life, where a shepherd can contemplate a world "free of all cares," with urban prostitution and the general corruption of an affluent London society.

Near the end of the poem, the speaker confesses his inebriation but continues the distinction: "That big with Sack, and mirth we may retyre / Possessours of more soules, and nobler fire; / And by the influxe of this painted Skie, / And labour’d formes, to higher matters flye" (65-68). The reference parallels the Platonic concept of friendship or love found in The Symposium, where two souls join and, in this sense, possess one another. The result of the relationship and the rationale for it is, we are told, to ennoble and improve both souls. It ennobles both as they approach truth and thus "to higher matters flye."^

For Vaughan, however, the two worlds are not completely unrelated, since the phenomenal world can share qualities with the absolute. Just how interrelated the two worlds can be is reflected in the metamorphosis of nature suggested in the last • ■:.'/? ■■ original poem of the collection, "Upon the Priorie Grove.” The first phrase of the poem, "Haile sacred shades," is to be taken -55- literally. The Grove is sacred in the sense that it is not limited by the physical restrictions of degeneration and decay.

The last few lines of the poem which are addressed to the grove, seem to have reference to the Classical and Christian notion about the ultimate restoration of the phenomenal world:

From hence transplanted, thou shalt stand A fresh Grove in th’ Elysian Land; Where (most blest paire!) as here on Earth Thou first didst eye our growth, and birth; So there againe, thou ’It see us move In our first Innocence and Love. (29-34)

Unlike Aristotle’s concept discussed earlier, which provides for the conservation of matter through flux, Vaughan’s is dealing here with restoration. And there are a number of sources from which this notion might have come. Virgil's "Eclogue IV" seems to be one likely source, for it not only presents the theory but des­ cribes a setting quite similar to the one defined here by Vaughan

(5-26). Virgil’s theory deals with the ultimate replacement of the age of iron with the age of gold, when "the great circle of the centuries begins again." Although it seems unlikely that this image of the golden age is behind Vaughan’s initial association of the grove with "Chaste Treasure" of the wealth, both poets do see an age of purity and innocence. Both deal with a sacred land, both with a time when poison ivy will wither, when "vines" will become tame, when the sun will reign, herbs flourish, and love pre­ vail. For Vaughan, then, nature as well as the soul can bridge the gap between the two worlds. -56-

Up to this point, our discussion centers around Vaughan’s absolute world that is to be attained by the soul and by nature at a future date—a time when the soul departs from this clay and when the natural world is restored. But there is also an early suggestion of a backward yearning toward a pre-existent state of the soul. Although the Platonic concept of pre-existence is dealt with at some length in Mount of Olives (pp. 282-284) and is more clearly expressed in later collections, Vaughan seems to show signs of an early interest in the idea here, especially in the phrase from the last quoted stanza, "Our first Innocence."?

Granted the "Grove" looks forward to a time when the lovers can return to a place where their love relationship first started, and therefore, in the Grove’s ultimate restoration, they can exper­ ience again the purity of early love. But to limit the meaning of the phrase to the early stages of a love encounter is to overlook 8 what would have been a familiar classical connotation. Vaughan more obscurely alludes to a similar idea in "Ingenuous Friend," at a time when the friends have actually gained Elysium: "And here our soules bigge with delight / Of their new state will cease their flight: / And now the last thoughts will appeare" (51-53). "Last thoughts" echoes the classical concept that pure ideas held in pre­ existence are progressively forgotten as one grows older and be­ comes enslaved by these "lower elements," but are remembered once again in afterlife. The connection between "Last thoughts” and -57-

the classical concept is clearer when it is recalled that the

thoughts will appear to those experiencing an "ancient love" (25).

The dual-world concept—especially the idea that the 9 lower elements can enslave and imprison the high-born soul —appears

to be a dominant theme no less in the sacred poetry than the secular

This fear of enslavement comes out clearly in "To Amoret Weeping," as the speaker expresses thanks for his lack of wealth and po­

ssessions :

But.grant some richer Planet at my birth Had spyed me out, and measur'd so much earth Or gold unto my share; I should have been Slave to these lower Elements, and seen My high borne soul flagge with their drosse, & lye A pris'ner to base mud, and Alchymie (21-26).

The ideas about the corrupting influence of gold and the soul's imprisonment probably come to Vaughan directly from the Christian church. The two ideas are discussed also in Thé Laws. What is perhaps most interesting about this Dialogue is that many of its major concepts, including the idea about gold and imprisonment, are paralleled in Vaughan's poem. Gold, of course, had been banned from the Republic, for the citizen cannot be "very rich and very good at the same time."'’'^ Both Vaughan and Plato are similarly distressed about the influence of gold, and both condemn usury.

In the same paragraph that he discusses the very rich and very good, Plato observes that no one shall "lend money upon interest."

Similarly, Vaughan condemns "Dam'ned usurie,” and does so in the same stanza where he discusses the corrupting influence of gold, -58- giving the same reason as Plato, that money Is a bad influence on the soul. The prison imagery that Vaughan uses here (the soul is "pris’ner to base mud") also recurs throughout the dialogues, and usually for the same reason—to clarify the soul-matter re­ lationship. H

Even at moments when Vaughan is not consciously dis­ tinguishing one world from the other, the division seems implicit.

For example, the light poem "Song" builds upon this idea without actually referring to it:

Amyntas goe, thou art undone. Thy faithfull heart is crost by fate; That Love is better hot begunne, Where Love is come to love-too late; Had she professed hidden fires, Or shew'd one knot that tyed her heart: I could have quench'd my first desires, And we had only met to part (1-8).

Underlying the reference in the second line to star-crossed lovers is the concept of the determining influence of the natal star. Since the theme of star-crossed lovers was common in the seventeenth cen­ tury, especially in poems inspired by the Petrarchan love tradition,

Vaughan might have received the idea from any number of contempor- 12 ary poets who influenced his early work. It also seems clear that Vaughan was seriously working with this concept shortly after the publication of Poems in the classical translations from Boethius.

Underlying such an idea is the Platonic concept that God has "assigned each soul to a star...and declared to them the laws and destiny."^

Vaughan will become more seriously concerned with it in Olor Iscanus; -59-

in "Song," he shows an early interest. The previous quotation from

"Weeping"--some richer Planet at my birth / Had spyed me out"—is

an example of Vaughan more seriously entertaining the idea. In

each instance in Poems, the notion is meaningful within the larger

context of the dual-world concept, on which he had been playing numerous variations.

Almost as fundamental to his thought as the belief in two worlds is what seems to be a passion to discover what is of most value in life—a desire in Vaughan's poetry which takes the form of a quest or a journey. In his 1646 collection, the quest moves in two directions, the second a consequence of the first: 1) a search to find the eternal in the midst of the temporal world, and 2) an attempt to discover in the temporal world the good life. The last links Vaughan closely with the area of social criticism and ethical conduct. The first more naturally grows out of his desire to sepa­ rate and relate the two worlds.

The first quest is closely related to the concept dis­ cussed in the last chapter—that of a single source from which all flows and to which all returns. This quest, actually the soul’s return to its source, appears evident in the over-all arrangement of the collection. This movement, which has gone unrecognized by most critics of Vaughan, seems to define itself as a quest for knowledge of the archetypal world of light. The collection as a whole is an early example of Vaughan’s beginning to work from a -60-

classical premise that for man complete knowledge is unattainable,

and yet, in life the soul is able to gather valuable fragments of 16 wisdom. There are moments in Silex Sciritillans when Vaughan appears to experience a kind of direct Plotinian union; but for now, he must be a collector of pieces, beautiful though they are, and make his way with the aid of another soul, nature, or his own reason.

An examination of the first and last poems gives us a clearer understanding of how the quest tends to inform the entire collection. In the first, "To my Ingenuous Friend, R.W." Vaughan immediately distinguishes between the two worlds. The poem opens hypothetically,

When we are dead, and now, no more Our harmless mirth, our wit, and score Distracts the Towne; when all is spent That the base niggard world hath lent Thy purse, or mine (p. 3, 1-5).

And, still hypothetically, the speaker looks forward to a time when the "souls shall meet...freed from the tyranny of clay" to stroll

"in those blessed walks." Thirteen poems later, "Upon the Priorie

Grove" responds, "Haile sacred shades! coole, leavie House! /

Chaste Treasure of all my vowes." In some respects the Grove is the destination—that which is desired at the beginning of the collection.I? The speaker has by this time in the collection worked his way free of concern about the noise and corruption of the lower world.

While both speak about Elysian fields, the first is at- temptint to find one, the second has reached it. Here, in this -61- last poem, there is reference to past experience—to the speaker’s

"growth and birth"—which seems to refer to the maturing process that takes place throughout the collection of thirteen poems. No longer is the nightingale singing a "sad elegie"; we are reassured in "Priorie Grove" that "henceforth no melancholy flight, / No sad wing" (5-6). The sad nightingale of "Ingenuous Friend" re­ flects the psychological state of the speaker, who laments the

"inconstant, cruell sex," the object of the sublunary lover; the concluding poem, however, deals with the birth of a deeper kind of love and of an "Innocent" union. Even the water of Lethe that is summoned by the sad lover to "drink all sense and cares away," is no longer necessary, for now the senses are less significant, though still important, and the sadness has disappeared. Instead, the water of the mythological river is replaced by "gentle show'rs" and "tears of Heaven." While the tears will make the grove decay, they also help to emphasize the sacredness alluded to in the first line. By the end of the collection, Vaughan has come nearer to finding the eternal amid the temporal and seems to have chosen what he has come to value highest—the absolute world where flux and decay have no place.

Between the first and last, Vaughan arranges eleven poems that form what may be described as levels of the soul’s awareness, as it struggles free of earthly distractions and moves toward the eternal; even as did the soul described in Thé Timàeus, -62- which was assured that, if "he lived well during his appointed time 1 o [he] was to return and dwell in his native star." We should bear in mind that the collection appears to represent, not a series of clearly progressive stages, but a general movement away from the 19 strictly physical toward the spiritual. The arrangement of the original poems appears to fall, into three groups reflecting three stages; the first is physical adoration and consists of poems one through five; the second (six and seven) deals with the significance of the intellect; and the third (eight through thirteen) represents a spiritual commitment.

The five poems of the first group share the common fears, disappointments and concessions peculiar to the sublunary lover; he who depends upon "tinsill beames" and "false fires" and must ex­ perience the cruelty and sadness that is the way of the flesh. The

"inconstant, cruell sex" of the first poem, already discussed, is echoed in the second, "Les Amours," where the lover playfully re­ alizes that he should have "quit my sinnes, that durst believe /

True joyes in a changing face" (4-5). After realization that he has over-valued a world where flux and mutability reign, he asks the woman to regenerate his ashes after death by "this influx from that quickning eye, / By secret, pow'r, which none can spie"

(17-18). The emphasis is on things of this world-—on the tears she is to shed and on the regeneration of the body. The speaker wishes to make progress of a physical nature, which is a concern -63-

for the flesh that is shared by the first poem.

The following poem, "To Amoret. The Sigh," like the one that preceded, deals with physical beauty that kills the un­ requited lover. The fourth poem, "To His Friend," picks up where the second ends, and calls the misguided lover a "Doating

Idolater!" But Vaughan here goes beyond a mere rejection of sensuous adoration. The poem itself is a call to physical action in an attempt to win the woman’s favor:

Aske Lover, ere thou dyest; let one poor breath Steale from thy lips, to tell her of thy Death; Doating Idolater! can silence bring Thy Saint propitious? or will Cupid fling One arrow for thy palenes? leave to trye This silent Courtship of sickly eye; Witty to tyranny: She too well knowes This but the incense of thy private vowes, That breaks forth at thine eyes, and doth betray The sacrifice thy wounded heart would pay; Aske her, foole, aske her, if words cannot move The language of thy teares may make her love (1-12).

Within this physical context the religious connotation of "Idolater" is picked up in the fourth line by "Saint," in the eighth by

"incense," and in the tenth with "sacrifice." The argument is clearly pitched in terms associated with the spirit—and it is the spirit that is explicitly discussed in the last level of the soul’s awareness.

The next poem of the group, "Song," deals with a woman who delights in the lover’s pain; here again, the speaker is guilty of placing too much value on her "Angels face." If the language in these five poems has been somewhat conventional and trite, so -64- also is the love. But the rest of the collection depicts a deepening sensitivity of the soul as.it moves toward wisdom—the

"growth and birth" to which the last poem of the collection alludes.

The speaker is now ready to throw off his old set of values after having experienced the vicissitudes of a changing, un­ stable, inconstant world. And this process of shifting the object of his desire—in this case, from the physical to the mental— parallels the argument in the Symposium. Desire, we are told, is not repressed, but rather redirected. By the time we reach the sixth poem, "To Amoret, Walking in a Starry Evening," the speaker like the dweller of the Plafenic Cave, has decided that life’s essence is found in an intellectual quest and that the soul alone has the power of realizing this essence. An indication of this new intellectual commitment is found in the last stanza:

For sure such two conspiring minds, Which no accident, or sight, Did thus unite; Whom no distance can confine, Start, or decline, One, for another, were design’d (19-24).

We have come a considerable distance since the concern of the first poem about the "Cruell sex." The three concepts found here—that the truly significant union is of the soul, that the union is de­ termined by a power which has its source in another world where the two souls originate, and that this union renders the spatial and temporal elements virtually insignificant—all find their source in classical thought.21 -65-

The next poem, "To Amoret Gone from him," as the title

suggests, presents a physical situation in which the speaker can

apply the notion he formulated in "Starry Evening." In this sense,

the two poems form a close unit, with the second offering a sig­

nificant addition. The human soul learns that it is not alone in

the universe, but that in fact all creation (including rocks,

plants, and animals) is interfused with a "tye of influence," and

that this immanence tends to unite all in a single harmony. For

Vaughan, as for Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, the fusion in

nature ("the loose tye") is weaker than in man. But this is not

to suggest that in this early collection creation is sentient.

Later on the speaker refers to a loadstone that aspires toward an

object ("to Amoret of the difference," p. 13 11. 29-30) or, in

another poem, deals with a woodbine that is an "Embleme of her

love" ("Upon the Priorie Grove," p. 15 11. 13-14). Not until Olor

Iscanus, however, does nature become clearly sentient. And by

Silex Scintillàns, stones possess intelligence and record the sins of man ("The Stone," p. 515 1. 20ff).

The source of the concept about sentient nature is clas­ sical. While in Thé Timaeus Plato observes that the soul is

"interfused everywhere," his discussions in general support a fusion that descends as low as the animal level, but does not em­ brace the realm of plants and minerals. This is where Aristotle and Plotinus leave Plato, for in them the fusion does in fact -66-

touch all matter. In thé Eririead III, Plotinus assumes the personae

of the world and categorically states: "All that is within me

strives toward the Good....For from that Good all the heavens de­

pend, with all my own Soul and the Gods that dwell in my every

part, and all that lives and grows, and even all in me that you 22 may judge inanimate."

The first fifteen lines of "To Amoret gone from him" do

not go this far. Vaughan presents the river and flowers as mourn­

ing the sun’s absence. We are reminded that nature does not for­

get its allegiance:

If Creatures then that have no sence, But the loose tye of influence, (Though fate, and time each day remove Those things that element their love) At such vast distance can agree, Why, Amoret, why should not wee (19-24).

Such allegiance in this first collection, of course, comes very close to conventional hyperbole; but it also seems to suggest an early interest in nature, which will reappear in later poems with classical associations.

What this poem shares with the one that precedes are references to the sudden insignificance of physical distance and the "tye of influence" that helps fuse the two worlds. And for the first time in the collection Vaughan, using classical imagery, attempts to establish the relationship between the two worlds. Plato 23 speaks of one world being a reflection of the other. For Vaughan also this world is one of mere reflection: Nature is represented -67- by streams and flowers that, "Like absent friends, point to the

West, / And on the weake reflection feast" (17-18).

The third level, which represents a kind of spiritual commitment, begins with the next poem, "A Song to Amoret." Much as in the preceding poem, nature is represented as a model, both in the faithfulness of the sun "wedded to the Sphere" and in the temperateness of mild April. The central interest of the poem shifts to a divinely inspired love. Similar to the distinction drawn in The Symposium between the common love of body and heavenly 24 love of soul, Vaughan's describes the love of the outward form and intellectual love of the refined mind: "Fortune and beauty thou mightest find....But my true resolved minde, / They shall never come nigh" (17-20). Significantly, the poem ends,

For I not for an hour did love, Or for a day desire, But with my soule had from above, This endles holy fire (21-24), 25 which echoes the Platonic notion of divine inspiration.

"An Elegy" and "A Rhapsodie" are both less serious poems and do not advance the general movement toward a spiritual commit­ ment. The second poem, with its use of the Platonic concept of friendship, has already been dealt with. Possibly, the drinking bout represents a reaction to disappointment in the love relation­ ship, and therefore, a falling back to an earlier position. "An

Elegy," as Marilla observes, is an ironic.poem about the death of a love affair. The first six lines discuss the speaker's sighs -68-

and tears as they become a "legacye / To after-Lovers"; the

remainder concern the self-induced infatuation of the speaker. In

all, the poem represents ground lost in the soulls progression. But what has not been fully recognized is its core of classical thought.

Some critics have pointed out the Pythagorean theory of the soul's transmigation in Vaughan’s phrase "Metempsuchosis of Love," and the neo-platonic notion that love gets its source and power from the eye in "A pledge to Cupid for a quicker dart, / to arme those eyes against my selfe."

But in addition, what Harrison says about Spenser’s

"An Hymn in Honor of Love" is equally true of Vaughan's "Elegie," namely, that the lover refashions or creates the visual image of 27 his beloved. The irony is that those qualities that the speaker refashions in his imagination are her breath, cheeks, her skin; in short, those things of the lower elements already discarded in previous poems.

The last three poems reintroduce the idea of divine inspiration first presented in "A Song to Amoret." In the third group, the senses are not only rejected as a viable means of at­ taining knowledge of reality, but Vaughan, in "To Amoret, of the

.difference," echoes Plato's warning in The Phaedo that "in attempt­ ing to consider anything in company with the body she [the soul] is

28 obviously deceived." Vaughan similarly implies that the senses are not to be relied on: -69-

Whil'st I by pow’rfull Love, so much refin’d, That my absent soule the same is, Carelesse to misse, A glaunce, or kisse, Can with those Elements of lust and sence, Freely dispence, oq And court the min (22-30).

The last stanza of this poem reinforces the ideas of the divine

spirit permeating the universe (through the loadstone figure) and

the notion of the soul’s spiritual affinity:

Thus to the North the Loadstones move, And thus to them th’ enamour'd steel aspires: Thus, Amoret, I doe affect: And thus by winged beames, and mutuall fire, Spirits and Stars conspire, And this is LOVE 929-35).

The soul now becomes that which joins together the two worlds.

It temporarily resides on earth and has the ability to conspire

with the pure and real world of the natal star. Love, then, is

identified with the desire to contemplate the bright region of 30 being, and it is the universal binding force. The "winged beams"

are, of course, one aspect of the Classical conception discussed in

the previous chapter, namely, the soul's yearning to return to its 31 source, from which it flows and to which it returns.

If we read the next poem, "To Amoret Weeping," as a

lover's disagreement over insufficient funds (Marilla does just that), the fundamental idea is lost sight of, namely, the soul appears to remain the central issue. The poem opens with the speaker informing his beloved that the will must control the passion, which -70-

strongly suggests the Classical three-part division of the soul, 32 where the highest and controlling faculty is reason:

Leave, Amoret, melt not away so fast Thy Eyes faire treasure, Fortunes wealthiest Cast Deserves not one such pearle; for these well spent, Can purchase Starres, and buy a Tenement For us in Heaven (1-5).

Couched as it is in such imagery of minting—"melt," "treasure,"

"cast," "spent"—in addition to the references to usury and gold

later on, it is understandable that one might over-value the im­ portance of economics as a theme.

Throughout the collection up to the twelth poem, Vaughan has been concerned with concepts that are either peculiar to clas­ sical thought or common to both it and Christianity, and even ideas that suggest a Petrarchan origin. However, "Weeping" stands apart, for it deals with two ideas peculiar to Christianity: 1) the humble penitence necessary for salvation (1-5), and 2) something very much like Christian Grace, suggested in the following lines about a soul above the common lot:

Thanks to that providence, That arm'd me with a gallant soule, and sence 'Gainst all misfortunes; that hath breath’d so much Of Heav'n into me, that I scorne the touch Of these low things (47-51).

It seems clear from these lines that providence has given the speaker’s soul an uncommon amount of spirit to guide him in virtuous ways. Perhaps this is not grace, but we strongly sense the down­ ward movement of God’s intervention that characterizes Christianity, -71-

to which Willey refers in Thé English Moralists. The difference

between this sense of divine intervention initiated by God and

the impersonal Unmoved Mover of Aristotle is evident, especially

since the former appears in the context of Christian penitence.

We will not hear of them again until the verse translations of

Casimirus at the end of Olor Iscanus and, of course, intermittently

throughout Silex Sciritillâns.

"Haile sacred shades !"--the first words of the last original poem, "Priorie Grove,"—signals the proximity of the initial destination. And a sense of the quest is generated by the kind of relationship Vaughan creates between this poem and the one immediately preceding it. The first three lines of "Grove" help set it up: "Haile sacred shades! coole, leavie House! / Chaste

Treasurer of all my vowes, / And wealth!" The motif of the former poem is here woven into the major movement of the soul: the gold loses all of its baser connotation and now becomes chaste and 33 sacred. The speaker has examined what is real and lasting and how it must be obtained, and has gone some distance toward achiev­ ing it.

The relevance of the extended translation to the rest of the collection is indeed questionable if, like most critics, we 34 approach the first thirteen merely as a group of love poems. Of course they are that, but perhaps not in the most significant sense.

In order to clarify , the essential relevance and to introduce the -72-

second quest, it will be helpful to examine the first eight lines

of Juvenal's "Satyre":

In all the parts of Earth, from farthest West, And the Atlanticke Isles, unto the East And famous Ganges; Few there be that know What’s truly good, and what is good in show Without mistake: For what is’t we desire, Or feare discreetly? to what e’re aspire, So throughly blest; but ever as we speed, Repentance seales the very Act, and deed (1-8).

Immediately we can see that the problem this poem ex­ plicitly sets out to solve ("What’s truly good") is, in effect, a major focus of the earlier poems—as the speaker works his way through petty disappointments and fears of a sublunary lover to an acceptance of the importance of the mind and of the spiritual world beyond. The reference in these last two lines to aborted attempts to find what is good, is similar to the earlier false starts of the first few poems. The basic assumption in the fourth and fifth lines that there are two worlds, one real, the other of mere ap­ pearance or reflection, also links the translation to the original poems. Vaughan's translation of this idea is put into terms of appearance and reality: "What’s truly good;, and what is good in show / Without mistake." The last twenty-eight lines attempt to answer this implied question spiritually and ethically;

What then should man pray for? what is’t that he Can beg of Heaven, without Impiety? Take my advice; first to the Gods commit All cares; for they things competent, and fit For us foresee; besides man is more deare To them, then to himselfe: we blindly here Led by the world, and lust, in vaine assay -73-

To get us portions, wives, and sonnes; but they Already know all that we can intend, And of our Childrens Children see the end. Yet that thou may’st have something to commend With thankes unto the Gods for what they send; Pray for a wise, and knowing soule; a sad Discreet, true valour, that will scorne to adde A needlesse horrour to thy death, that knowes 'Tis but a debt which man to nature owes; That starts not at misfortunes, that can away, And keep all passions under locke and key; That covets nothing, wrongs none, and preferres An honest want before rich insurers; All this thou hast within thy selfe, and may Be made thy owne, if thou wilt take the way; What boots the worlds wild, loose applause? what can Fraile, perillous honours adde unto a man? What length of years, wealth, or a rich faire wife? Vertue alone can make a happy life. To a wise man nought comes amisse: but we Fortune adore, and make our Deity (534-551)

The question asked at the beginning of the poem, "What’s

truly good," is answered here at the end. In fact, these verse para­

graphs offer a two-part answer. The first makes clear that we

should place supreme importance on the archetypal world or God,

and on its determining influence. The second answer, found in the

last stanza, helps to place this translation of Juvenal more sol­

idly within the Platonic tradition. Here Juvenal turns to the soul

and, quite in the Platonic tradition, counsels for the possession

of both wisdom and knowledge. And the speaker is not being redundant

As it is used here, "knowledge" is the possession of truth or what

is truly good (the goal throughout most of the early poems).

"Wisdom," on the other hand, is truth in action, which produces virtuous conduct. A wise and knowing soul, then, is one in -74- possession of truth and one which acts with temperance, courage, and justice. A knowing soul is one that comprehends the full mean­ ing behind the advice offered in the first stanza. A wise soul acts in accordance with the tenets of the second stanza: with courage in the face of death, with temperance in keeping "passions under locke and key," with justice in wronging no one, coveting nothing, and preferring honesty. These two ideas, possession and application of truth, tend to fuse the quests into a single pur­ pose. Virtuous acts, the result of wisdom generated from knowledge,

"alone can make a happy life." And we are reassured that "all this thou hast within thypelf and may / Be made thy owne, if thou will take the way"—if we "will" the proper way, control our pas­ sion and look within ourselves, then life on earth can be happy.

G.M.A. Grube says of Plato that "for him, as for all the Greeks of his day, the center of interest is and remains neither heaven nor hell, but human life." This is, in effect, what Plato tells us in The Republic. Those who are able, he observes, must

"ascend until they arrive at the good," but then "they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and honours, whether they are worth having or not."^

Vaughan's social awareness, reflected in the second quest, paral­ lels this Classical preoccupation. Actually, in Poems the interest in this world develops into social consciousness, as we will presently see: in Olor Iscanus, it becomes a passion for social -75-

reform. Vaughan’s interest in Juvenal seems to be precisely for

the social element. His justification for translating the "Satyre,"

we recall, makes just such a point: "What you see here, is but

the Interest: It is one of his, whose Roman Pen had as much true

Passion for the infirmities of that state, as we should have Pitty,

to the distraction of our owne" ("To all^- ingenious Lovers" p. 2.

15-17).

The world-view found in the 1646 collection at times re­

flects Classical ideas. The two worlds, which have been under dis­

cussion, are joined together by the soul, a kind of divine overflow

that is diffused everywhere in the lower world. The soul’s single

most important function is to find its way back to its source. The

conduct of the. soul on earth, therefore, would appear to be ul­

timately theocentric. The means the soul has while on earth of

attaining the world beyond is through knowledge of truth, or the

Good, or God—all three stand for an absolute world beyond. Poems

also seems to suggest that the quest for the real world is, at 39 least in part, intellectual.

The assurance we get from the translation is that each

soul contains all the wisdom necessary for a happy life. What is

left for man is the job of uncovering and then recognizing—with

the aim of knowing himself. This process of discovery is basically what occurs throughout the collection of 1646 and produces two

interesting results. The first is the translation of the discovery -76-

into overt acts, as we have already suggested in our examinations

of "knowledge" and "wisdom." The second is the creation of an

ideal world. Grube rightly observes, "The more the phenomenal world 'shares in' the absolute Ideal values, the more true"^

and the more harmonious the phenomenal world becomes. Thus, while moral conduct is, in a sense, a product of the first quest, the moral act helps to create a world of absolute values.

Unlike Olor Iscanus, where the quest becomes predomin­ antly secular, the major journey motif in Póéms is largely toward the spiritual—finding the eternal and the absolute. And for this reason, we should not expect the ethical system to be as clearly and as coherently stated as in the more extensive Olor Iscanus.

Nevertheless, we can determine by further examination the import­ ance Vaughan does place on the cardinal virtues of temperance and courage; his dislike of worldly ambition; his keen awareness of and distaste for oppression, either personal or social; his sympathy with the aristocracy; his deep fear of anarchy; and his advocacy of submission to the proper civil authority in order to stabilize social levels. These were ideas much in the air at this time and words like "moderation" and "temperance" were much used. Moreover, the'difficulty of tracing a classical influence increases when it is remembered that "Christian thought Platonized at least since

Augustine; the dividing line is hard to fix even in theology. In 41 .ethics it becomes imperceptible." It is impossible to determine -77-

which of the ideas about virtue, ambition, oppression, or anarchy

are natural, which are acquired, or from what source they are

acquired. This discussion concerning ethics and conduct must be

limited, much like the examination of metaphysics, to pointing out

the extent to which Vaughan is classical. Some of these ideas that

show him responding to this world are expressed strongly in the

early collection, others appear to be germinating and will reach fuller development in later publications.

The virtues of temperance and courage, and even justice which we noted in the "Satyre," remain a point of moral reference in most of the early collection. When, for example, Vaughan is found castigating anarchy, or other forms of social oppression less violent, he offers temperance or moderation as the solution.

Though the virtue of temperance is seldom explicitly mentioned, most of the character defects which Vaughan refers to are caused A 2 by the lack of control and moderation. Money is never rejected or condemned in and of itself but because it leads to excess: it is the "plush riches" or the avaricious usurer that Vaughan will not tolerate. Riches will lead to "medling with King or State"

(p. 14. 44), to lasciviousness, or to the disorderly rise of the mercantile class Cp. 14. 31—33). Ultimately, both Vaughan and

Plato object to the distraction wealth affords, for man should , , 43 never neglect the struggle to regain knowledge of his real home.

This is, of course, the reason Vaughan praises the poor: -78-

But grant some richer Planet at my birth Had spyed me out, and measur'd so much earth Or gold unto my share; I should have been Slave to these Elements (21-24).^

His references to fame (p. 21), ambition (p. 12) and material possession in general (pp. 3, 9, 18, 20) are generally handled with the same sense of priority, not with total disdain.

The virtue of courage is presented by different names.

The possession of it is explicitly praised in the Preface to Poems, published in 1646 in the face of such "course" times. It is this virtue that characterizes the speaker in "Amoret Weeping," while he "dares / What ever fate, or malice can prepare." It is implied in the phrase, "we beare our stars," as the speaker in "Amoret Weep­ ing" echoes the Stoic endurance of Juvenal, as well as writers of the next collection: Boethius, Ovid, and Casimirus.

We have already discussed Vaughan’s concern with harmony or the "tye of influence" in nature. He seems to be as much con­ cerned with harmony or oder in the rational soul of man—the major 45 concernoof The Republic. This appears to be the idea behind his interest in keeping "all passions under lock and key" (p. 541) in the translation from Juvenal. What is to become in Olor Iscanus a reliance on reason as a controlling faculty of the soul is here already felt in the condemnation of jealousy: "But worse than all, a jealous braine confine / His furie to no Law; what rage assigns, /

Is present justice" (480-482). A mind, in other words, that is not restrained by the law of reason, but instead is moved by arbitrary -79-

justice, is the worst of all human conditions. As Plato ob­

serves in The ReptiblidIV, such injustice is the cause of "disease

and weakness and deformity." This awareness of internal oppression

extends in Vaughan to a concern for external oppression or ex­

ploitation of the people. We see it in his attacks against the

injustice and corruption of lawyers (p. 3. 16), against the rise of

the self-interested mercantile class (p. 14. 29-34, 43-45), and

against these general inequities between the rich and the poor

(p. 14. 28-29). The practice of usury and monopolies are other

sources of oppression which disturb Vaughan. At one point in "To

Amoret Weeping" the speaker explains that if his soul were "pris’ner

to base mud" (if he were slave to the lower elements),

I should perhaps eate Orphans, and sucke up A dozen distrest widowes in one Cup; Nay further, I should by that lawfull stealth, (Damn’d Usurie) undoe the Common-wealth; Or Patent it in Soape, and Coales, and so Have the Smiths curse me, and my Laundres too; Geld wine, or his friend Tobacco; and so bring The incens’d subject Rebell to his King (p. 14. 27-34).

The references are to the extreme callousness of the period, to the soap and coal monopolies (the one resulting in the soap riots of 1635), and to the Irish tobacco monopolies. Patents, which were in fact monopolies, were, as C.V. Wedgwood points out, one of the major causes of the widespread hatred of the king in the

30s.46

A popular English ballad writer of the time reflects

this bitter contempt: -80-

Oh how high were they flown with their floorish hope, With their patents for pins, tobacco and sope, False dice and false cards, besides the great fyne They yearly receiv’d by enhancing of wine.^?

The ideas with which Vaughan deals were in the air. But instead ofCondemning the crown, Vaughan reproaches those monopolists who circumvent authorized consent and who thus ^become "Rebell to his king.

The weight of oppression iszas' seriou’s* on the individual soul as it is on the political state.Both Plato and Vaughan find a close correlation between the workings of the two. In the translation of Juvenal,;.where he typically interjects his own senti­ ments, Vaughan’s attacks on democracy and parliament are similar to those implied by Plato's parable of the mutinous ship. Vaughan observes:

So fals ambitious man, and such are still All floating States built on the peoples will: Hearken all you! whom this bewitching lust Of an houres glory, and a little dust Swels to such deare repentance (159-63).

Similarly, Plato speaks about the pending danger in the ship of state, when ruled by the people's will: "The sailors are quar­ relling with one another about the steering—every one is of opin­ ion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are 49 ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary." In the poem and the dialogue, the masses are as ambitious as they are ig­ norant in their moment of glory. Something of Vaughan's sympathies with the aristocracy can be felt here and will be discussed presently. -81-

The second line from Vaughan’s translation, of course,

makes reference to the current political state of England. As we

saw the individual condemned earlier for resorting to arbitrary

justice, similarly we see condemned what Vaughan calls democratic

rule. "Rage," after all, amounts to the same thing as "lust":

both are uncontrolled passions. Among royalists of the time, and

that includes Vaughan, "democracy" was a popular word of contempt, 50 for it was thought to debase the mind and lead to chaos. This

link between passion and the contemporary political situation is a

theme which becomes increasingly prominent in his later poetry.

From what we have said so far about conduct, it seems

clear that the selection of the proper conduct (the virtuous act)

does not depend on an Aristotelian quantitative adjustment—choosing

the midpoint between two extremes. Instead, selection of a proper virtue is determined more by the control of reason over passion.

Instead of balancing an excessive emotion, say lust, with what

Aristotle would term a "defective" emotion, such as apathy, in

order to find the mean, Vaughan typically in one of his poems

speaks of Love that has been "refin’d" and "can with those Elements

of lust and sence, / freely despence, / And court the mind" ("To

Amoret, of thé différénce," p. 13 26-28).

The problem of uncontrolled passions that create dis­ order is closely associated with Vaughan’s fear of anarchy. Though the suggestions are slight, perhaps the clearest example of this -82-

threat is found in "Rhapsodie":

Should we goe now a wandring, we should meet With Catchpoles, whores, & Carts in ev’ry street: Now when each narrow lane, each nooke & Cave, When riotous sinfull plush, and tell-tale spurs Walk Fleet street, & the Strand, when the soft stirs Of bawdy, ruffled Silks, turne night to day; And the lowd whip, and Coach scolds all the way; When lust of all sorts, and each itchie bloud From the Tower-wharfe to Cymbelyne, and Lud, Hunts for a mate, and the tyr’d footman reeles ’Twixt chaire-men, torches, & the hackny wheels (35-46).

The picture is of contemporary England with its noise, over-affluence, and moral decadence—the ruler becomes the coachman and the ruled, pimps and knaves. The disorder of the social state presented here is subtly emphasized by the seemingly irrelevant stanza that immediately follows, which begins with a toast to a

Roman emperor who defied the senate. And in the two stanzas that follow this, the attacks on the Roman senate slowly shift to at­ tacks on the English Parliament. The transition between the coach­ man at Fleet Street and the Strand and the English Parliament per­ haps seems illogical but appears to serve two functions: 1) the disorder in stanza placement parallels the disorder in content, and

2) the juxtaposition of stanzas implies an effect-cause relationship

The blame for the current anarchy rests,in other words, at least partly on the "flatt'rers, and fooles" who now make up the ruling body of England. Though Plato’s argument is more explicit, it is based on the same ideas. He warns that affluence breeds a government based on the peoples’ will, which in turn creates ex­ cessive freedom that can end only in anarchy. Vaughan’s -83- recurrent references to’patience,’ ’endurance,' 'calmness' and

'constance' throughout much of the early collection are his pres­ cription to the individual faced with such an age of chaos and disharmony.52

Throughout the collection a certain sense of class con­ sciousness is present in Vaughan's poetry, or perhaps a sympathy toward the aristocracy. We feel it in his attacks against democ­ racy and the Parliament. We feel it also in his references to

"the wiser few" (p. 3. 21), who understand what in life is truly significant, or to those gentlemen who are "more refined" than the

"common noise" and who have been selectSdiby Vaughan as his proper audience (p. 2. I & 8).53

Many of the metaphysical ideas with which Vaughan deals in Poems—a single source from which all flows and to which all re­ turns, the dualistic worlds, and the emanation of the soul—reappear unchanged in his next collection. Others, such as the concepts of pre-existence and sentient nature, which Vaughan appears to show an interest in without clearly defining or seriously developing, emerge as more serious concerns in Olor Iscanus. Still others, such as his classical response to the world around him, become major pre­ occupations,. '-84- '

CHAPTER IV

OLOR ISCANUS (DEDICATED 1648): A SPECIFIC SOCIAL CONTEXT

All of the metaphysical concepts discussed in the last chapter are employed in Olor Iscanus. But its major concern is with ethics. The first two poems restate those metaphysical con­ cepts finally reached in the preceding collection; and the remain­ ing occasional poems apply them to a number of social situations— contemporary aesthetics, politics,military service, and personal behavior—in which ethical conduct is the central issue. Some­ times two or three poems with a similar theme are grouped together, and sometimes a single poem expresses a theme which is repeated in other poems nearby. And generally within each occasional poem,

Vaughan briefly restates his metaphysical position, applies it to ethics, and treats social conduct at some length.

The difference in metaphysics between the collection of

1646 and Olor Iscanus is one of degree, not kind. An examination of the first two poems in the second collection, for example, clarifies the persistent dualistic world-view. In fact, the poem that opens the collection, "To the River Isca," suggests interesting parallels with the last original poem of the previous collection.

As in "To My IngenuousiFriend, R.W." and "Upon the Priorie Grove," an idealized garden scene provides the setting. There is also the similar suggestion that the phenomenal world will be ultimately 1 restored: —85-

Hence th’ Aunerents say, That, from this sickly aire They passe to Regions more refin'd and faire, To Meadows strow'd with Lillies and thé Rose, And shades whose youthfüll green no pld age knowes, Where all in white they walk, discourse, and Sing (19-23).

The permanence hinted at in the fourth line is similar to that of

the Groves, whose "greene curies" will not experience decay or

turn to "an aged Gray." The passage also sets up a comparison be­

tween the first line and the remaining four (between "sickly aire"

and "Regions more refined"). What we have, essentially, is the

familiar classical distinction between the two worlds.

While Vaughan continues his interest in the ultimate res­

toration of nature, he also remains responsive to the truth that

it imparts, in fact, he becomes even more preoccupied in Olor

Iscanus with the nature-as-emblem concept. Nature, because it is less corrupt, has remained more closely tied to its source than has man and is therefore capable of demonstrating such virtues 2 as faith and constancy. This is hinted at in "To Amoret Gone

From Him," and is suggested in the early parts of "Upon the Priorie

Grove"; it is dealt with more fully in "To the River Isca," "Where

...men shall more faire truth see" (41). And the next thirty-two lines in the poem describe these truths, which are then carefully catalogued for the reader:

Honour, Beautie Faith and Dutie Delight and Truth With Love, and Youth (72-75). -86-

As we will see presently, Vaughan is consciously preparing us in the abstract, for practical application later on in the ethical poems.

The quest motif that became fundamental in Poems is also present in this collection. In "To the River Isca," however, it is not the speaker but the river that becomes the seeker: "In all thy journey to the Main / No nitrous clay, nor Brimstone-vein / 3 Mixe with thy streams" (55-57). Like man, it has a soul and must reject the clay that enslaves—a good lesson for man, and one that is repeated in "The Waterfall" of Silex Sciritillans, where "sublime truths" are found in "thy mystical, deep streams!"

"To the River Isca" concludes where "To My Ingenuous

Friend, R.W." begins, namely, with reference to "Lowd, anxious cares," though here the world of flux is represented, not by taverns and lawyers, but by "dead and dying things (the Common Wares / and showes of time)" (80-81). The poem ends with the hope that the

"showes" of time and war will not disturb the river's borders—which will then become "The Land redeem’d from all disorders!" Such a wish to redeem is an early example of Vaughan’s deep-rooted passion for reform.

We mentioned earlier that the persistent drive toward truth and the almost urgent sense of discovery throughout Poems is restated in this collection. "The Charnel-house," the second poem in Olor Iscanus,seems to be an exception.• Though it does form a -87-

thematic unit with the preceding poem, it is a poem of discovery

in itself. Two concluding remarks in the initial poem, "To the

River Isca," help to define this relationship. The first is in

its statement about freedom from "Cares / for dead and dying things.

Since a charnel-house is, of course, a place for the dead, the

second poem is in this sense a sequel to the first, for it is com-

mited to, not freed from, the dying world. The descriptive lines

that introduce "The Charnel-house" express this kind of relationship

"Frontspeece o'th’ grave and darkness, a Display / of ruin'd man,

and the disease of day" (3-4). The order and harmony of the first

poem (seen especially in the wish to redeem the land from all dis­ order) shifts in the second to a consideration of disharmony and

chaos:"Leane, bloudless shamble, where I can descrie / Fragments of men, Rags of Anatomie" (5-6). The subtle juxtaposition of the poems effectively emphasizes the changelessness and absoluteness of the river, which becomes part of the "Main," and the evanescence of the cemetery, which will shortly decay.

A description of life’s disorder, similar to that in

"Rapsodie," is followed in "The Charnel-house" by the familiar theme of the continual diastole and systole of the phenomenal world:

What a loath’d nothing you shall be one day, As th' Elements by Circulation passe From one to th’ other, and that which first was Is so again, so ’tis with you; The grave And Nature but Complott, what the one gave, The other takes (24-29). -88-

The circular path of the soul, as it moves from and flows toward

its source, we have already observed in The Timaeus. But these

lines for the first time show a side of Vaughan seen before only

in "To Amoret Weeping" and the translation of Juvenal, namely, his

affinity with Stoical thought. The strong sense of fate—-the

speaker’s acceptance of it and adjustment to it—is something Vaughan

began to respond to near the end of the collection of 1646; it

becomes an important theme in Olor Iscanus, especially in the

translations of Ovid and the earlier poems of both Boethius and

Casimirus.

Through the first thirty lines in "The Charnel-house,"

we have seen the speaker develop specific ideas of death and dis­

order, generalize about our "loath’d" nothingness, and suggest the

direction of our real home within the concept of "circularity."

Having once clarified the movement of the soul, he describes the world as "counterfeit." This world of death and decay is worth

little:

Have I obey’d the Powers of a face, A beauty able to undoe the Race Of easie Man? I look but here, and strait I am Inform'd the lovely Counterfeit Was but a smoother Clay (37641).

Much of the remainder of the poem is devoted to the practical application of insight gained from the preceding sections. Even as early as the second poem in the collection, Vaughan begins to relate metaphysics with ethics. In fact, we will presently find • -89-

in the groups of thematically related poems that Vaughan's meta­

physics largely determines his ethics. And:one very interesting

application here concerns the light of day. The speaker is nervous

at the prospect of finding himself in the cemetery at night and re-

| marks, "But the grudging Sun / Calls home his beams, and warns me

to be gone, / Day leaves me in a double night" (57-59). As the

charnel-house, in the course of the entire poem, comes to repre­

sent the world of flux, so night takes on a larger meaning. The sun’s

beams, as they enact the process of circularity, serve as model,

exactly as does nature in "To the River Isca." On this symbolic

level, day becomes associated with knowledge and complete understand­

ing of the Source. The night, of course, is the same darkness that

pervades the cave or, in this case, the charnel-house, and repre­

sents ignorance, the ultimate condition of man here below.

In a sense, the poem ends with a recommitment to the

living, which prepares us for the ethical discussions in the poems

that follow. The speaker's response to the setting earlier in the

poem was emotional; his "wild lusts" had been frozen. By the end,

it is intellectual. He has learned something about himself in the

foregoing lines and falls back on reason as a guide to conduct in

the future:

Henceforth with thought of thee I’le season all succeeding Jollitie, Yet damn not. mirth, nor think too much is fit, Excesse hath no Religion, nor Wit,- But should wild bloud swell to a lawless strain One check from thee shall Channel it again (61-66). -90-

We have come to understand, through the speaker's struggles in Poems and in "To the River Isca," that nature is not entirely a world of shadows, that parts of the phenomenal world will experience an ultimate restoration, that our souls are brought into this world "to learn afflictions" (p. 44, 22-23), and hence, that there are things of this world that need not be rejected. We learn in "The Charnel-house," in fact, that if properly seasoned and not allowed to distract the soul, even mirth is acceptable.

This emphasis on moderation explains the rejection earlier in the poem of the Atheist and Epicure (13-14), for both are excessive and uncontrolled—one for total rejection, the other total in- fa dulgence. The function of "Wit" (superior mental powers) or reason is regulatory; wit is a most powerful guide to private and public conduct.?

The serious tone that characterizes "The Charnal-house" is typical of the mood throughout much of the collection. And at least partly responsible for the serious tone is the strong presence of Stoicism. The two major tenets found in Olor Iscanus appear frequently—1) that man must distinguish between what he can and 8 cannot do Cin terms of his capability and purpose in life) and ■9 2) that he must comply with necessity. We will meet the first later in our discussions on "friendship"; the second, we have al­ ready met in "The Charnel-house" (25-29) where we are asked to accept the "complott" between nature and the grave. The three -91-

translatlons of Ovid and most of the translations of Boethius

and Casimirus take a strongly iStoical position; and the tenets carry over into the original poetry as well.^ What we have seen

in Póéms is a growing stress on patience, becomes an emphasis on

endurance and defiance in Olor Iscanus. And generally we are 11 asked to endure life in moderation, not in.negation.

After the first two poems in the collection, Vaughan deals with several social situations, for which he prescribes various kinds of conduct. Contrary to Durr's oversimplification that his response to this world is characterized by rejection and 12 negation, the range of Vaughan's secular interest is wide. His positive concern touches contemporary aesthetics, civil ethics, military conduct, and private or personal behavior. We will find that even when Vaughan's criticism is negative, it appears to be based firmly on the belief that reform is needed, not on a pessimism that leads to rejection. Virtuous conduct is, in effect, the re­ sult of insight acquired during the soul's journey in this world; it indicates knowledge gained, which is a considerable distance from alienation and negation. It is in this connection that we will see Vaughan involved with the Classical notions that "goodness is knowledge" and that "no man sins on purpose." The necessity of

"knowing thyself," the underlying thought in Póéms and "The Charnel- house," is a close corollary.

Vaughan clearly sees the true artist as the possessor -92-

of knowledge. Conduct of the literary artist, he explains, must

be virtuous. This is especially true in terms of the artist's

social obligations. The 1655 "Preface" clarifies this point better

than anything else in Vaughan. Here, he addresses himself to

several points, which serve as criteria for judging literature of his age. First, he strongly favors a fusion of aesthetics with morality (p. 391, 30-32). He repeatedly emphasizes a virtuous subject as necessary in order to produce good poetry (p. 389). It follows that the poet must have a social conscience, for he becomes a consoling agent for a troubled age. Vaughan observes that he himself is "useful" to the public (p. 392, 13-14). The poet, in short, if he deserves the title, must make It his business to

"redeem the land." And if it is true that "Virtue alone can make a happy life," as we are told in the "Tenth Satyre," then the poem should lead man to happiness and thus answer the question, "What’s truly good?" (p. 18,4) In this connection,erne'recurring motif in the "Preface" is the marked influence of the good or bad poem (the virtuous or lewd poem) on the reader.

The "Preface" further indicates that the intention of the poet is to "refine" the mind and to move the reader toward "per­ fection." At the same time, the poet must reject and discard the popular frills, the ornamental conceits, the wild imaginings or­ dinarily found in poetry. Vaughan is especially skeptical of thos-e poets, both past and present, who have "more fashion than force," or who "aimed more at verse, then perfection.!1^ To these -93-

points perhaps another might be added. The tightly coherent and

well-reasoned structure of the entire "Preface" implies the high 13 value Vaughan places on the rational faculty.

The difference between the literary criteria of 1655 and

those which Vaughan employs as well as states in Olor Iscanus is not one of kind; the "Preface" is a /carefully.developed statement

of concepts already employed in earlier writings. Most of the

ideas prescribed in 1655 had already been accepted and used in both Poems and Olor Iscanus: interest in a virtuous subject, in social problems, in a refined mind, and in the faculty of reason, are perhaps the clearest. An examination of the five poems in

Olor Iscanus praising poets and playwrights bears out the continuity of preoccupation. Unfottunately, these poems have usually been discounted as mere conventional verse, written more out of courtesy than for any other reason. If there is some truth to this, it lies in the fact that what is often taken as courtesy also reflects an interest or serious preoccupation. Frequently, the ideas praised in these poems are those he is sincerely beginning to value or that he already holds strongly; and they are the ideas which will be­ come the subject for the extended "Preface" of Silex Scintillans.

Of the five poems that compose the group on aesthetics, three are very conventional in the way they handle the subject. The first of these, "Monsieur Gombauld," praises the wild imaginings of Endymion, the very characteristic the "Preface” rejects. Yet, T"—94-

Vaughan is also interested in the truth or instruction reflected

in the bucolic setting of Gombauld’s prose romance. As if half

in apology, he asserts that the imaginings are not "mere Inventions":

"In th' same peece find scatter’d Philosophie / And hidden, disperst

truths that folded lye / In the dark shades of deep Allegorie" (42-44)

The poem does not add much beyond this. Nor does "Upon Mr. Flet­

chers Plays," except for the concern shown in the moral effect of

the plays on the audience (33-38). The third poem "To the most

Excellently accomplish’d Mrs. K. Philips," is characterized by fantastic and extravagant compliments. The lack of restraint and utter triteness of the last line—"No Laurel growes, but for your

Brow"—is typical of much in the verse. However, a few significant ideas appear in the poem. The speaker commends Mrs. Philips’ austere style, reassuring us that in her lines "Coorse trifles bolt the page"; and he praises the purity of her thought, which is as

"Innocent and high / As Angels have" (11 & 13-14).

Though partially hidden by extravagant imagery, the cause-effect relationship between metaphysics and ethics is present even in this poem about Mrs. Philips:

So Lodestones guide the duller Steele, And high perfections are the Wheele Which moves the lesse, for gifts divine Are strung upon a Vital line Which touch’d by you, excites in all Affections Epidemicall.

Here is the "vital line" of influence between the visible and in­ visible worlds. It directly affects Mrs. Philips, who in turn -95-

passes on these divine thoughts to others.

The most interesting and significant poems of the group

are "Upon the Poems and Plays of the ever memorable Mr. William

Cartwright" and "To Sir William D’avenant, upon his Gondibert."

Vaughan concludes the former poem with a comparison of the puri­ fying effect of Cartwright’s plays upon the audience to the virtuous influence of the soul upon the body (37). Most of the points de­ veloped in the "Preface" appear in the course of the poem. Both intellect and lack of ornament are praised highly:

Thy matchless Genius, in all thou didst write, Like thé Sun, wrought with such stàyd héat, and light, That not a line (to the most Gritick he) Offends with flashes, or obscuritie (17-20).

We are told that Cartwright has "no need of paint," fashion, or ornament. Additionally, Vaughan appears to associate strength of intellect with a moral obligation to employ that intellect in social reform. While the association is never made explicit, the praise of Cartwright’s genius is immediately followed by a concluding stanaa that begins, "When thou the wild humours trackst" (21). The juxta­ position of stanzas links morality with intellect, the one thing for Vaughan that could control the excesses of "wild humours."

We are told that Cartwright’s pen has exposed the foibles of man­ kind or the "motley stock in men"—the "vow’d Addresse" of the

"Courtly page" and the "brave rage" of the soldier.

The poem upon D’avenant opens with a response to al­ legations leveled by Puritans against poetry in general. D’avenant -96—

is credited with putting to rest the Idols of the Cave present

in the Puritan predisposition against poetry:

Well, wee are rescued! and by the rare Pen Poets shall live, when Princes dye like men. Th’hast cleer’d the prospect to our harmless Hill, Of late years clouded with imputed Ill (1-4).

There were a number of reasons behind Puritan contempt of poetry.

Underlying "imputed Ill" was the popular charge that poetry is immoral, or, because it deals with a make-believe world of fancy, that it is simply insignificant and time-wasting. D’avenant is praised for rescuing poetry, which has been "of late years clouded."

Later in the poem we are told that he has given to poetry a moral dimension (9-10). If this praise is not meant to be entirely ac­ curate criticism, it does say much about what Vaughan values highly.

In a word, he appears to be preparing the way for the prescription in the 1655 "Preface." He is clearly commending the subject matter in D’avenant’s poems, "Which doubly feast us, being so refin’d /

They both delight and dignifie the mind" (9-10). Similarly, in the

"Preface" he says, "I may flourish not with the leafe onely [which will interest and delight the reader], but with someefruit also"

(p. 392, 31-32).15 And it is no accident that the preface to

"Gondibert," the poem of D’avenant’s which Vaughan is here praising, 16 places the central aim of poetry squarely in moral instruction.

Essentially, D’avenant’s poetry is commended for its new and different approach—reason is placed over fancy and controls the wild imaginings. Most of the long second stanza is spent in ' -£7- praise of this rational approach. In fact, D'avenant's mind, much like Cartwright’s, is compared to the sun, "Whose Eye Brooks no disguise"; it is a slayer of "giants" and "Inchantments"i a slayer of all the excessive imaginings which are the product of an unbridled intellect.

The secular responsibilities of the poet, in fact of all literary artists, relate to other areas of social concern. Those qualities demanded of the artist—a social consciousness, a desire for reform, and a moral earnestness—constitute equally the virtues of Vaughan’s perfect politician. And while there are numerous short references throughout Olor Iscanus to Parliament and the politician, one poem, "To My learned friend, Mr. T^. Powell, upon His translation of Malvezzi's Christian Politician," most extensively defines the ideal statesman. In this poem, Vaughan subtly berates the politicians of his own day: "Come then rare

Politician of the time" (29)("Rare,” of course, connotes "paucity" as well as "excellence").^2 He both praises specific virtues and launches an implied attack upon the Puritans. With his strong royalist sympathies, Vaughan must have sharply disapproved of what he thought to be the aggresive intentions of Pym and his party: their illegal procedures, such as "attainder," for disposing of

Pinch, the King's chief legal adviser, along with the Secretary of State; the formulation of the Nineteen Propositions and the enactment of the Militia Ordinance—both without the King’s counsel • -98-

or consent; and the final political execution with no attempted

compromise.

Instead of positively criticizing them, however, he praises the statesman who acts with wisdom (31). In response to the general inefficacy of law in the period prior to and during 18 the Civil War, Vaughan's statesman is expeditious, but friendly to the opposition (32). At the time Vaughan was writing this poem,

Parliament had already become notorious for borrowing money and 19 not returning it. The lack of popular faith that resulted is reflected in Vaughan’s emphasis on justice—his politician is, above all, "true to the common trust" (33-34). He is open to advice from both sides. He must be willing, Vaughan observes, to avert open conflict, not with force but gentleness (35). And as he acts with order in the face of conflict, he is temperate in success (34).

In all, his actions will receive divine confirmation (38), for they are inspired and guided by wisdom and reason. All of this— the prescription of order, moderation, justice and wisdom, determ­ ined or guided by the spiritual world—is suggestive of the classi­ cal relation between knowledge and wisdom. This discussion of the virtuous politician, which begins with a judgment, ends with a warning:

If from these lists you wander as you steere, Look back, and Catechise your actions here, These are the Marks to which true State-men tend, And greatness here with goodness hath one End (39-42). -99-

What Vaughan has to say here surely looks forward to

the darksome States-man in "The World" from Silex Scintillans.

This later statesman moves without expedition (16-17), without

the light of a wise soul (19-20); he is not friendly or open-

minded (21-22, 25); heaven does not confirm his acts (27); nor

is he "true to the common trust" (29). His utter disregard for

the public appears in the last few lines:

Churches and altars fed him, Perjuries Were gnats and flies, It rain’d about him bloud and tears, but he Drank them as free (27-30).

Earlier, he has been presented in non-human terms:

The darksome States-man hung with weights and woe Like a thick midnight-fog mov’d there so slow He did nor stay, nor go; Condemning thoughts (like sad Ecclipses) scowl Upon his soul, And Clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout. Yet dig’d the Mole, and lest his ways be found Workt under ground y (p. 466, 16-24).

The animal metaphor, which associates the statesman with the mole,

together with the light eclipse and cave suggestion (24), might

well be related to the classical notion that the dark, evil soul 20 transmigrates into an animal form. Moreover, Casimirus

comment (p. 88, 30ff) that evil men are no longer human but beasts, may be relevant. And at the center of this concern for the evil

soul in man is the belief that reform is necessary. The good soul will enjoy a happy life here on earth. In "The World," in the

translation from Casimirus, and in the poem about Powell, Vaughan -100- shows a characteristic concern about the world around him. As in "The Charnel-house," the phenomenal world is to be seasoned, ordered and controlled, but not negated.

In the conclusion of "Mr. T. Powell," Vaughan draws a close tie between the greatness and goodness of civic accomplish­ ment: "Greatness here with goodness hath one End" (42). Since the object of goodness is virtue, the great or "true" statesman must necessarily act virtuously—unlike the darksome states-man, whose policy is governed strictly by self-ends. This is probably what attracted Vaughan to Boethius’ Met. 7. lib. 2, where the strength of the nation, the "frame of things," not the rebellious mass, is to be found in universal goodness or love, without which discord surely follows. This is one of several points that Vaughan makes earlier in "To the River Isca," when he speaks of peace and order where no "new ware" awakes (81-82); Love is the force that will unify and redeem the land (73-76 & 83-84).

The six lines that Vaughan himself adds to the Boethius translation repeat this idea with familiar reference to the conflict on the "floting lie":

0 happy Nation then were you If love which doth all things subdue, That rules the spacious heav’n and brings Plenty and Peace upon his wings, Might rule you too! and without guile Settle once more this floting lie! (28-33).

The love and goodness that permeate the universe; permeate the true statesman, for his acts are confirmed by heaven; his gentleness, -101-

mildness, justice and truth, in short, his wisdom, become a measure , 21 of his kinship to, and participation in, the harmonious universe.

Such goodness, whether it is generated from the universe at large

or immediately from the statesman, is fundamental to social order

or, in Vaughan’s phrase, "social faith." As in aesthetics, so in politics—social involvement requires a moral consciousness, and vice versa.

The relationship between Vaughan’s metaphysics and

ethical conduct is most clearly drawn in the group of poems de­ picting the ideal soldier. "On the Death of Mr. R. Hall," one of two poems comprising the group, defines the close association be­ tween the virtuous "graces” of courage and valor and the reasoning faculty of the soul. Vaughan says of Hall that "richer graces... adorn’d thy mind" (51) and that "Thy Piety and Learning did unite"

(55).

Vaughan also explains what it means for the soul to have gained a high level of excellence, or conduct on earth. After completing a review of the man's virtues, he concludes the elegy with the anticipation of Hall’s joyous future:

But all these now are out! and as some Star Hurl’d in Diurnall motions from far, And seen to droop at night, in vainly sed To fall, and find an Occidentall bed, Though in that other world what wee Judge West Proves Elevation, and a new, fresh East. So though our weaker sense denies us sight And bodies cannot trace the Spirits flight, Wee know those graces to be still in thee, But wing’d above us to eternitie. -102-

Since then (thus flown) thou art so much refin’d That we can only reach thee with the mind, [I]22 wiH not in this dark and narrow glasse Let thy scant shadow for Perfections passe (59-72).

The reference at the beginning to "that other world" and the star-

soul association, as well as the allusion at the end to the "dark"

"shadow" of this world; the winged ascent of the soul and the in­

ability of the physical sight to follow it; the refining and ma­

turing process of the soul and its unique ability of knowing the

eternal—all of these are classical in imagery and idea. They are, 23 in fact, the positions reached in the earlier quest within Poems.

The relationship between man and his world or between the soul and 24 , its home is little changed. We are assured that the virtues (or

graces, as Vaughan calls them) attained on earth remain with the

soul after death of the body. The soul, in fact, is able to wing

its way home precisely because of the level of virtue achieved.

Although the poem about Hall deals both with virtue and metaphysics, the major concern appears to be the latter. The focus

changes somewhat in the second poem in the group on military service,

"An Elegie on the death of R.W. slain in the late unfortunate

differences at Routon Heath, Neer Chester, 1645," though there

are several brief references to conduct at other points in Olor

Iscanus. The most extensive account of military conduct is found here. The classical tone of the entire poem is set in the first 25 stanza by the lengthy paraphrase from Virgil’s Aeneid—the same

somber, masculine, epic tone is repeated in the last line of the 26 poem, in a direct quotation, again from Virgil. The second „-103-

stanza is also of classical origin, but more in subject than tone.

Here, Vaughan provides a short restatement of his metaphysics—the

soul’s relationship to earth and its attraction to the ,,ource.

It is apparent from what we are told that R.W. was

slain at an early age, probably in battle, but his soul had de­

veloped amazingly well during its brief sojourn:

His early Soule Had but new broke her day, and rather stole A sight, than gave one; as if subt’ly she would learn our stock, but hide his treasurie (21-24).

His refined mind, in effect, was able to acquire knowledge of

self and others (28-29), while it "seiz'd perfections," without

acquiring the distractions of what Vaughan terms "Crooked knowl­

edge"—possessed by "worthless livers," "Vast pretenders," and

"Lordly fooles," alluded to further on. The remainder of the poem

describes the soldier's virtuous conduct, the outward expression

of the "seiz'd perfections" or internal harmony.

The conduct which Vaughan examines and praises in "Death

of Mr. R.W." is strongly reminiscent of Aristotle's magnanimous 28 man. In both men the soul, of course, acts in "accordance with

the rational principle." Vaughan's perfect soldier has tremendous courage, which is tempered with a reasonable amount of caution

(38-41); he is courteous toward common men but, if challenged, quick to test his peers (43-44); he is honorable in civil acts

(like the statesman, "he weav'd not self-ends and the; public good"

(47)--these are the virtues of Vaughan's ideal soldier. And they -104-

are also those of the magnanimous man. In.this soldier, we also

find a parallel to the Platonic and Aristotelian notion that "to

know is to do," for in R.W. "the Act and apprehension both lodg'd

there" (58). Essentially, Vaughan is dealing with the same idea

in "Praise of a Religious Life," where we are told that if the

"Tyrant-usurer" would "but tast / These true delights, 0 with what

haste / And hatred of his wayes would he / Renounce his Jewish

Crueltie" (113-116). Having achieved all of these virtues, R.W.

dies the death of a soldier in the defense of his country (66-68)

30 and the established order.

The soldier like the statesman, is presented as social

reformer, but ironically he is more effective after death. The world to be redeemed is presented here in terms of "vast pretenders, which of late / Swell'd in the mines of their King and State,"

(45-46) of the widespread exploitation of the people (47-49), and

of the general moral decay of the time (97). Ultimately, the virtues of the dead soldier, perpetuated by means of the poem, will be a consolation to the age. They, "As some blind Dial, when the day is done, / Can tell us at mid-night, There was a Sun" (93-94).

Much like the magnanimous man, who is given the status of philoso­ pher-king in the Republic, Vaughan's soldier is associated with 31 an instrument of light and truth in an age of "double nights, "-.i

Of the five works in Olor Iscanus that might be termed

"friendship poems," two describe the actual qualities of the re­ lationship itself. The one, "To the best, and most accomplish'd -105-

Couple---,’’ deals with love; the other, "To his Inconstant friend,"

deals with close fellowship. Vaughan takes the second, a verse

translation from Ovid, and characteristically makes it relevant

to contemporary England. For example, he extends the title to

include "translated for the use of all Judases of this touch-stone-

Age." This poem might well be one source of the classical allusion

to those shared and equal souls of friends earlier in Póéms. We

recall that "To My Ingenuous Friend" makes reference to the souls meeting "with equall wings, and ancient love" (p. 3, 25) and

"Rhapsodie" alludes to the influx of. souls as friends become

"Possessours of more soules and nobler fire" (p. 12, 66-70). Ovid speaks to the same point: "Whose years and love had the same

Infancie / With thine. Thy deep familiar, that did share / Soules with thee" (21-24). It is difficult.to read the first line with­ out associating "Infancie" with "The Retreate" from Silex Sciritillans

"Happy those early days! When I / Sin'd in my Angell-infancy" (1-2).

In both there is the classical concept of recollection, but in the translation of Ovid, we find a shared recollection. And thus, "deep familiar"might well refer to spiritual ties long preceding present . 32 existence.

The souls of friends share the same divine influence be­ fore their life on earth. Similarly there is a divine ordination in the first "friendship poem," "To the best, and most accomplish’d

CoupleX-^,"where the speaker refers to a higher power, "which first 33 ordain’d your love" (16). But here the similarity ends, for one -106- poem describes Vaughan's notion of a perfect union, the other an imperfect association. Read together, they clearly define the qualities of an ideal personal relationship. Ovid's friend is inconstant and "hast ta'ne thy flight" the moment "temperate winds" of good fortune change to storm and "night /Stifled those Sun­ beams," Contrast this with the hoped-for constancy of the couple:

"Fresh as the houres may all your pleasures be, / And healthfull as Eternitie" (7-8). The reference to "houres" (a division of time) in conjunction with "Eternity" (which is without temporal restriction) helps to emphasize the temporal freedom of the second and reinforces the sense of steadfastness shared by the two.

While Ovid's poem deals with a relationship that declines into excessive coldness, the other presents the quality of temp­ erateness and moderation. Instead of an angry heaven, with clouds that stifle the sun, Vaughan associates the couple with the warmth of day; they will share a life as "smooth as heavn's face" (15).

The one poem is about perfidy, the other about loyalty, the one about dissimulation, the other about truth. "Accomplished Couple" concludes with the popular notion that lovers can teach others some thing of virtue: "So you to both worlds shall rich presents bring, / And gather'd up tó héáv'n, leave here a Spring" (37-38).

In light of Classical tradition, the rationale for physically and spiritually joining together two people is based on the desire to educate. For Plato mutual love culminates in a mutual search for 35 truth. What is easily mistaken in Vaughan for mere convention -107-

seems instead to be closely related to his serious preoccupation

with redeeming the land or reforming the people.

Ovid uses nature as emblem to reinforce his theme of

inconstancy:

the sportive leafes and wind Are but dull Emblems of her fickle mind, In the whole world ther’s nothing I can see Will throughly parallel her wayes, but thee (49-52).

"To My Worthy Friend Master T. Lewes," another of the five "friend- . i'J- ship poems, employs the same Emblem concept, but with a difference:

Sees not my friend, what a deep snow Candies our Countries wooddy brow? The yeelding branch his load scarse bears Opprest with snow, and frozen tears, While thè dumb rivers slowly float, All bound up in an Icié Cóat. Let us meet then! and while this world In wild Excéritricks now is hurld, Keep wee, like nature, the same Key, And walk in our forefathers way (1-10).

Where as Ovid sees only the fickleness and inconstancy in nature,

Vaughan recognizes the even tenor of the "same key." But the im­ plication, surely, is not that man should read into nature what­ ever his mood dictates. Nature is a valid model for man only if he uses his reasoning faculty. It is an easy thing to misjudge nature, for man is ultimately unable to know the ways of Providence, 3 6 and easily mistakes the means for an end.

The quotation from "Master T. Lewes" helps also to further define Vaughan's social consciousness. L.C.Martin observes that the first four lines are based on the initial stanza of Horace's

Ode I, 9. A less free translation runs, -108-

Look up at Mount Soracte’s dazzling snow Piling along the branches that can barely Withstand its weight, while piercing ice Impedes the river’s flowing k comparison between the two translations helps to clarify Vaughan's secular preoccupation. Once Vaughan moves beyond the second line, he evinces a deadly seriousness that Horace did not originally intend. This is created by his selection of words like "yeeld- ing," "opprest," "frozen tears," and "bound up." Not until the eighth line do we understand the reason for this tone, namely, the civil disorder, corruption, and moral decay of his age.

Vaughan is alarmed about much the same kind of "wild

Excentricks" in the fourth poem, "To his retired friend, an

Invitation to Brecknock." The invitation comes at a time closely following the execution of Charles I (48), "Midst noise and War"

(76). It was a time when the Cavaliers were defiant. Mockery of the enemy’s vices was bitter and widespread. Vaughan’s re­ action to the deceit and unscrupulousness of the masses reflects well the intellectual milieu of the period:

Vex at the times ridiculous miserie? An age that thus hath fool’d it selfe, and will (Spite of thy teeth and mine) persist so still. Let’s sit then at this fire, and while wee steal A Revell in the Town, let others seal, Purchase or Cheat, and who can, let them pay, Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day (78-84).

In both "Master T. Lewes" and "Invitation" we sense Vaughan’s belief that the world's disorder and degeneration are caused di­ rectly by "Those black deeds" of a corrupt mankind. -109-

In his poems on military conduct, we have observed the

references to decadence in the Court, to exploitation of the

people, and to the damaging effect of war. These are evidences of

Vaughan’s sensitivity to oppression, whether of the individual, the

people, or the government. The power to oppress is a potential

danger feared in the statesman. And fear of oppression largely in­

spires Vaughan's vehement attacks against usury, against lawyers,

and Parliament. The existence of this oppression is responsible

for his belief in the world's decay or his fear of the "wild

Excentricks."

To such a situation, friendship offers not a solution

39 but peace of mind:' if nothing else, it has a calming effect.

In a period of war, oppression, and corruption, Vaughan has not

stopped writing about the charnel-house and continues to investi­

gate answers to the frightening notion of fragmentation and the

fear of isolation.

"Invitatioii," however, is usually read as a light, al­

most jovial poem. And there is evidence to support this, espec­

ially in the last few lines: "Let others seal, / Purchase or

Cheat..'. / They and their bags at best / Have cares in earnest, wee care for a Jest" (82-83, 87-88). J But much of the poem is

deadly serious. Fourteen lines near the beginning (13-26) describe

the War-torn area to which the friend is being invited. The

speaker tells of the town's defense: "Thou 'Idst swear (like Rome) -110- her foule, polluted walls Were sackt by Brennus, and the salvage

Gaules." And he describes the shattering noise of the Civil War:

"Of bang'd Mortars, blew Aprons, and Boyes, / Pegs, Dogs, and Drums.

With the hoarse hellish notes / Of politickly-deafe usurers throats."

This does much to "season all succeeding Jollitie" in the poem.

The actual meeting of the two friends, we are told, will turn to discussions of "Peace" as well as "mirth" (76).

Underlying much of the poetry in Olor Iscanus, and re­ flected partly in "invitation," are a strong social consciousness, a clear desire for reform, and a serious concern with virtuous con­ duct. All three of these have developed from interests we have seen germinating in the first collection. In Olor Iscanus, the ele­ ments of social consciousness and the concern for reform and conduct are central to Vaughan's conception of the literary artist, the statesman, the soldier, and even the friend, to some extent. In both collections Vaughan continues to link his concern for this world with his metaphysics—the soulis journey, the insight gained during the sojourn, and the proper conduct that, should result. Under­ lying the ethics and metaphysics are pagan and Graeco-Christian concepts; and of these concepts, probably the most pervasive are those that deal with the dualistic worlds and the single source from which all flows and to which all returns.

To a large extent, the metaphysical and social preoccupa­ tions in the first two collections continue into the sacred poems, -Ill- even in the face of Vaughan's religious conversion. The literary commonplace offered by Fogle that Silex Sdirttillans represents a

"withdrawal into an inner realm of peace" and "a retirement from confusions of the temporal" world^O is seriously misleading. Such a judgment, repeated by F.E. Hutchinson among others, is largely responsible for the common distortion of Vaughan'si.temperament. -112-

CHAPTER V

Silex Scintillans (1650 and 1655):

CONVERSION AND A CONTINUING PREOCCUPATION

That Henry Vaughan experienced a religious conversion

around 1650 has become a literary commonplace. His recent defini­

tive biographer, F.E. Hutchinson, assures us that a rather sudden

conversion occurred within a two or three year period between

1647, before and during the time Vaughan wrote Póéms and Olor

Iscanus, and 1650, the publication date of Silex Scintillans. In

the light of this conversion, Hutchinson draws a distinct line be-

tween the l&acred and secular poetry.

His chapter titled "Conversion" inquires into the reason for this "new direction," which "caused Vaughan to produce poems

so immediately different in...subject...from anything he had writ­ ten before."'*' Hutchinson’s observation that there is "nothing in the secular verse to prepare the reader for what goes on in the sacred poetry" is not, however, entirely convincing, in view of his cursory examination of the earlier poems. In addition, Hutchinson observes that "Henry Vaughan had now [after 1650] something dis­ tinctive to communicate" (the implication is that he had not before this time) and that "the author of Silex Scintillans was a changed man, and this change is of the highest importance in the considera­ tion of him as poet." If this conversion is of such importance -113-

in understanding Vaughan's.poetry, it seems surprising that so

many critics, including Hutchinson, accept the literary common­

places without sufficient evidence.

This is not to suggest that Vaughan had experienced no

conversion and that there is no difference in metaphysics between

the secular and sacred poems. In fact, the conversion brings with

it, among other things, a shift in thinking about man’s relationship

to this world and to the one to come. But the Christian conversion

represents a shifting, not a sudden fundamental change; the "new

direction" is largely a modification of the old, and these modi­

fications work in conjunction with uniquely pagan ideas. The Greek

concepts already familiar to us frequently serve to clarify or

to furnish the initial impulse in a poem that has at its center a

biblical idea.

A close examination of Silex Scintilläns reveals that

three purely Christian ideas represent the extent of what Hutchin­

son calls "the changed man." Two of these are not entirely new in

Vaughan1s thinking, for they have appeared as early as Poems, though briefly. The first concerns divine initiative: the downward move­ ment of Christ or God as a necessary act in order to bridge the gap between fallen man and the eternal world. It offers grace to the repentant and permits complete regeneration. The idea first ap­ pears in "To Amoret Weeping," appropriately placed at the end of the collection of 1646 near the conclusion of the soul's development -114-

An interesting example in the sacred poems of this divine

initiative is found in "They are all gone into the world of light":

If a star were confin'd into a Tomb Her captive flames must needs burn there; But when the hand that lockt her up, gives room, She'l shine through all the sphaere (p.484, 29-32).

Along with the idea of a personal God who chooses to become involved 2 with man is the classical allusion to star-fire, which is used to clarify the Christian concept. The joining of the pagan and Christ­ ian traditions is similarly employed in "Midnight." The first stanza discusses the vital ray shot from the star to the human soul. 3 The second stanza continues the idea of emanations, but ends by imploring God's intervention:

Come then, my god! Shine on this bloud, And water in one beame, And thou shalt see Kindled by thee Both liquors burne, and streame. 0 what bright quicknes, Active brightnes, And celestiall flowes Will follow after On that water, Which thy spirit blowes (p. 421, 21-32).

The Christian concept of downward movement clearly does not con­ flict with the classical ideas found in the earlier two collections.

And it does not represent a sudden, fundamental shift in Vaughan's thought. Both, the classical concepts—of emanations and the natal- star influence--take Vaughan a good distance toward an immanent

God. Vaughan's earlier concern in the secular poetry with the -115- ultimate restoration of the phenomenal world also relates closely to the idea of an immanent and transcendent world and serves to emphasize a continuity of preoccupation.

Intervention or grace, a seemingly new idea in Vaughan’s thinking, is contingent upon repentance as a first step toward re­ birth. But the belief in repentance, the second apparently new idea, does not represent a fundamental change either. Much like the notion of divine initiative, repentance concerned him as early as the first volume. Yet, in the sacred poetry, he frequently makes repentance a necessary precondition for divine intervention, as he does here in the third stanza of "The Showre":

Yet, if as thou doest melt, and with thy traine Of drops make soft the Earth, my eyes could weep O're my hard heart, that’s bound up, and asleep, Perhaps at last (Some such showres past,) My God would give a Sun-shine after rain (p. 413, 13-18).

Working in this passage is an idea that parallels the Aristotelian notion of the continuance of matter, a concept discussed earlier in connection with Poems and which he uses here to clarify the ideas of repentance and grace

'Twas so, I saw thy birth: That drowsie Lake From her faint bosome breath'd thee, the disease Of her sick waters, and Infectious Ease. But, now at Even Too grosse for heaven, Thou fall'st in teares, and weep'st for thy mistake (p.412,1-6).

Water from the lake evaporates and changes to tears of repentance; the reference to the cyclical movement of the elements, used to -116 suggest human repentance, becomes associated in the last stanza with the "Sun-shine" of divine grace. Vaughan is typically em­ ploying a classical idea to clarify a Christian thought. Again, in another poem he turns within himself in an attempt to recall knowledge now forgotten of a pre-existent life: "With Hyero- gliphicks quite dismembred, / And broken letters scarce remembred"

("Vanity of Spirit" p. 419, 23-24).2 The poem concludes with a promise of self-renunciation, a willingness to die, in exchange g for a "half glaunce" at knowledge possessed during pre-existence.

The addition in the sacred poetry of the Christian con­ cept of renunciation or repentance does not represent a sudden, fundamental change in Vaughan’s thinking. The concept of re­ nunciation is, in fact, anticipated in two earlier ideas: 1) good- Q ness, which is self-effacing, and 2) love, which is directed toward the universe and away from the self.^ Both have at their center the belief that the individual is less important than the whole, and both were treated in the secular collections. In ad­ dition, Vaughan has been in the past strongly responsive to the idea that ethical acts help to create an absolute world, just as 11 knowledge of the absolute may result in ethical acts. An aware­ ness of this circular process leads one naturally toward self- renunciation.

The one distinguishing characteristic in Silex Scintillans that does not actually first appear in Poems of Olor Iscanus -117-

is the element of faith: faith in what God does for man through

Christ. "Man's fall, and Recovery" is one of several sacred poems

that clearly associates faith, God, and Christ. The element of

faith is, at other times, directed toward submission to God’s will, as it is in "Man":

Weighing the stedfastness and state Of some mean things which here below reside, Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date And Intercourse of times divide,.... I would (said I) my God would give The staidness of these things to man! for these To his divine appointments ever cleave (p. 477, 1-4, 8-11).

It is the speaker’s faith in God that underlies the wish that all men should submit to His will. Here again the Classical and Chfiist ian traditions typically fuse, as nature becomes the perfect ex­ ample of submission to the divine will. We have, of course, al- 12 ready met with the idea of nature-as-emblem in the secular poems.

In fact, submission to divine will—that is to say, Christian duty- has much in common with Stoical duty in the sense of obedience or 13 resignation to the larger plan of Providence. Moreover, in a larger sense Christian duty is foreshadowed in the earlier collect­ ions (especially in Poems) by the soul's total commitment to move toward and ultimately to rejoin its source.

These Christian concepts under discussion—namely, divine intervention, repentance, and faith--represent the extent of the philosophical change Vaughan has undergone. If the change re­ quires the label "conversion," it is one that is neither sudden -11'8- nor fundamental, the Ideas having developed wholly or partially from those in the two earlier collections. Solely on the grounds of these three Christian ideas, Hutchinson’s observation that there is

"nothing in the secular verse to prepare the reader for what goes on in the sacred poetry" should be seriously questioned. And the weakness of this kind of contention, typical of a century or more of Vaughan criticism, is more pronounced when we examine those classical concepts in Silex Scintillans that have historically fused with the Christian content.

The concept of the dualistic worlds that characterizes a great deal of the earlier poetry is equally pervasive in the 14 sacred. The opening three stanzas of "They are all gone into the world of light!" are representative:

They are all gone into the world of light! And I alone sit lingring here; Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear.

It glows and glitters in my cloudy brest Like stars upon some gloomy grove, Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest After the Sun’s remove.

I see them walking in an Air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days: My days, which are at best but dull and haary, Meer glimering and decays (pp. 483-484, 1-12).

The tension generated between the two worlds—one of appearance, decay, and shadows, the other, real and eternal—is as apparent here as in the secular poetry. The dominant image lends special interest, since it not only deals with the same concept as before, -119- but it presents the concept in much the same way as in "To

Amoret Gone from Him,'.' from the collection of 1646. In both psems the concept of dual worlds is presented through the same central agrument. In both the speaker talks about absent friends, about the real world of light to which one friend has departed, and about the visually weak reflections from the real world as perceived by the one who is left behind. The difference between the two poems suggests a shift in treatment, not a change in the basic attitude held by Vaughan toward nature.

In "To Amoret Gone from Him," nature is personified as the "absent friend," who "did mourne his absence," the one who yearns after the "weake reflection" of that which is now gone. In the secular poems, nature is an object to be admired. "They are all gone into the world of light!" however, shows the speaker no longer admiring from a distance, but in a sense assuming the pre­ vious role of nature, as he mourns the absence of his friends, catches their "faint beams... .After the Sun’'s remove" (7-8) and, like nature, becomes the very model of constancy and allegiance.

In effect, the speaker in the sacred poems has learned the lesson which was offered by nature as early as the first collection.^ At times in Silex Scintillans, when the speaker has forgotten the les­ son, he characteristically wishes,

I would I were a stone, or tree... Then should I (tyed to one sure state,) All day expect my date ("And do they so? have they a Sense" p. 432, 15-16). '-12Q1.

For Vaughan, of course, the two worlds have never re­ mained entirely separate. The classical golden age, discussed earlier in connection with "Upon the Priorie Grove" (pp. 15-16), is one of several concepts he employs to fuse the phenomenal with the absolute. It too is shared by both classical and Christian traditions. Probably the clearest example in the sacred poetry is found in "Resurrection and Immortality," where the soul berates the bodyis suspicion that matter is finite:

Poore, querulous handfull! was't for this I taught thee all that is? Unbowel’d nature, shew’d thee her recruits, And Change of suits And how of death we make A meere mistake, For no thing can to Nothing fall, but still Incorporates by skill, And then returns, and from the wombe of things Such treasure brings As Phenix-like renew'th Both life, and youth; For a preserving spirit doth still passe Untainted through this Masse, Which doth resolve, produce, and ripen all That to it fall; Nor are those births which we Thus suffering see Destroy’d at all; But when times restles wave Their substance doth deprave And the more noble Essence finds his house Sickly, and loose, He, ever young, doth wing Utlto that spring, And source of spirits, where he takes his lot Till time no more shall rot His passive Cottage; which (though laid aside,) Like some spruce Bride, Shall one day rise, and cloath'd with shining light All pure, and bright Re-marry to the soule, for 'tis most plaine Thou only fal’st to be refin'd againe (pp. 401-402, 19-50) ■ -121-

The "preserving spirit" (31) that pervades all matter and re­ fines the very clay that enslaves—this is the same spirit that in "The Priorie Grove" will ultimately transform the arbor's "aged

Gray" to "A fresh Grove" (p. 15, 26 & 30) and the same spirit that in "To the River Isca" will fashion "Regions more refin'd" Xp.39, 20)

In both secular and sacred poetry, Vaughan is dealing with a spirit that is immanent as well as transcendent. In the sacred and secular collections the immanence is implied through references to sentient nature and, as we have just seen, to the ultimate restoration of the phenomenal world. In the sacred, Vaughan can be more explicit.

At times he converses directly with the Lord, as he does at the end of "Regeneration." To the speaker's uncertainty as to where grace can be found, the voice whispers, "Where I please" (80). While the passage deals with the much broader problem of predestination, it is clear that this contact in the grove is between the speaker and an immanent God.

While this closes the gap between the finite and infinite, the soul of man must continue to make its own way. The journey mo­ tif, along with the theme of affliction and adversity, continue to be major elements in Silex Scintillans.'*' Now, as before, the ideas about the soul's journey and the necessity of affliction work together. "The Storm" deals entirely with affliction that at once washes and wings the soul back toward its source (p. 424, 23);

"The Sap" develops the idea that grief intensifies the/hatal-spark -122-

in the soul and thus strengthens the desire to return to the star-

home (p. 476, 41); "White Sunday" suggests that grief is one of

the two wings used by the soul as it ascends (p. 485, 12).

Any activity or desire that fails to take the soul toward

this upward goal is considered unimportant by Vaughan. The pur­

suit of anything on earth as an end is also rejected because it 18 distracts. This is the major point in "Distraction":

The world Is full of voices; Man is call'd and hurl'd By each, he answers all, Knows ev'ry note, and call, Hence, still Fresh dotage tempts, or old usurps his will (p. 413, 11-16).

If man is distracted by the world's voices, his soul will not grow

and prepare itself for the journey back to the source.

The pursuit of something here below not as an end but

as a means toward a more perfect life is not considered a dis­

traction. While affliction is one means of preparing the soul

to ascend, Vaughan clearly offers another, namely, good deeds. The

requirement of these deeds was a major preoccupation in Olor Iscanus

and the idea reappears in the sacred poems. More will be said

about this presently in the discussion on ethics, but it should be 19 mentioned here that Vaughan remains interested in conduct. His

cataloguing in "Rules and Lessons" (pp. 436-439) of over thirty virtues, from justice toward others to moderation in sleep, at­

tests to this continued interest. -123-

Behind this concern for virtuous conduct is Vaughan's

belief in Platonic love, actually, a dual concept that underlies

all of Vaughan's poetry. One aspect of this concept involves a

love that is generated from man and directed outward. It is,

what Irene Samuel calls, a "generic longing" for every good—a

longing at its highest level for wisdom directed toward knowing 20 God through knowing oneself. It is a fundamental desire for

knowledge about the creative force that has brought the universe

into a single harmony. The relevancé of Vaughan's admonition in the

"Tenth Satyre" "Pray for a wise and knowing soul," goes without

saying. Numberous poems in Silex Scintillàns make reference to

this kind of love, either by imploring adherence to the four car­

dinal virtues or by explaining that through knowledge one can at­

tain a celestial place. The other aspect of this dual concept works from the opposite direction: it is a harmonizing force that

comes from without and pervades all creation. Though examples of

it are found in Olor Iscanus, especially in reference to the states- 21 man and in the translations of Boethius, this love that is re­

sponsible for universal order is expressed most frequently in the 22 earliest collection and the two editions of Silex Sciritillans.

These Graeco-Christian concepts under discussion—the dualistic worlds, the fusion of these worlds, the soul's journey

toward its source, the soul’s affliction and distraction, and the love that is generated both by man and by God—comprise the bulk -124- , of Vaughan’s metaphysics in the early and later poetry. Along with them, Vaughan continues to be interested in ideas that his­ torically have remained separate from orthodox Christian thought.

Surprisingly, the presence of those purely pagan ideas is stronger in the sacred than in the secular poems of the forties. Plotinian emanations that permeate all of nature, from the highest to the lowest levels of creation, and the influence of the natal star, have already been discussed in connection with Silex Scintillans, 23 and need no further comment.

Two classical ideas which reappear in the sacred poems— namely, Platonic love of Beauty and the shared souls of friends— are not as frequently alluded to or as well defined as are the other Gfeek concepts. The second idea comes to the religious col- 24 lection unchanged from Olor Iscanus. The first is never clearly developed in any of Vaughan's work. The closest Vaughan approaches the subject in the secular poems is in passing reference to Beauty in "To the River Isca," where nature is seen to reflect the virtue.

He develops the idea somewhat better in the later collection where

He refers to the world of Ideas:

These are the Magnets which, so strongly move And work all night, upon thy light and love, As beauteous shapes, we know not why, Command and guide the eye ("The Starre," p. 490, 21-24)

The beauteous forms inform man of another world. And the attraction they have for man is due to an inherent desire of the soul for all that is truly beautiful. -125- ?

Some modern readers of Vaughan, embarrassed at the im-

plications of several of these non-Christian concepts, tend to

overlook their presence or to minimize their importance. This is what has happened to the theme of pre-existence. Hughes, for in­ stance, limits the theme to "The Retreate."25 He reasons that the Christian idea of the resurrection of the body, which is gen­ erally present in other poems that seemingly allude to pre-existence, contradicts the Classical idea and throws into serious question the importance with which Vaughan holds it.

There is no question that Vaughan was directly exposed 2 6 to this classical concept or that he understood it. The prob­ lem is how literally is he treating it in his poems. Few deny the seriousness with which the concept is treated in "The Retreate," À / where he longs to "tre.ad again that ancient track" and to move by

"backward steps." The related idea of childhood remembrance is suggested also in the same poem.

The entire first stanza develops the idea of childhood.

It begins, "Happy those early days!" and the following lines refer to the child who is not yet aware of the corruption in this world

(his "second race") and who is still able to look back and glimpse

"Some shadows of eternity." The second stanza characteristically brings together Christian and pagan ideas:

That I might once more reach that plaine, Where first I left my glorious traine, from whence th’ Inlightned spirit sees -126-

That shady City of Palme trees; But (ah!) my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way. Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move, And when this dust falls to the urn In that state I came return (p. 419, 23-32).

The reference to the "City of Palme trees" and the scriptural allusion in the last two lines (dust falling to dust) are strongly

Christian. And the clear implication throughout the stanza that the 27 soul comes from God and will return is Graeco-Christian. The lines referring to the drunk and staggering soul are pagan and 28 have their source in Boethius, who in turn might have borrowed 29 the idea from Phaedo. Vaughan seems to be working simultaneously with both traditions in developing the ideas of pre-existence and childhood.

That both classical concepts appear in one sacred poem is sufficient to raise the possibility of their reappearance at 30 other times. Echoes of the ideas can be found in "Distraction," which stresses the process of forgetting pre-existent knowledge

"when coffin’d in / this quicken’d masse of sinne" (p. 413, 17-18); in "Vanity of Spirit," where he refers to distant "traces and sounds of a strange kind" (p. 418, 16); or in "The Sap," as he bemoans the passing of "thy first birth" (p. 475, 2).

The metaphysical preoccupations under discussion—those ideas that represent the extent of Vaughan’s conversion and those that represent a continuity of thought--bring with them ethical concerns. 33 And the ethical concerns in all collections are - -127-

largely identical and generally parallel with classical thought.

Continued interest in the secular world, needless to say, is

natural for one who remains strongly responsive to the idea of the

restoration of the phenomenal world, to divine emanations, to worldly

afflictions, and to the necessity for good deeds. The same pro­

nouncement in Olor Iscanus, namely, that mirth and joy have their

place in this life, underlies the morality in Silex Sciritillans.

The speaker in "The Charnel-house" explains that such emotions are

acceptable when seasoned; so Vaughan makes similar provision in

"Rules and Lessons" from the sacred collection: "Yet, fly no friend,

if he be such indeed, / But meet to quench his Longings,and thy Thirst; /

Allow your Joyes Religion" (p. 438, 79-81). The entire poem pre- 32 scribes a full day’s activities. The forenoon, before mirth and

friends have been dismissed, is spent in secular pursuits: in the

area of business, "Actions, Counsels and Discourse," if guided by

temperateness, are clearly allowed for; close friendships nourished by honesty are given special emphasis, as is the quality of self- reliance ("Seek not the same steps with the crowd"). We are told that moderation should guide our habits of sleeping and eating; gen­

tleness in action is valued above force; lewdness is to be avoided, nature closely observed, procrastination rejected, oaths kept, the poor rewarded, and the neighbor respected.

In Silex Sciritillans Vaughan’s earlier preoccupation with

social conduct is superseded by a more general ethical concern. -128-

Some of the virtues prescribed earlier that dealt with the proper

conduct of, say, an artist or statesman become now moral values 33 which lack specific social application. The virtues in "Rules and Lessons" are a case in point. And yet, several ideas of social reform do reappear with equal intensity. However, in the secular and sacred collections, Vaughan remains preoccupied with both worlds at the same time. In both the secular and sacred, he clearly wants to bring this world into closer conformity with the other.

One means of doing so is through Socratic ethics—the rejection of pleasure, fame, and wealth—which continues to hold 9 / Vaughan’s interest. "The World," with this tripartite repu­ diation, is a good example. Vaughan begins early in the poem to berate the doting lover too much involved with "Silly snares of pleasure"—his "Lute," "Fancy" and "flights." The second sin that he discards is the way of the "darksome States-man," already dis­ cussed in the preceding chapter. What follows is a picture of an ambitious, self-centered, callous man. And while he is not striv­ ing for fame as such (he is much too concerned with self to allow for concern about what others think), he has gained the approval of the church. The whole section dealing with the statesman pre­ sents a situation in which fame has gone sour.and the statesman be­ comes notorious’—crowds of crying, shouting witnesses pursue him; it rains blood and tears around him. The third involves the -129-

"miser on a heap of rust." He is so much taken with his gold that he hardly trusts himself to handle the riches.

The fearfull miser on a heap of rust Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust His own hands with the dust, Yet would not place one peece above, but lives In feare of theeves (p. 467, 31-35).

Earlier, in Olor Iscanus, the miser is presented as a usurer, but the image of a man fearful of his own hands or of those around him, as he broods over his pile of rust, is similar in both the secular and sacred poems. One of the earlier examples of this concern with riches is found in "To his Friend—

To think how th’earthly Usurer can brood Upon his bags, and weigh the pretious food With palsied hands, as if his soul did feare The Scales could rob him of what he layd there; Like Divels that on hid Treasures sit, or those Whose jealous Eyes trust not beyond their nose They guard the durt, and the bright Idol hold Close, and Commit adultery with gold. A curse upon their drosse! how have we sued For a few scatter’d Chips? how oft pursu'd Petitions with a blush, in hope to squeeze For their souls health, more than our wants a peece? Their steel-rib'd Chests and Purse (rust eat them both!) (p. 45, 41-53)

But the repudiation of wealth, as well as of fame and pleasure, is a common concern in the seventeenth century. Though the three targets are a part of the Classical tradition, they are also a contemporary problem under constant attack.

And, of course, once this classical connection is made, at least one justification for the threefold rejection immediately 36 comes to mind. It is closely related to the plea in "Juvenals -130- tenth Satyre" and is again echoed in the sacred poem, "Vanity of

Spirit," where science and learning have come to preoccupy the speaker:

I summon’d.nature; peirc’d through all her store, Broke tp some seales, which none had touch’d before, Her wombe, her bosome, and her head Where all her secrets lay a bed I rifled quite, and having past Through all the Creatures, came at last To search my selfe (p. 418, 9-15).

It has always been important for Vaughan to "search my selfe."

It is this total preoccupation with science and learning or with sour delights, worldly ambition, or gold (which become ends in themselves) that prohibits man from striving to understand himself

(a means toward a higher end) .

As before in the secular poems, the classical element in the metaphysics strongly informs not only his ethical concerns in general but also specific areas of social concern—oppression caused mainly by wars, submission directed to an established authority, 37 and anarchy caused by the corruption of mankind. Since the re­ lationship between Classicism and these three areas has already 38 been discussed in connection with Olor Iscanus, it need not be redefined in Silex Scintillans. What should be emphasized is the extent to which Vaughan is also responding in the three areas to the social currents of his age.

In a very.loose sens^, the man who is distracted is op­ pressed by worldly cares. But oppression, one of the major social -131- themes in the secular poems, is presented in.the sacred poems much more explicitly. In "Distraction" the speaker complains that the "World / is full of voices" (p. 413, 11-12) and fears that if

left alone too long Amidst the noise, and throng, Oppressed I Striving to save the whole, by parcells dye (p. 413, 31-34).

Near the beginning of the augmented reissue of 1655 the speaker is still frightened of those voices but now more clearly identifies them:

I skill not your fine tinsel, and false hair, Your Sorcery And smooth seducements: i’le not stuff my story With your Commonwealth and glory ("The Proffer," p. 487, 33-36)

"Commonwealth," along with "democracy," is a term of popular con­ tempt in the period. And Vaughan is very much a man of his time in this respect. 39

War, for Vaughan the most serious kind of civil oppres­ sion, is a recurring theme in Olor Iscanus. The physical violence it caused is, for instance, a subject running through "The Charnel- house" (pp. 41-42, 11. 17-22, 32-33, 43-44); the disorder and chaos that follow it are stressed in "An Invitation to Brecknock" (p. 46).

It reappears in the sacred poetry, particularly in "The Constellation, 40 where man's life is compared to the peace and serenity of the stars:

But seeks he your Obedience,' Order, Light, Your calm and wel-train’d flight, Where, though the glory differ in each'star, Yet is there peace still, and no war? -132-

Since plac'd by him who calls you by your names And fixt there all your flames, Without Command you never acted ought And then you in your Courses fought.

But here Commission'd by a black self-wil The sons the father kil, The Children Chase the mother, and would heal The wounds they give, by crying, zeale (p. 470, 29-40).

Though the first two of these stanzas make brief reference to the Civil War and fighting, the third makes more specific references to oppression. Regicide in the father-king allusion is difficult to overlook. The next two lines allude to the wounded mother church. The Puritans, having chased and wounded her, had done so in their attempts to purify the church from Ca­ tholicism, which remained a genuine threat to England throughout much of the seventeenth century.^3

One of the few alternatives Vaughan offers to the op­ pression of "worldly voices" is the submission to proper authority- to the established monarchy, to reason, to nature or to God. Here again he reflects a general sentiment of his age. Submission was a major theme in social criticism in popular religious literature A2 of the sixteenth century and continues well into the seventeenth.

It is significant that for Vaughan the theme becomes most dominant in the second edition of 1655, a decade when the royalist cause was thoroughly lost and Stoic detachment and Epicurean fatalism were widespread.

The commitment to submission, expressed by Vaughan at -133-

times.as "duty" or "steadfastness," is one major reason he is so

strongly responsive to nature. We recall that it is in the constel lations that man can find the much needed model of obedience and a "calm and wel-train’d flight" (p. 470, 29-30). Near the end of

"The Constellation", the whole of creation is seen as instructing man in the art of submission:

So guide us through this Darknes, that we may Be more and more in love with day;

Settle, and fix our hearts, that we may move In order, peace, and love, And taught obedience by thy whole Creation, Become an humble, holy nation (p. 470, 51-56).

Throughout the sacred poems, in fact, nature serves as a model for submission to human and divine authority.

Submission underlies the theme in "Cock-crowing," in

"The Stone," "The Star," and "The Water-fall." It is also the major theme in "The Bird," which, in the strong similarity of sub­ ject to that of an earlier poem, offers some measure of the con­ tinuity of Vaughan's thought since the beginning of Olor Iscanus.

Many poems of the secular collection were written before the second outbreak of Civil War and the royal execution at a time when there was still hope for the reestablishment of the monarchy and a re- 44 turn to the "halcyon days" of the past decade. In "To the River

Isca," Vaughan writes of the mildness of the night, the joy in the turtle dove, and the allegiance of both night and dove to the river: -134-

Mild, dewle nights, and Sun-shine dayes, The Turtles voyce, Joy without fear, Dwell on thy bosome all the year (p. 40, 48-50)!

The riv,er, clean and unpolluted, has submitted to a greater force as it journeys toward its home, the "Main": "In all thy Journey to the Main / No nitrous Clay, nor Brimstone-vein / Mixe with thy streams" (p. 40, 55-57).

The purity of the night and of the river, the joy of the bird, are possible, the speaker informs us, because the Welsh countryside was yet relatively free from "lowd, anxious cares," from

"Common Wares and Shows of time" (p. 41, 79-81). Not so by 1655, the time of the augmented reissue of Silex Sciritillans. The bird is now buffeted by "many a sullen storm":

The Turtle then in Palniytrees mourns, While Owls and Satyrs howl; The pleasant Land to brimstone turns And all her streams grow foul (p. 497, 25-30).

The darkness in "The Constellation," which represents the death of the king and wound of the church, is used here again in reference to the treacherous times and the sadness. The turtle dove now mourns, and the pleasant land, which escaped the pollution of brim­ stone in "To the River Isca," has turned the river foul. The evil to which Vaughan refers is the natural outcome for a land engaged in a thoroughly hopeless conflict. The sadness seems to reflect Vaughan’s final political disillusionment and defeat that

Vaughan experienced. But in spite of the adversity of the storm, the bird, which remains faithful to the divine will, awakens the -135-

following morning with hymns to the "unseen arms" of Providence.

The idea of submission to a higher authority.underlies all of

Vaughan's writing, regardless of the change of events and the dis­

appointments in life.

The call for submission, moreover, should also be read

as a response to the widespread fear of anarchy in the forties and

fifties, as well as a counterthrust to the current threat of oppres­

sion. Vaughan found anarchy in many forms and in many different places. The growing moral decay throughout the country is evidence of this anarchy. Brief references to such decandence are present in his warning to the reader about the current abuses of verse and of love:

Blind, desp'raté fits, that study how To dresse, and trim our shame, That gild rank poyson, and allow Vice in a fairer name;

Thé PUrles of youthfull bloud, and bowles, Lust in the Robes of Love (p. 446, 9-14).

The moral weakness of the times that is referred to here echoes earlier ideas in "An Elegie on the death of Mr. R.W." in Olor

Iscanus, where the age is shown to be without light and "better times" is something hoped for in the future. At another point,

Vaughan speaks of contemporary secularization of the marriage rites:

Praying! and to be married? It was rare, But now 'tis monstrous; and that pious care Though of our selves, is so much out of date, That to renew't were to degenerate ("Isaac's Marriage," p. 408, 1-4) -136-

The monstrous times have replaced praying at such events with swear­

ing and oaths:

Had’st ne'ran oath, nor Complement? . thou wert An odde dull sutor; Hadst thou but.the art Of these our dayes, thou couldst have coyn'd thee twenty New sev'ral oathes, and Complements (too) plenty ("Isaacs Marriage," p. 408, 13-16).

The fear of anarchy is strongly reflected as well in all sorts of popular practices which Vaughan vehemently opposes. One of the clearest examples of his rejection of irrational behavior, the basis of anarchy, is found in "The Garland," where the speaker refers to his "Sinfhl age" that has corrupted him. This is followed by a catalogue of reasonless acts: "Wild affections," excessive gambling and self indulgence, "glorious desceptions" (which include

"false joys," love of self and ornate homes). The idea is re­ peated in "The World," which condemns "wide Excesse" (40), as does "Misery," with similar reference to "Excesse of Friends, of words, and wine" (25). This concern over moral decay is, of course, nothing new in Vaughan’s thinking. His "judgment against lewdness" in "Rules and Lessons" echoes earlier thoughts:

that’s base wit That voyds but filth, and stench. Hast thou no prize But sickness, or Infection? stifle it. I I ■ I I ■ J ■!, ». I **- Who makes his jests of sins, must beat-least If not a very devill, worse than a Beast (p. 438, 74-78).

In Olor Iscanus, he has already commented that a virtuous act alone

"A difference make ’twixt beasts and man" ("Casimirus Lyric. Lib. 3.

Ode 22." g. 88, 30). ' r -137-

Partly as a reaction to anarchy and oppression, Vaughan

is able to find solace both in the immediate future and in the 45 immediate past. At the moment of social crisis, many could find

signs of the world’s decay in the near future. And Vaughan is

among them, especially when he urges the acceleration of the col­

lapse:

Dear Lord- make haste, Sin every day commits more waste, And thy old enemy, which knows His time is short, more raging grows. Nor moan I onely (though profuse) Thy Creatures bondage and abuse; But what is highest sin and shame, The vile despight done to thy name; The forgeries, which impious wit And power force on Holy Writ, With all detestable designs That may dishonor those pure lines ("The Day of Judgement," p. 531, 27-38).

The signs of decay are, it is suggested, found in sacred (in forgeries of the "Holy Writ") as well as social areas (where sin wastes). The poem begins with an apostrophe—"make the dead, like flowers, arise / Youthful and fair to see new skies" (5-6)— and ends with the same: "Descend, descend! / Make all things new! and without end!" (45-46). Vaughan is, in effect, dealing with something similar to the classical idea about the ultimate res- 46 toration of the phenomenal world, in addition to the Christian beliefs concerning the last judgment and the appearance of the

Antichrist who ber.n 1 Hs. the end. Surprisingly, the difference in this sacred poem is that the major concern is with the "raging" of -138-

the secular world-;around him and its ultimate collapse (not pri­ marily its restoration).

Christopher Hill observes in Puritanism and Revolution that the social crisis half way into the century gave signs of the world’s decay.4? Vaughan, however, found hope in these portentous signs. He could look forward to the Day of Judgment, and he could also look backward to the "halcyon days": to the peace and tran­ quillity of the thirties. But this backward glance is not peculiar to Vaughan. In reference to this decade, for instance, Charles was frequently praised by the courtiers for establishing an "era of

48 peace and plenty that he had inaugurated."

Vaughan’s "Isaacs Marriage" similarly laments the passing of those days. While James Roy King overlooks this yearning to return to the earlier decade, he is able to find here references to social practices that have gone out of fashion in the mid- 49 seventeenth century—chastity, simplicity, and reverence. There are several things Vaughan does to apply the biblical subject of the poem to contemporary England. His description of the "young, gay swearers," the "antick crowd" or the "stately dumb"^® is pre­ sented in the context of the "thirstie Isle" (58) and in time ref­ erence to "these our days" (22).

The association between Isaac and Charles I must have been tempting for Vaughan and his reader. The inference is particularly strong in the last stanza': -139-

Thus soar'd thy soul, who (though young,)' didst inherit Together with, his bloud, thy fathers spirit, Whose active zeal-and tried faith were to thee Familiar ever since thy Infancie. Others were tym'd, and train'd up to't butthou Diddst thy swift yeers in piety out-grow, Age made them rev'rend, and a snowie head, But thou wert so, e're time his snow could shed; Then, who would truly limne thee out, must paint First, a young Patriarch, then a marr i'd Saint (pp. 409-410, 63-72)

James I's faith had indeed been tried. Charles I's "swift years" numbered twenty-six when he ascended to the throne, and of course

"Patriarch" and "saint" were names traditionally given to the

English king. It is not entirely clear that the penultimate stanza makes reference to Charles, with statements about the journey of

Isaac's soul, the marriage of the state, and the earth offering a sacrifice so that the "thirstie Isle" might receive divine nour­ ishment.5^ But it is a strong possible reading in light of the publication date of 1650.

The extended first stanza of forty-two lines compares the present chaos and moral decline to the peace and serenity of the earlier decade. The image of "White Peace" (or "White^days") ,' employed in the 50's to describe the "halcyon days,"~? is used by Vaughan for the same reason:

0 sad, and wilde excesse! and happy those White dayes, that durst no impious mirth expose! When Conscience by lew'd use had not lost sense, Nor bold-fac'd custome banish'd Innocence; Thou hadst no pompous train, nor Antick crowd Of young, gay swearers, with their needlesse lowd Retinue ...But here was ne'r a Complement, not one -140-

Spruce, supple cringe, or study'd look put on, All was plain, modest truth ...0 sweet, divine simplicity! 0 grace Beyond a Curled lock, or painted face! (pp. 408-409, 11. 17-22,: 31-33, 37-38)

"Wilde excesse" is a recurring idea in Vaughan's collections. His

dislike for everything that is uncontrolled-such as war, anarchy,

and lewd poetry—underlies his preoccupation with submission to

secular and sacred authority. But the rejection of excessiveness

does not mean a total rejection of this world. Mirth that is

"impious" cannot be allowed; mirth that is controlled, or joy that

is seasoned, is welcomed and even praised.

Margaret Mahood is correct in placing Vaughan in the

humanist tradition, but for reasons beyond those she provides.

She observes that he sees in "nature the signature of the Creator";

that he sees "within himself the union symbolized by the signature"

and that he "does have an earthward stress." Certainly, these are

valid points. But what she fails to acknowledge is that the stress

extends to a preoccupation with this world, which is both social

and moral; and that it is in this light that Vaughan should also

be placed within the tradition. "Humane studies have to do with

life and conduct, those which form the good man." And life and

good conduct have always been among Vaughan's major interests. In

an age of Puritan strictness, Classicism gave to writers of the age

"a rational sanity and idealistic ardour" which "made for charity

and tolerance"^ in both the sacred and secular life. This sanity -141-

-and idealism make an impact on Vaughan far greater than is conceded.

His charity and tolerance for this life reflect a temperament not unlike that of Sir Thomas Browne or George Herbert.

But this temperament and those qualities that help place

Vaughan within the humanist tradition are not rhe result of a re­ ligious conversion. They are not peculiar to Silex Sciritillans any more than are*the Greek concepts of pre-existence or emanations, or the Graeco-Christian ideas of the dualistic worlds, the single source to which all returns, and the ultimate restoration of this world. Vaughan had been concerned with these in Poems, and nearly alllreached full development in Olor Iscarius. The ideas that do represent the extent of the conversion—Grace, repentance, and faith—are significant, but they do not represent a sudden funda­ mental change, for they have either been preceded by or have actually grown out of closely similar ideas. To think of Vaughan as completely "changed" is to overlook a strong continuity of preoccupation. -142-

CHAPTER VI

THALIA REDIVIVA (1678): RETIREMENT AND

A LIMITED SOCIAL AWARENESS

Tháliá Rediviva (1678), Vaughan’s final publication, at last exhibits some of the "new direction" which Hutchinson has pro­ fessed to see as early as 1650. Even here, though, Vaughan does not show himself to be a thoroughly "changed man" (in fact, there are few fundamental changes from first to last), but he begins to treat the theme of withdrawal with greater force and intensity than in the earlier poetry. Near the end of this collection there appears a rejection of the world, amounting finally to complete revulsion. In this one sense, then, Vaughan may be said to have undergone a more thorough conversion than before.

The two-part structure of Thália Rediviva, of secular and sacred poems, seems to emphasize this shift. With the exception of six works, it is commonly believed that the poems in the first division were written in the 1640's but for political and esthetic reasons were withheld from Poems (1646) and Olor Iscanus (dedicated

1647). The poems of the second division, under the heading "Pious thoughts and Ejaculations," were written during the 1650's and

1660's, and those which can be dated after 1655 represent a con­ siderably older Vaughan. The juxtaposition of the two groupings makes more striking the change of views observable in the second part -143-

From the title, which means "the revival of Thalia," the

Greek muse of pastoral poetry, one might expect an emphasis on

nature and, since the classicalmuse^is to be revived, an emphasis

on the pirely classical element as strong as that in Silex Scintillans

However, in the secular division, neither expectation is fulfilled,

a fact which is not surprising, since nature never becomes central,

nor does the purely classical element ever attain such importance

in the two earlier collections for which these poems in Thalia

Rediviva were originally intended.'*' But although the purely clas­

sical concepts are not a major element, they are not entirely absent.

As in previous collections, Graeco-Christian ideas compose the major

element of Vaughan’s metaphysics. Both the classical and the

Graeco-Christian ideas are a continuous preoccupation in Vaughan's wofk. Since these ideas have already been discussed in connection with Poems and Olor Iscanus. the two collections for which the poems

in this secular division were originally intended, another extended 2 discussion seems unnecessary. What remains to be examined in this division is the nature of the association between the metaphysics and the physical world and also the extent Vaughan is involved with this; physical world.

The Graeco-Christian concepts at times help to bring the phenomenal world into closer conformity with the Infinite. In

"To Lysimachus, the Author being with hirti'in London," for example,

Vaughan stresses the dependence of man on this world for an -144-

understanding of the other. Light, he observes,

Reveals her firy Volume unto thee; And looking on the separated skies And their clear Lamps with careful thoughts & eyes Thou break’st through Natures upmost rooms 6 Bars To Heav’n and there converses! with the stars (p. 633, 32-36).

It is necessary, says the poet, to understand the natural world in

order to have commerce with the divine spirit. Essentially, Vaughan

is dealing with the classical idea of nature-as-emblem, which he

used earlier in the secular and sacred collections. The phrase

"The Separated skies” refers generally to the division of the

heavens into spheres, and, more specifically, to the classical sepa­

ration of the impure region below from the refined region above the

moon. In both the separation and union of the worlds, the Greek

element is strong.

Underlying the idea of union between the two worlds is

the Platonic concept of man’s primary goal in life. The idea, ex­

pressed earlier in "Juvenals Tenth Satyre," defines man's real pur­ pose as the attainment of divine knowledge, resulting in wisdom or virtuous action.4 Vaughan’s concern about wisdom in the secular division is very similar to that in the earlier publications for which these poems were originally intended. He continues to be responsive to the familiar areas of politics, oppression, Socratic ethics, and class-consciousness.

We may recall that in Olor Iscanus Vaughan’s conception of the ideal statesman centers in virtue. He must be wise, and in this wisdom his judgment must be divinely confirmed; he must be -145y

self-sacrificing; and he must be gentle and friendly, even toward

the enemy. In the secular division of Thalia Rediviva, the king,

the most perfect statesman of all, possesses many of the same quali­

ties. His gentleness toward the. enemy is clearly stressed (5);

he has sacrificed his security to help .the public good (19); he

is a "Royal Saint" (8) and acts with divine confirmation; his

wisdom is also emphasized, for he is nothing less than a "Prophet"

(20). In the same poem, "The King Disguis’d," reference is made to

oppression, another familiar area of social concern:

These are our days of Purim, which oppress The Church, and force thee to the Wilderness. But all these Clouds cannot thy light confine, The Sun in storms and after them, will shine (p. 625, 21-24).

The reference is to Charles’ flight in 1646 in order to avoid

capture. In the king’s absence, both.state and church are threat­

ened by anarchy. What results is a general moral decay, and thus

a "sinful Isle." In Poems (1646) Vaughan responded to the same

social crisis which caused him to fear anarchy in "the Floating

State built on the people’s will" ("Juvenals Tenth Satyre," p. 21,

160); in Olor Iscarius he responded to the violence of the age and

hopes to "Settle once more this floating lie" (p. 85, 33).The

ideal statesman in the earlier secular poems and here iri Thalia

Rediviva appears to be one answer to such an age: .while the times

are violent, he is calm; while the age is morally weak, he is virtuous and divinely guided; while the age is chaotic he is reason-

6 able, wise, and judicious. -146-

This first division of Thalia Rediviva clearly re­ flects Vaughan’s continuing preoccupation with the secular world.

In addition to a continuing interest in the Statesman and in the oppression or chaos of the times, Vaughan remains interested in

Socratic ethics. Such a concern, which is especially strong in connection with wealth and fame, is expressed in "The importunate

Fortune, written to Doctor Powel of Cantre." The speaker here ex­ plains, "I refuse / Thy Wealth" (101-102), for to pursue wealth or fame is to forget one's purpose in life. The reference to the danger of distraction is not new in Vaughan's thinking either?; it is the same which underlies his concern about social position. Un­ like the strong class-consciousness expressed in Olor Iscanus, the importance of social station is questioned in the last collection:

What is’t to thee, Who canst produce a nobler Pedigree, And in meer truth affirm thy soul of kin.... - To some bright Star, or to a Chérubin ("To Lysimachus, the Author being with him in London,"p. 632, 25-28)?

The extended first stanza of this poem, in effect, ridicules the gallants and fops, along with the ladies and lords, who work hard to maintain a sense of social rank. Vaughan has not previously conceded that social station is insignificant. Except for this con­ cession, the ideas in the poems from this division, which were withheld from the previous secular collections, represent a con­ tinuity of social preoccupation.

Similar social comment is equally strong in the few -147-

g secular poems written in the 1650's and 1660’s. One such poem,

"To the pious memorie of C.W. Esquire," written about 1653, is

typical of what Vaughan has been responding to in Poems, Olor Iscanus

and Silex Scintillans. In this, Vaughan is concerned about the

injustice of law and the corruption of those who enforce it (40-56).

He makes numerous references to such Classical and Christian

virtues as moderation (63), constancy (32), justice (53-56 and 87),

order (74), and temperance (26)—the same virtues frequently com­ mended to the reader in the sacred collection—for instance, in

"Rules and Lessons" (pp. 436-39)—and.in the secular publications as well.

Essentially, Vaughan’s response to this world in the

secular division is very similar to that expressed in the earlier

collections. The close relation between metaphysics and ethics

is nearly identical with the previous secular and sacred collections.

And the absence from these poems of purely Christian ideas—those that represent the conversion of the late 1640’s and early 1650’s— helps to support the contention that these poems were written be­ fore Silex Scintillans and intended for earlier publication.

The second division in Thalia Rediviva, introduced by

the heading "Pious thoughts and Ejaculations," may be distinguished from the first by its use of both purely Christian ideas and the theme of retirement, which will be discussed presently. Unlike the first division, the second is composed of sacred poems written -148-

in the 1650’s and 1660’s; the purely Christian ideas here are

similar to those iri Silex Sciritillansi, For example, "The Request"

clearly demonstrates Vaughan's continued belief in Christian doctrine:

Yet do'st thou give them that rich Rain, Which as it drops, clears all again. 0 what kind Visits daily pass ’Twixt thy great self and such poof grass, With what sweet looks doth thy love shine On those low Violets of thine! While the tall - Tulip is accurst, And Crowns Imperial dye with thirst (p. 667, 21-28).

Divine initiative, faith in God's intervention, and penitential

tears, symbolized here in the purifying rain, are all present in

the earlier collection of Silex Sciritillans.

Along with the purely Christian ideas, Graeco-Christian

concepts hold a central position in the sacred division. But

these concepts appear to be more carefully selected than in earlier

collections. Those expressed here tend to emphasize the signifi­

cance of the world beyond this world. The Graeco-Christian ideas

that frequently reappear—the dualistic worlds, the single source from which all flows and to which all returns, the distraction which results from the pursuit of worldly goods—are consonant with the theme of withdrawal. On the other hand, those concepts which in earlier collections supported ideas of worldly involve­ ment—the soul’s quest on earth, the necessity of worldly affliction, and the significance of good deeds—are infrequently used or alto­ gether omitted in this sacred section. The inclusion of some ideas and exclusion of others suggests Vaughan’s somewhat "new direction" away from the physical world. -149-

The sense of withdrawal is also reflected in Vaughan’s

selection of purely classical ideas. The pagan concepts which are

closely associated with another world or which de-emphasize the

importance of this world—emanations (particularly in connection

with sentient nature), the longing for pre-existence, and the wish

to re-unite with the natal star—these remain’important philo­

sophical ideas. At the same time, the concepts that markedly lessen

in importance tend to relate more closely with this world—recollection,

the shared souls of friends, and Platonic love (especially in con­

nection with knowledge of self). Where the pagan concepts appear,

the reference is brief and frequently cryptic. The vague allusion

in "The BeeJ' a poem in the sacred division, to the first white age

10 of pre-existence is a case in point:

0 purer years of light, and grace! The diff'rence is great, as .the space ’Twixt you and us: who blindly run After false-fires, and leave the Sun (p. 673, 53-56).

The phrase "years of light," which is somewhat similar to "the

first white age" or to the "happy white days" in earlier collections,

is here closely associated with Christian grace; the allusion is so brief and the Christian association so apparent that it is difficult 11 to tell whether Vaughan has the pagan tradition in mind at all.

All of these Christian and Classical ideas in the sacred division represent Vaughan's continued preoccupation. They also

suggest, through Vaughan's selection and emphasis, a somewhat new direction of thought, which takes less account of the physical -150- world. It is noteworthy that the idea of retirement, which de- emp'hasizes the physical world and is supported by the Classical and Christian concepts, recurs throughout this division and seems to become increasingly stronger toward the end. Total withdrawal, however, does not become an important idea in the sacred section ]2 until near the conclusion of the division. But even the with­ drawal theme is not fundamentally new. The'theme was ;dealt with earlier in the translations and paraphrases of Juvenal, Virgil,

Horace and Boethius; the difference is that now the theme is treated in the original poems and with a greater force and in­ tensity than before.

An early example of the retirement theme, which is sup­ ported by both the Classical and Christian ideas, is expressed in

"Looking back," a poem placed near the beginning of the sacred di­ vision:

Fair, shining Mountains of my pilgrimage, And flow1ry Vales, whose flow’rs were stars: The days and nights of my first happy age; An age without distast and warrs (p. 660, 1-4).

The sense of urgency and agitation that slowly develops along with the theme of retirement in this section does not yet appear. Instead, the calm, wistful tone supnorts the sense of nostalgic longing in the poem to retreat from the physical world and to attain "my first happy age," which alludes to both childhood and political peace.//

The speaker in "Retirement," a poem farther on in the sacred division, is more specific about what he is withdrawing from: -151-

All various Lusts iri Cities still Are found; they are thé Thrones of Ill, The dismal Sinks, where blood is spill'd, Cages with much uncleanness fill’d. But frirai shades are the sweet fense Of piety and innocence (p. 662, 17-22).

This rural-urban opposition is somewhat stronger than the longing

to retreat to the "first happy age." Previous reference to this

conflict has been generally limited to the translations in the

secular collections; and iri Silex Sciritillans the conflict does

not seem to exist. The theme reappears here iri Thalia Rediviva in

"Looking back," in "Retirement," in "the Recovery," "The Nativity,"

"The True Christmas," "the Request," and "The Bee," often with a

stronger conviction than that in the earlier translations.

Near the end of the sacred division, the speaker’s tone has become more serious and the rejection more complete; ’ even the 13 natural world is rejected. In "The World," for instance, the speaker cannot find truth, friendship, honor, or pleasure in this life. The resignation from the world—"Here I renounce thee and / resign" (p. 670, 19)—is very much unlike Vaughan's previously 14 expressed pleasure in worldly involvement. Earlier in this di­ vision, the poet speaks of a longing to attain

that Joy, which none can ;grieye, And which in all griefs doth relieve. This is the portion thy Child begs, Not that of rust, and rags and dregs ("The Request," p. 668,31-34)

"The World" responds to this need for "Joy" by renouncing the phenomenal world of "rust and rags and dregs," an action which -152- enables the speaker.to receive the "supreme Bliss" (p. 671, 63).

Such an emphasis on the other world limits the extent and degree of Vaughan's social awareness.

Throughout this sacred division of Thalia Rediviva, stress on the retirement theme minimizes the Importance of the physical world. The most obvious effect is in the kind of response he makes to the world around him. Those things that attracted him in Silex

Scintillans—such as virtuous conduct, Civil War, Parliament, poetry, and the moral decay of the age--no longer seem important.

This can be clearly shown in poems. dat6d.;after 1650. In treating things of this world, those written after 1655, deal al­ most exclusively with the Anglican Church. The familiar fear of anarchy or oppression, which was expressed in earlier collections in connection with the king and Parliament, continues, but now it is associated with external forces which oppress the Church and cause religious disorder. In short, it appears that what before was a concern for things of this world is now narrowed in scope and limited to an interest in ecclesiasticism.

Typically, "The Nativity, written in the year 1656," one year after the augmented reissue of Silex Scintillans, deals with church-related oppression:

A Tax? 'tis so still! we can see The Church thrive in her misery; And like her head at Bethlem, rise When she opprest with troubles, lyes (p. 665, 9-12). -153-

No longer is it civil oppression, which was■expresséd in Olor

Iscanus•and a number of passages in the sacred volume, but rather

the Decimation Tax imposed by Parliament upon church members.^5

Parliament about this time had also enacted laws prohibiting

Christmas observance. "The true Christmas," written about 1656,

speaks to this point; it condemns the prohibition, praises the

simple, humble spirit of the holy day, and prays to "restore the

heathen ways" (2). Some time between 1656 and the Restoration,

Vaughan can write with regret that "truth and piety are mist /

Both in the Rulers and the Priest" ("The Bee," p. 672, 7-8). And

near the end of the same poem, consistent with the idea of re­

jection of this world, Vaughan questions false worship:

Is not fair Nature of her self Much richer than dull paint, or pelf? And are not streams at the -Spring-head More sweet than in carv'd Stone, or Lead? But fancy and some Artist's tools Frame a religion for fools (p. 673, 57-62).

In the light of his continued concern about what was happening

to the Church, the paint, stone and lead might easily be a syn­

ecdoche standing for the Church. Formalized religion, at the mercy

of Parliament, might very well serve but fools. Vaughan, in fact,

seems to be preferring a natural religion over one that is church-

rel-, ated,.

The return of Charles in 1660 does not appear to have

lightened Vaughan’s heart. Two poems in particular, "Discipline" and "The Request," reflect a disappointment in the post-Restoration -154- license within the church that followed the King’s return.

"Discipline" seems especially vehement against the lawlessness:

When Act of grace-and a long peace Breed but rebellion and displease;- Then give him his own way and will, Where lawless he may run until His own choice hurts him, and the sting Of his foul sins full sorrows bring (p. 661, 7-12).

The rebellion is left in the hands of the individual sinner; help 18 is sought neither from the organized Church nor the king. This does not necessarily indicate, of course, a rejection of either king or Church, but it seems to be another instance in the sacred division of Vaughan's loss of faith in things of this world.

The element of withdrawal that runs through the sacred division begins to be treated with greater force and intensity than in earlier collections. It is expressed first in terms of retirement, and amounts at one point finally,to complete re­ jection of the physical world. This rejection represents the

"new direction" in Vaughan's thought which Hutchinson professes to see in the early 1650's. But this is not to suggest that in this last publication Vaughan is a thoroughly "changed man." The meta­ physics, in fact, remains largely the same as in earlier poems.

The Christian ideas that represent the extent of the conversion, those that are frequently expressed in Silex Sciritillans-—'divine interventions, repentance, and faith—, reappear often in the second division of Thalia Rediviva. -155-

The absence of these purely Christian ideas from most of the poems in the first division supports the contention that these poems were written in the 1640's but were withheld from Poems and Olor Iscanus. The metaphysical and secular preoccupations in the secular division help additionally to link these poems with the main body of Vaughan's work. The pagan concepts and Graeco-

Christian ideas that make up the metaphysics are, in fact, the same as those in the earlier sacred and secular collections. Unlike the sacred division of Thalia Rediviva, where concern about things of this world is severely limited by the sense of withdrawal, the first division expresses interest in such things as conduct, war,

Parliament, even the new astronomy and Harvey's discovery of the circulation of blood. In the treatment of metaphysics and the secular life, both the first and second divisions reflect a strong continuity of preoccupation. -156-

CONCLÚSION

That Henry Vaughan is a derivative poet is a literary

commonplace. His borrowings from Donne/ Cartwright, Randolph,

and Herbert are well known; some of the Latin influences and certain

of the Greek allusions are also recognized. Yet, though he borrowed

ideas from someone such as Herbert, the poem Vaughan produces is

usually "an individual work that contains more of himself than of his master."'*' Similarly, his borrowings from and allusions to

classical writers do not make him a thoroughgoing classicist, any

more than he is a mystic simply because his religious poetry re­

flects the early stages of contemplation and purgation. Vaughan

responds to certain writers and traditions largely because they

help to express his own fundamental beliefs: they are frequently

used to introduce, reinforce, or clarify his own insight.

The classical borrowings and parallels in Vaughan’s

early secular poetry are particularly significant because they are typical of the ideas central to his philosophy. The classical poets referred to in the first two collections, such as Juvenal,

Aristotle and Boethius, are a case in point. Vaughan is attracted

to "Jevenal’s Tenth Satyre," for instance, because it clearly ex­ presses what he himself will spend much of his poetic career trying

to.say, namely, that the soul flows from and returns to its source.

This concept, which informs the structure of Póéms and which -157- underlies the thought:in both the secular and sacred poetry, is expressed early in the Roman translations¿ and partly explains

Vaughan* s.interest in Boethius.

2 Vaughan is a "natural classicist," and this helps to account for his interest in classical writers and helps to explain why the borrowed ideas are congenial to his own philosophy. Un­ doubtedly, his formal education, both with his schoolmaster Matthew

Herbert and at Oxford, along with the intellectual milieu of the period, helped to form some of his interests and concepts; but, most of his metaphysics that is similar to Greek thought is not so much acquired as reinforced and complimented by conscious and un­ conscious borrowings.

An example of classical thought that reinforces native ideas is the Juvenalian concept discussed earlier concerning the supreme source from which all flows and to which all returns. While the concept is expressed in Vaughan’s Roman translations, it also underlies the references to Plotinian emanations'—the divine over­ flow that touches all creation and gives sense to nature—, and is a basic idea throughout the Christian poetry, especially in the allusions to St. John and St. Paul. In addition, this idea of the soul’s ascent and descent underlies the major concept of the im­ manence and transcendence of Vaughan's world. It is so fundamental to.Vaughan’s metaphysics expressed in all of his collections that acquired thought alone cannot easily account for such a deep- rooted preoccupation. -158-

Closely related to the idea of the soul’s movement from

and return to its source is the Platonic concept of dualistic worlds: one real, changeless, infinite, the other unreal, un­

stable and finite. It is a native concept which is strongly in­

formed by acquired classical thought: the idea underlies Vaughan’s allusions to Aristotle’s continuance of matter, Plato’s pre­ existence, the classical Golden Age, and the Christian Day of

Judgment. Regardless of which immediate idea Vaughan is working with or which tradition he seems to be working in (he often seems to work in both Christian and classical at once), his preoccupation is deep-rooted and fundamentally "natural."

One of the major points that is brought to light in the examination of the extent of Vaughan’s classicism is the Platonic paradox in the poet’s secular and sacred work: the soul is both imprisoned by the body and the physical world and yet must use the phenomenal world to acquire knowledge about the Absolute and to gain a limited perfection here below. The second element of the paradox closely relates to one of Vaughan’s goals in his poetry, namely, to bring this world into closer conformity with the other.

The soul not only uses the phenomenal world to gain knowledge about perfection, but realizes perfection through virtuous conduct. Some thirty years ago, in fact, Helen White observed that Vaughan

"shows himself preoccupied very much as Herbert seems to have been, with the social morality of his time." There is a certain "devout -159-

humanism" in his work, she continued, "not only in his choice of

materials for translation but also in responsiveness he shows to 3 the various influences of the age." Though Miss White's ob­

servations were made generally in reference to Vaughan's prose, the

preoccupation with social morality as we have seen is central in

much of the poetry.

Proper conduct is naturally a point of special interest

to one whose metaphysics emphasizes the two worlds, a soul that

yearns to return to its source, and the attainment of perfection

here below as a means of achieving ascent. Even in the later

collection—of Silex Scintillans—where Vaughan stresses the sig­ nificance of grace and the more passive virtue of repentance,

conduct remains an important concern.

As we have seen, the conduct to which Vaughan subscribes

in Póéms (1646) and Olor Iscanus (dedicated 1648) is basically

Graeco-Christian. In his earliest collection, he begins to ex­ press interest in reason and its control over passion. The one element that he consistently opposes is, in fact, excess, whether with, physical violence, with pleasure, wealth, or even democratic rule. "Wild excess," a recurring phrase in Vaughan’s poetry, requires rational control mainly because éxcessive behaviour be­ comes an end in itself and tends to distract the soul from its homeward journey. In all four collections, Vaughan finds the answer to a world of "Wild Excentricks" in submission to individual -160-

reason, to nature, or.to the established government. Control

through submission, however, does not mean negation of the physical

world. Vaughan does not reject physical pleasure, for example;

the poet’s concern is merely that it be "seasoned."

Submission to a reasonable force is encouraged; but co­

ercion which breeds oppression is criticized harshly by Vaughan.

The oppression of the individual and King caused by Parliament, by

the rising mercantile class, and by the-maases in general, is dealt

with in Poems. The fear of anarchy—the result of oppression—

underlies much of the poetry in the first two collections and is

the reason for Vaughan’s strong insistence on the Graeco-Christian

virtues of temperance, courage, and justice.

These concerns are , also central to Olor Iscanus, but

here they are placed into special social contexts of politics, war,

aesthetics, and friendship, each of which reflects a strong moral

consciousness. Much like Juvenal in his "Tenth Satyre," Vaughan

struggles throughout the collection to answer the question, "What

is there in life that is truly good and how is this good to be

attained?"

In Silex Scintillans (1650 and 1655) these specific

social situations do not remain central; but, a general moralistic preoccupation that closely parallels Greek thought persists.

Vaughan continues to express interest in the generàl Graeco-

Christian virtues of temperance, moderation, order,.and courage- -161-

and his defense ,of submission, his. rejection of Soc.fetic ethics, and i? his fear of distraction, oppression, and anarchy continue, though

references to these matters are not as frequent. Although these

ideas are not placed in specific social situations, most are pre­

sented in reference to contemporary England; anarchy is discussed

in connection with the current moral decay of the period; oppression

is seen in relation to the war and the growing democratic spirit; submission underlies the popular millenarian doctrine and the longing to retreat to the past decade of the "halcyon days."

Both the moralistic preoccupation and the metaphysical ideas running through all of his collections strongly bind the secular to the sacred. Even the three ideas that represent the extent of Vaughan’s religious conversion iri Silex Sciritillans— grace, repentance, and faith—clearly relate to or grow out of the metaphysical concepts expressed earlier in the secular collections.

In fact, after Poems and Olor Iscanus, very few new ideas find their way into Vaughan’s poetry. The failure to see this con­ tinuity stems from the problem of recognizing similar ideas ex­ pressed in two different contexts; the largely classical context of Poems and Olor Iscanus and the fundamentally Christian context of Silex Scintillàns.

Thalia Rediviva, the last collection of poems, reflects something of the change that Hutchinson professed to see in the sacred poetry. The distinguishing element is the theme of withdrawal -162-

from the physical world, which leads at one point to complete

rejection. But even this idea is not totally new, for it was ex­

pressed earlier, though.less intensely, in the prose translation

of De Guevara and the translations of the classical poets Boethius

and Ovid. In Thalia Rediviva, the effect of withdrawal on the

nature and extent of Vaughan's social consciousness is clear.

Although Vaughan’s interest continues in the familiar ideas of

oppression, anarchy, and submission, his expression of them is

limited to observations about the present state of the church.

And near the end of the collection, even the established church

seems to be rejected in favor of a natural religion.

Most of the ideas expressed in poems written during or

after Vaughan's religious conversion, then ,are the development

and fulfillment of his earlier work. In each collection his poems give expression to the secular as well as the sacred life;

the recognition of which works toward a more balanced view of

Vaughan's poetry. A study of the classicism in Vaughan's thought helps to define the metaphysical continuity and, because of the close classical relationship between metaphysics and ethics, helps to make clear the nature and extent of his persistent moral con­ sciousness. |6?3

NOTES -164-

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets (New York, 1936), and James Roy King, Studies iri Six 17th Century Writérs (Athens, Ohio, 1966).

2. Henry Vaughan, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, ed. Rev. H. F. Lyte (Boston, 1847), Intro.

3. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, 12th ed. (Methuen, Ill., 1911), p. 305.

4. Carolyn Spurgeon, Mysticism in Eriglish Literature (Cambridge, 1913), p. 57.

5. See for example: Rufus Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London, 1914); Geraldine E. Hodgson, A Study in Illumiriation (London, 1914); Elbert N.S. Thompson, "Mysticism in Seventeenth Century English Literature," SP, XVIII (1921), 170-231; Edmund Blunden, Ori thé Pôëms of Hèriry Vaughan: Characteristics and Intimations (London, 1927); Lorna Collard, "Henry Vaughan and the Region Elenore," The Occult Review, LII (1930), 299-308; J. B. Leishman, "Henry Vaughan," in The Metaphysical Poets (Oxford, 1934), pp. 145-187.

6. T. S. Eliot, "The Silurist," The Dial, LXXXIII (1927), 260-261.

7. Douglas Bush, English Literature iri the Earlier Seventeenth Century (New York, 1945), p. 145.

8. Henry Vaughan, Thé Works of Heriry Vaughan, ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford, 1957). All references to Vaughan’s works were taken from this source. Hereafter, references to the prose, poems, as well as commendatory poems written about Vaughan, will indicate page and line number in parentheses immediately follow­ ing the reference to the work in the text.

9. This is not to forget that interest in Vaughan continued along theological lines long before Husain's study. As Marilla notes with justification in "The Significance of Henry Vaughan’s Literary Reputation," MLQ, V, (1944), 155-162, Vaughan has been the victim for more than a century of "literary critical inertia." -165-

10. Margaret Mahood, Poetry and Humanism (London, 1950).

11. E. C. Pettet, Of Paradise and Light: A Study of Vaughan's Silex Scintillans (Cambridge, 1960).

12. Pettet, p. 22.

13. R. A. Durr, On thé Mystical Poetry of Henry Vaughan (Cambridge, 1962), p. 7.

14. Durr, pp. xx-xxl. Essentially Durr is rejecting here the use of Louis L. Martz's terminology in Thé Poetry of Medi­ tation (New Haven, 1954). In his Paradise Within (New Haven,1964), Martz continues to use the term with justification, seeing Vaughan in light of "the Augustinian concept of interior 'illumination'" (pp. 2-31).

15. See for example The Explicàtor : Conrad HL-ilberry, "The Morning Watch," XIV, 44 (Apr. 1956); Louis G. Locke, "Peace," I, 43 (Apr. 1943); MacDonald Emslie, and others, "The Queer," XIII, 29 (Mar. 1955); W. Nelson Francis, "The Waterfall," XIV, 57 (June 1956); L. Chambers, "Henry Vaughan’s Allusive Technique: Biblical Allusions in 'The Night,'" MLQ, XXVII (1964), 47-52.

16. An extreme point of view, but in the direction of the flesh, is that by Frank Kermode in "The Private Imagery of Henry Vaughan," RES, I (1951), 206-225. Quite simply, Kermode questions the very sincerity of Vaughan's religious experience.

17. King, p. 128.

18. White, p. 254.

19. Those who have already acknowledged the presence of, say, Platonic or Plotinian thought in Vaughan have discussed this in­ fluence in context of a journey or search beyond this world. See, for instance, Leishman's study of Vaughan in The Mëtàphysical Poets.

20. Julian L. Ross, Philosophy in Literature (New York, 1949), p. 92.

21. John Smith Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry (New York, 1903), pp. 167-186.

22. Rosemond Tuve, A Reading of George Hérbért (Chicago, 1952), p. 22. -166-

NOTES

CHAPTER I

1. "Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature," p. 228.

2. Percy Osmond, The Mystical Poets of the English Church (New York, 1919), p. 167.

3. E. L. Marilla, The Secular Poems of Henry Vaughan (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 290-291.

4. His revulsion from the temporal world seems to stem di­ rectly from his involvement with it: he loved the Anglican Church and hated the Puritan revolution that suppressed it.

5. Introduction, The Complete Works of Henry Vaughan (New York, 1964), p. xii.

6. Underlying the emphasis on the empirical approach is Vaughan's desire to gain knowledge about the world above by under­ standing the world below. Elsewhere in his poems, he attacks use­ less "searches" that bring man to "the dreadful brink," because the "searches" become ends in themselves and distract one from the real goal.

7. This theory is fairly typical of poetry written in the Christian tradition. But, because of the growing emphasis in the twentieth century on Vaughan's otherworldliness, the poet is seldom placed within the tradition.

8. See the unpublished dissertation (University of Oregon, 1965) by E. Richard Gregory, Jr., "Du Bartas and the Modes of Christian Poetry in England," pp. 152-227. Though the dissertation does not deal with Vaughan, it does discuss the theory of Christian poetry that became popular in England.

9. Du Bartas: His Divine Weekes and Works, trans. Joshua Sylvester (1574), in Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, ed. Francis C. Haber (Gainesville, 1965), 84.

10. In "Jordan 2" Herbert rejects his earlier poetic practice of covering over truth with glitter; "Nothing could seem too rich to clothe the sun." The plain style, the sun image, and the con­ cern for truth make their way into Vaughan's work. -167-

11. The subject of Vaughan's friends is taken up in some detail in Hutchinson's Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation (Oxford, 1947). See especially pp. 75-77, 118-120, 81-82, 216-217

12. White, The Metaphysical Poets, p. 251.

13. The major heading in Chapter 2, "Of the Preservation of Health," is answered in the first subdivision heading, "Lead a Pious and an Holy Life." Vaughan continues, "For Piety...is profitable for all things, having the promise of this present life and of that which is to come" (p. 552).

14. Chapters three and four discuss in some detail the "good life" and the nature of Vaughan's moral preoccupation.

15. Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature (New York, 1957), p. 43.

16. In connection with Metrum 6, L. C. Martin observes in Works, p. 759, that the last stanza is "much amplified from Boethius." The Latin quotation on the title page of "Juvenals Tenth Satyre" (p. 17) is from Horace, Ars Poetica, and in trans­ lation reads, "If you do not seek to render word for word as a slavish translator." The method of free translation endorsed here is the method practiced by Vaughan in all of his translations

17. Compare Vaughan's with the strict English translations of the Consolation by "I.T." (1909), rev, by H. F. Stewart, Loeb Library (1918), pp. 128 ff.

18. White, p. 255.

19. See Basil Willey's The English Moralists (New York,1964) where "A Note on Sir Thomas Browne" points to a Classical in­ fluence and deals with Browne as a moralist.

20. Philip Macon Cheek, "The Latin Element in Henry Vaughan," SP, XLIV (1947), p. 88.

21. Anthony A. Wood, Athehae Oxoniehses, reprint, (New York, 1967).

22. Cheek, p. 70.

23. See E. L. Marilla, "The Significance of Henry Vaughan's Literary Reputation," 155-162. -168-

24. Tyrtaeus is the ancient Spartan poet.

25. Probably Katherine Philips, who was highly esteemed in literary circles of the seventeenth century, though now, we think, unjustly.

26. For convincing evidence that Henry: Vaughan attended Oxford, see F. E. Hutchinson's Life; Marilla's Secular Poems; Fogle's Works; and Cheek’s "Latin Element."

27. Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558-1642 (Oxford, 1965), p. 127. He also observes that an un­ written "extra statutory" curriculum carried out by separate tu­ tors assigned to individual underclassmen had a far greater impact on the complexion of the curriculum as a whole than did the standard "Statutory" curriculum, for it was, supposedly, the main door through which socially relevant and innovative programs en­ tered. While there is probably some truth to this, Curtis seems to be guilty of hasty generalizations. His belief that each student had his own program of studies is based on what a few exceptional tutors did with a few exceptional students.

28. Kenneth Charlton, Education in Renaissance England (London, 1965), p. 141. Similarly, one of the major points made by Hiram Haydn in The Counter-Renaissance (New York, 1950) con­ cerns the perpetuation of large areas of medieval thought into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

29. Curtis, pp. 86-87.

30. Curtis, p. 86.

31. Curtis, p. 91.

32. See Marilla, Sécúlar Póéms, P- 102, for the dating of secular poems.

33. Cheek, p. 69.

34. Cheek, p. 78.

35. To the Latin influence must be added the Greek. We should not neglect to mention Vaughan's extended translations of Plutarch and Maximus Tirius, both serious ethical writers. It is interesting to note, however, that Vaughan did not translate from the original Greek, but rather from editions put into Latin by I. Reynolds—a Greek lecturer at Oxford at the time Vaughan was a student.

36. Cheek, p. 69. -169-

NOTES

CHAPTER II

1. See E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundation of Modern Science (New York, 1951), pp. 25-35. Birtt sets forth a con­ vincing argument that Greek thought is the source of both the old and new cosmology.

2. Henry More, Thè Complete Poems of Dr. Henry More (1614-1687), ed. Rev. A. B. Grosart (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 64.

3. For extended accounts of this see Marjorie Nicholson’s The Breaking of the Circle (Evanston, Illinois, 1950), pp. 105- 145; Joseph Hillis Miller’s The Disappearance of God (Cambridge, Mass., 1963) and his Póéts of Réality (Cambridge, Mass, 1965).

4. This concept as well as the third were suggested to me by Charlotte Stegemann’s unpublished dissertation, "A Poet’s Use of Philosophy" (University of Pennsylvania, 1961), which is a study of Vaughan’s imagery.

5. Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, tr. B. Jowett, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1937), II, 14.

6. Theàetetus, Jowett,. II, 178.

7. Symposium, Jowett, I, 334-335.

8. Symposium, Jowett, I, 335.

9. Timaéus, Jowett, II, 14.

10. Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry, p. 167.

11. Probably the two most popular are the myths about the Charioteer and the Cave.

12. Timaeus, Jowett, II, 14.

13. See Irene Samuel’s Plato and Milton (New York, 1965), p. 159. -170-

14. Vaughan himself is never systematic in his treatment of the soul. And yet, the conflict between reason and passion underlies much of his discussion about anarchy, jealousy and other "wild excesses." For Vaughan, as for Plato, a proper re­ lation between the two faculties must be maintained in the indi­ vidual and in the state.

15. Phaedo, Jowett, I, 466.

16. See especially the Phaedo, Jowett, I, 456 ff.

17. Timaeus, Jowett, II, 13.

18. Samuel, Plato and Milton, p. 131.

19. Pháédo, Jowett, I, 463.

20. Samuel, P. 131. She explains that when the theory of Ideas is used by Plato in reference to the archetypal world, he is not consistent. In dealing with, say, a door or a bed, it is doubtful that he has a perfect corresponding model. She concludes, "the theory has seemed to many scholars an attempt to support the universal stability of ethical truth rather than to effect a dichotomy of life into two distinct worlds."

21. William Ralph Inge, The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought (New York, 1926), p. 70 ff.

22. Timaeus, Jowett, II, 30. Timaeus offers an illustration to clarify this point: "Suppose a person to make all kinds of figures of gold and to be always transmuting one form into all the rest;—somebody points to one of them and asks what it is. By far the safest and truest answer is, That is gold....And the same argument applies to the universal nature which receives all bodies." This is not meant to minimize the disparity between the two worlds, but rather to suggest that Plato does not necessarily see this world as tenuous and unstable.

23. There is a dualism between the nature of the universe and the physical forms of creation. Platonism is a maoism only in regard to real being...Otherwise,, the term "dualism" loses meaning. See Samuel's Plato and Milton, p. 123, and Harrison's Platonism arid English Poetry, p. 89. -171-

24. Aristotle, Introduction to Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, (New York, 1947), De Anima, 172-174. For Aristotle, ideas be­ come a part of this world, and it is this world that is real: "The soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it. But substance is actually, and thus the soul is the actuality of a body.... The soul is inseparable from its body,...for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actualities of their bodily parts (p. 172).

25. Sir David Ross, Aristotle (New York, 1966), p. 107.

26. See J. L. Ross, Philosophy in Literature, p. 134. While Aristotle is opposed to the absoluteness of Platonic meta­ physics and ethics, he is, Ross observes, a relativist. He champions the notion of the Golden Mean, a mid-point between two extremes. And mid-point is difficult to determine, for it varies with the situation and the individual.

27. A good example of another use of these images in the seventeenth century is Marvell’s "On a Drop of Dew."

28. Plotinus, The Enneads of Plotinus, tr. Stephen Mackenna, 2 vols. (New York, 1957),II, p. 16.

29. W. R. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, 2 vols. (London, 1923), I , p. 221.

30. Erinead IV, Mackenna, II, 19.

31. Ennead I, Mackenna, I, 87.

32. Ennead II, Mackenna, I, 182.

33. Ennead V, Mackenna, II, 101.

34. Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry, p. 187 ff.

35. Frequently, the Roman influence on Vaughan is direct; this is especially true in the translations of Boethius, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca. Since the individual Roman philosophers will be studied more thoroughly later on when Vaughan's poetry is examined, the present discussion is somewhat general.

36. Alfred Weber, History of Philosophy, tr. Frank Thilly (New York, 1925), p. 108. -172

37. Ross, Philosophy in Literature, p. 81

38. St. Augustine, Dé Véra Religióne Liber Thus, liii, 113, in An Augustine Synthésis, arranged by Erick Przywara (New York, 1958), p. 22.

39. Enarràtióries by Psalmos, LXXXIV, 9, in Przywara, p. 43.

40. In Joanhis Evangelium Tràctàtus, XXIII, 10, in Przywara, p. 18.

41. See especially Thè Confessions of St. Augustine, tr. E. B. Pusey, (London, 1924), pp. 129-130.

42. See Martz, Paradise Within, pp. 17 -31, for. a thorough account of this distinction as it applies to Vaughan.

43. Willey, Moralists, pp. 28-40.

44. St. Augustine, City of Gód, ed. Barker (London, 1931), p. 108.

45. Willey, p. 31.

46. Willey, Moralists, p. 33.

47. Willey, p. 39.

48. St. Bonaventura, Thé Mind's Róad tó God, tr. George Boas (New York, 1953), p. 7.

49. Thé Mind1s Road, p. XVI.

50. St. Bonaventura, p. 20.

51. Weber, History of Philosophy, p. 191. St. Thomas di­ vides essences into the pure, of which God alone is composed, and into form and matter. The human soul, he tells us, is a specific Rind of form. And while every material object has a form, what the material thing is (a tree or a man) and how it acts (if it grows or thinks) is determined by its form. The concept of potential actualizing itself is obviously Aristotelian

52. St. Thomas Aquinas, Tréàtisé on Man, tr. James F. Anderson (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1963), pp. 15-39. -173-

53. Thomas a' Kempis, Thé Imitation of Christ, in The Consolation of Philosophy, with an introduction by Irwin Edman, (New York, 1943), p. xvl.

54. See especially in the Imitation, pp. 170, 192, 219, and 311.

55. Gilbert Highet, Thé Classical Tradition, p. 44. -174-

;NOTES ■

CHAPTER III

1. James A. Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind (North Carolina, 1949), p. 6.

2. Vaughan’s sense of virtue and conduct, and his general social awareness, seem to be largely influenced by his metaphysics.

3. Sir David Ross, Aristotle, p. 108.

4. Phaedo, Jowett, I, 451.

5. Symposium, Jowett, I, 312 & 329.

6. Virgil, "Eclogue IV," trans. James Laughlin, in Latin Poetry in Vérse Translated, ed. L. R. Lind (Boston, 1957), 66-68. Both The Timàeus and Eririéad II deal with related theories of per­ manence, but without the similarity of imagery that we find in Virgil. See Marilla's Secular Póéms, p. 151, where St. Augustine is suggested as another possible source.

7. There is simply not enough evidence in Póéms to establish the fact that Vaughan had in mind at this early time the classical concept about pre-existence. But the germ seems to be present.

8. The context in which "first Innocence and Love" is placed involves the idea about the ultimate restoration of the grove and the rejoining of the two souls after death. Since the union of lovers in after life was commonly thought to be determined before birth, "first Innocence" might easily have been associated with pre-existence.

9. The classical precedent for this idea might be any number of the Dialogues, but perhaps The Pháédo, Thé Timáéus, and The Phaedrus, are the most obvious.

10. Laws, Jowett, II, 508-509.

11. See for instance Phàédrus, Jowett, I, 254.

12. Randolph, Donne, Habington, Cartwright, and Feltham are a few early influences listed by Martin in the Commentary tó Works.

13. See especially Lib. 1. Met 2. -175-

14. Timaeus, Jowett, II, 23.

15. Actually, several traditions appear to be working here at once. Marilla observes, but does not develop the idea, that the poems might be arranged in a love cycle. This would seem to argue a Petrarchan influence. But, in light of references to spiritual repentance and divine initiative in later parts of the collection, there is a strong suggestion of the Christian Progress of the Soul. In both traditions, the poems reflect Vaughan's early interest in the soul and its development—an interest that becomes central in his later collections.

16. Phaedo, Jowett, I, 448-450.

17. Vaughan is celebrating the grove because it was the scene of his now successful courtship. But the change of tone between the first and last poems, the clearly different treat­ ment of similar subjects, the shift in values, and the consum­ mation of a courtship probably begun in the initial poem—all of this seems to suggest a closer relationship between the poems than is usually acknowledged. The eleven poems placed between the first and last appear to represent a loose sequence of ideas, as the speaker moves away from sublunary love toward a place where "Spirits and Stars conspire."

18. Timàéus, Jowett, II, 23.

19. In terms of the Petrarchan tradition, the uneven move­ ment in the sequence is accounted for by the fact that the cause of true love never did run smooth. In terms of the Graeco- Christian tradition, the uneven movement of the soul has to do with spiritual relapses, a problem of the troubled soul which is more carefully developed in Silex Scintillans. See especially "The Relapse," p. 433.

20. The classical precedent for this idea is probably The Répüblic, Jowett, I, 769-770, where Plato observes "Light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun...Author...of genera­ tion and nourishment and growth."

21. See especially the early parts of Thé Timàéus.

22. Enüéad III, Mackenna, II, 15. See also Thé Timàéus, p. 14, and John Leofric Stocks’ Afistôtéliànism (New York, 1963), pp. 34-103.

23. Timàéus, Jowett, II, 13 and 19. -176-

24. Symposium, Jowett, I, 309. See also Laws, II, 586ff where Plato discusses the three kinds of love.

25. Symposium, 309-310.

26. Marilla, Secular Poems, p. 183.

27. Harrison, Platonism, p. 116. This concept is founded on the Platonic notion of the regenerate powers of the eye, which was discussed earlier in connection with "Les Amours." Harrison observes that "The two souls departing from heaven at the same time were informed with the same idea...consequently he loves it [the idea shared with the beloved], and by refining the visual image of the beloved from all the grossness of senses, he be­ holds in it [the refashioned image before him] the idea of his own soul and that of the beloved."

28. Pháédo, Jowett, I, 448.

29. Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is prob­ ably a more immediate source for these lines.

30. This is precisely the significance of love in Olor Iscanus At one point Vaughan refers to it as the very "frame of things."

31. in Platonism and English Poetry, pp. 104-166, Harrison makes the interesting observation that the influence of Platonism on English love poetry was to spiritualize the experience. And because of this purification, much of the poetry centers around, not the object of the love, but the psychology of the love ex­ perience. This is what seems to take place in much of Poems, with particular applicability to the subject in "To Amoret, of the difference 'twixt him, and other Lovers, and what true Love is," ;as the title suggests.

32. See especially The Republic, Jowett, I.

33. It is interesting that the penitential tears moving up­ ward in "Weeping" become now "tears of Heaven" moving downward;' In a sense, this reinforces at once the suggestion of grace in the former and helps to preserve the water imagery which began with reference to Lethe in the initial poem of the collection.

34. Harold Walley's "Strange Case of Plot Iscanus," RES, XVIII (1942), 27-37, is typical. -177-

35. Theaetetus, Jowett, II, 2Olff. See also Samuel's Plate and Milton, p. 101, which compares knowledge and wisdom. While none of this is exclusively Platonic,it is‘> central to classical thought in general.

36. Theaetetus, Jowett, II, 145ff.

37. Grube, Plate's Thought (Boston, 1958), pp. 148-149.

38. Republic, Jowett, I, 778.

39. Harrison observes, in his Platonism and English Poetry, p. 183, that "the high speculations of Platonic philosophy opened a way by which they [English poets] could conceive God as a prin­ ciple grasped by the mind rather than as a personal judge and punisher of sin." In all probability, the "high speculations" influenced Vaughan.

40. Grube, Plato's Thought, p. 49.

41. Samuel, Plato and Milton, p. 69.

42. "A Song," p. 9, for example, does refer to temperance, but generally it is not explicitly stated in the collection.

43. Pháédo, Jowett, I, 464.

44. This interest in poverty foreshadows his predilection in Olor Iscarius for a simple life of retirement and contemplation.

45. Thé Republic, Jowett, I, especially 702-704. Obviously, these ideas of order and harmony also have a long Christian tradition. In Olor Iscarius and Silex Scintillans Vaughan often seems to be influenced by both traditions at the same time. This might well be the case here.

46. C. V. Wedgwood, Poetry and Politics Under the Stuarts (Ann Arbor, 1964), p. 63.

47. Scottish Ballads and Songs, ed. James Maidment (Edinburgh, 1868), Vol. I, pp. 339-41.

48. The Republic, Jowett, I, 705. Here Plato remarks that "the same principles which exist in the State exist also in the individual." The popular concept about micro-macrocosm would have been a more immediate source underlying Vaughan’s sense of identity between man and state. See Nicolson’s introduction to The Breaking of the Circle, where the idea is discussed in general without reference to Vaughan. -178-

49. Republic, Jowett, I, 749.

50. G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas iri thé 17th Century (New York, 1959), p. 52.

51. Republic, Jowett, I, 820-821.

52. For instance, see iri Works p. 28; p. 8, 1-24 ("To Amoret"); p. 9, 5; p. 13, 16; p. 14, 51.

53. This sense of class consciousness, suggested also in "To Amoret, of thé différéncé 1twixt" with its hierarchical al­ lusion, is related to what iri Olor Iscarius becomes a call for submission to authority. There is a tendency in Vaughan to favor solidification of class levels that defines itself in the next secular volume. -179-

NOTES

CHAPTER IV

1. This idea of restoration has a number of classical prece­ dents. One is Virgil's "Eclogue IV," which deals with the age of iron being replaced by the age of gold. See Chapter III, pp. 55-56, where the idea is discussed in more detail.

2. See M. Mahood's Poetry and Humanism. The translation near the end of the collection, "The Praise of a Religious Life by Mathias Casimirus, in Answer to the Ode of Horace," supplied Vaughan with all that he would ever use in the future in dealing with the concept of sentient nature. The necessity of finding parallels in Hermetic writings seems somewhat over-emphasized. See Maren-Sofie Rfistvig, The Happy Man; 'Studies in the Meta­ morphoses of a Classical Idéal (New York, 1962), p. 202, where she observes that Hermeticism is over-valued in Vaughan criticism.

3. We should never discount the fact that Vaughan could be using conventional hyperbole in dealing with the river. Yet the evidence is strong that he was by this time considering nature as sentient. See Casimirus' poem, "The Praise of a Religious Life." See also Chapter V, pp. 133-134, where Vaughan's treat­ ment of nature in "To the River Isca" is examined in detail.

4. See in Work p. 40, 41; p. 41, 86; p. 60, 29-31; p. 85, 28; p. 87, (Ode 23) 4.

5. Vaughan's concern with disorder in this world is one of the minor motifs in the collection. The examination of the "friendship" poems later in the chapter deals with the related awareness of alienation and fragmentation. The function of the literary artist and statesman, discussed later also, is to face this problem and to stress the importance of harmony and love.

6. This idea, incidentally, links "Charnel-house" to the poem that immediately follows, "In Amicum Foeneratorem," which is a light satire on excessive usury.

7. For the significance Vaughan places on reason in Olor, see for instance in Works, p. 59, 55-57; p. 64, 21 & 29-30; p. 80, 19-22; p. 81, Met 2. -180-

8. For example, see In Works p. 43, 8; p. 61, 9-10; p. 78 (Met. 4), 16; p. 78 (Met. 5), 1-26; p. 79 (Met. 6), 15-16.

9. See p. 45, 63-66; p. 47, 77-78; p. 67, 39-45; p. 77 (Met. 4), 1-2. Both Marilla, Secular Poems, p. 151, and H. R. Walley, "The Strange Casé of Olor Iscanus," p. 32, speak of a growing earnestness in the collection which I can not find.

10. Vaughan's preoccupation with Stoicism is common to those with royalist sympathies. Often it takes the form of "stoic defiance, of loyalty as an affirmation of the freedom of the soul." See Ruth Nevo, The Dial of Virtue: A Study of Póéms on Affairs of State in the Seventéenth Céhtúry (Princeton, 1963), p. 127.

11. See in Works p. 40, 48 & 65-66; p. 42, 62-66; p. 61, 21; p. 78, 18; p. 92, 109. Vaughan raises other ethical points that appear to grow out of a combination of Stoicism and Greek Metaphysics. One point has to do with his indictment against wealth, greed, and fame. For an indication of how Vaughan feels about wealth, see in Works p. 45, 30ff; p. 81 (Met. 2), 5; p. 83, 15-32: about fame, see p. 42, 49-55; p. 84 (Met. 6). He re­ jects all three for two reasons, both previously discussed: 1) they are excessive and uncontrolled, and 2) they distract man from his real goal. Both reasons underly his scoffing at "French apes" who have an interest in foreign fashions and the "English legs...drest th' outlandish way" (p. 45, 35-36). For the same reason he rejects "forc'd curls," "robes of Scarlet-die," and richly ornamented homes (p. 87, 9-20). Vaughan's indictment of excess is one aspect of his interest in reforming conduct. It is also closely related to his interest in the retirement theme, which is found more in the translations and which is to become the central idea in Thalia Rédiviva (1678). The un­ adorned simplicity and quiet serenity are what attract him most. The Latin quotation adapted from Virgil on the back of the title page, "0 who will set me in the cool valleys of the Usk," is echoed at different times throughout Olor Iscanus. Only the last few translations suggest that poverty is akin to God and only in the last translation by Casimirus is the act of pure contemplation actually endorsed (p. 90, 13ff).

12. Durr, Mystical Poetry, pp. xx-xxi.

13. Vaughan strongly praises the rational faculty in other poets, especially in his poem on D'avenant, pp. 64-65, in Martin's Works.

14. French Fogle, in The Completé Póétry, p. 66, identifies Monsieur Gombauld as the French poet who composed the prose ro­ mance, L' Endimion (1624). -181-

15. Marilla’s judgment seems weak in his assessment of "Sir William D’avenant," p. 244 in Secular Poems, where he observes that Vaughan praises the man and not the ideas.

16. See Marilla's comments in Secular Works.

17. Thé OED lists both meanings in use at this time.

18. Wedgwood, Poetry and Politics, p. 92.

19. Wedgwood, p. 84.

20. Phaedo, Jowett, I, 466-467.

21. And in this connection, he clearly subscribes to the principle of submission, whether it is to civil authority, indi­ vidual reason, to fate or natural law. At times this call to submit underlies Stoical duty, one of the several virtues listed in "To the River Isca." The sense of duty, in fact, seems to be one of the main virtues man is to discover in nature. It also motivates man to know himself, as well as the surrounding phen­ omenal world.

22. Martin’s omission.

23. These are all ideas we have met before, all part of the major concepts discussed in Chapter II—the dual worlds, astral influence, the soul’s attraction to the Source, and the significance of its sojourn on earth.

24. For example: For dual worlds see in Works p. 41, 24-29; p. 59, 59-74; p. 84 (met. 7), 1-4; p. 86 Lib 2. Ode 8: for astral influence see p. 63, 29-34; p. 65, 13-14: for the soul’s attraction to Source see p. 63, 5; p. 77, 33; p. 86, 17-18: for the significance of sojourn see p. 44, 22-23; p. 91, 62 ff.

25. Martin points out that the source of lines 9-18 is Virgil, Aen. 11. 79-82.

26. See Martin, p. 709.

28. Ross, Aristotle, pp. 204-208.

29. See especially Laws, Jowett, II, 607ff. -182-

30. Ross, Aristotle, p. 204. This is the only time, in fact when one can be truly courageous, in the Classical sense—death in the noble circumstance of battle.

31. The quotation comes from "The Charnel-house" (p. 42, 59) and alludes to the fragmented age. The fear of alienation and chaos is an idea that recurs in the collection and will be dis­ cussed presently in connection with the "friendship" poems.

32. Phaedo, Jowett, I, 44 ff.

33. This parallels the kind of relationship found in the later Amoret Poems of the first collection.

34. For other instances of this convention, see p. 4, 57-58; p. 6 in "The Sigh" 17-20 and in "Friend" 17-18.

35. Symposium, Jowett, I, 312. See also Grube*s Plato's Thought, p. 96.

36. See in Works, for instance, Met. 6 Lib. 1, p. 79, for a clear reference to the notion that all in creation have a di­ vinely appointed function, which is not always understood by man.

37. Horace, "Ode I, 9," trans. Muriel Spark, in Latin Poetry in Verse Translation, ed. L. R. Lind (Boston, 1957), p. 101.

38. Wedgwood, Poetry and Politics, p. 98.

39. In the secular poems, Vaughan seems to feel most secure when associationg with a certain level of society. The class- consciousness in the first collection, typical of the widespread self-conscious class awareness of the Cavaliers, tends to center around the nobility. As the Preface tó Póems is addressed to the refined gentleman reader, so the subject in Olor Iscanus is about the noble statesman, the gentleman soldier, the educated play­ wright and poet, and Vaughan's Oxford acquaintances and accomp­ lished friends. Even in "Praise and Happinesse of the Countrie- Life," where the simplicity of the country is opposed to the noise and decay of the city, the man living simply is not with­ out his servants and a stable that would have delighted Chaucer’s monk. And there is not much reference to the truly poor and humble.

40. Fogle, The Complete Poetry of Hérirÿ Vaughan, p. xii. -183-

.NOTES

. CHAPTER V

.1. Hutchinson, Life, p. 99.

2. See above, Chapter II and Chapter III, pp. 65-67.

3. See above, Chapter II and Chapter III, pp. 65-66.

4. See above, Chapter III, p. 55, and Chapter IV, pp. 84-85.

5. See above, Chapter III, pp. 51-52.

6. Vaughan is dealing here with the terrestrial cycle of the elements, which we met earlier in "To Amoret, of the dif­ ference, ’ twixt him, and other Lovers, and What true love is" (p. 12, 11-15). As in the earlier poem, Vaughan refers to the "grosse" elements which change form, yet are unable to become part of the world of permanence. "To Amoret" employs the con­ cept in order to distinguish between sublunary and refined lovers. For the identical reason Vaughan uses the concept here:

Love only can with quick accesse Unlock the way, The smoke, and Exhalations of the breat(p.412, 9-12)

Pure love alone can unite man with the eternal world, not the affection of sublunary lovers with their "tinsill beams" (p. 12, 8).

7. See above, Chapter III, p. 56, and Chapter IV, p. 105.

8. Merritt Hughes argues against the presence of pre­ existence on the grounds that it conflicts with Christian ■ideology. Hughes seems to underestimate the assimilative nature of the seventeenth-century mind, which is dealt with by Basil Willey in Seventeenth Century Background. Hughes and this con­ cept are more thoroughly discussed farther on in this chapter, p. 125.

9. See above, Chapter IV, pp. 99-100.

10. See above, Chapter IV, p. 99.

11. See above, Chapter III, p. 76.

12. See above, Chapter III, p. 66, and Chapter IV, p. 85. -184-

13. See above, Chapter IV, p. 8.

14. See above, Chapter III, p. 51ff, and Chapter IV, p. 87ff

15. Perhaps it is simply a coincidence that the speaker's function in the sacred poem parallels so closely the role of nature in the secular. Yet, the fact that Vaughan believed that nature was something to emulate (a concept that was developed in Olor Iscanus and that becomes central in Silex Sciritillans) sug­ gests that "They are all gone" puts into practice an idea about nature that he had previously formulated.

16. See above, Chapter III, p. 55.

17. See above, Chapter III, p. 76.

18. See above, Chapter IV.

19. See above, Chapter IV, p. 84ff.

20. Samuel. Plato and Milton, p. 154. Vaughan deals with this concept in other collections. See above, Chapters III, p. 73, and IV, p. 91.

21. See above, Chapter IV, p. 100.

22. See above, Chapter III, p. 67ff. Neither aspect of the dual concept should be confused with the court fad.

23. For instance, see above in this .chapter. The concept itself is discussed at length in Chapter IV, especially in the translations of Boethius. The idea of emanations is most clearly expressed in such poems as "The Sap" (pp. 475-476), "The Bird" (pp. 496-497), and. "The Stone" (pp. 514-516).

24. See above, Chapter IV, p. 105.

25. Merritt Y. Hughes, "Theme of Pre-Existence and Infancy in 'The Retreate,'" PQ, XX (1941), pp. 484-500. Hughes ob­ serves -that since Christian orthodoxy holds the view that the soul perfects itself in the body, and that since pre-existence presents the soul looking back and not actively participating, the first supposedly excludes the second. There is no reason to believe, howeVer, that one necessarily contradicts the other or that both cannot be held simultaneously and used to gain simi­ lar ends. Furthermore, the soul's perfecting itself in the body is by no means exclusively Christian. -185-

26. Vaughan’s long prose translation, "Of Life and Death," treats fully Plato's theory of pre-existence, the importance of childhood, and the significance of remembrance. See especially pp. 282-284 in Works.

27. This is one of the major ideas this study has traced through the secular poems.

28. R. G. Howarth persuasively atgues this point in "Vaughan and Boethius," N & £, CLXXI (1936), 60-61.

29. See Thé Phaedo, Jowett, I, 464. The following passage in particular is closely parallel to what is founds in Boethius and Vaughan: And were we not saying long ago that the soul when using the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when using the sense of sight or hear­ ing or some other sense (for the meaning of per­ ceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses)—were we not saying that the soul too is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard, when she touches change?

30. What Martz interprets in Thé Paradisé Within as "Augustan Memory" can as easily be taken for knowledge gained in a prior life.

31. See above, Chapter III, p. 73ff.

32. The whole poem seems to be an example of the practical Christian exhortations for which the seventeenth century has such a weakness. The poem is also a good example of how far Vaughan’s moral values parallel classical thought, particularly with the repeated references to temperateness, moderation, and self- reliance; and at other points to constancy, courage, and justice.

33. It might be borne in mind that temperateness, moderation and gentleness are, for instance, central also to the ethic previously discussed in terms of Olor Iscanus■

34. See above, Chapter IV.

35. Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Révolution: Studies in Interprétation of thé English Revolution of thé 17th Century (New York, 1964), p. 317. -186-

36. What helps additionally to link this poem with Classical thought, and thus with the earlier, secular poetry is the fact that one announced source for "The World" is St. John, who is, as Ross points out, fundamentally Platonistic. And a second source, unannounced by Vaughan but strongly suspected by L. C. Martin, is Casimir Sarbiewski’s "Ode 5," published in a 1646 collection of Odes, which shows a strong-influence of Horace. Vaughan has translated six odes and one extended piece of prose from this collection for Olor Iscanus. There is no apparent difference in tone or subject between the translated poems and prose in Olor Iscanus and that poem on which the "World" is probably based.

37. See above, Chapter III, p. 75ff, and Chapter IV, p. 88ff.

38. See above, Chapter IV.

39. In his English Democratic Ideas, p. 194, Gooch refers to this widespread contempt for the idea in the seventeenth century: '"The consequences to this rule tend to anarchy, must end in anarchy. For where is there any bound or limit set if men that have but the interest of breathing shall have voices in elections?’"

40. Vaughan frequently employs military imagery but often without reference to the secular world. A typical instance of this is in "The Palm Tree," where the speaker describes the spir­ itual victory of the soul:

Here Spirits that have run their race and fought And won the fight, and have not fear'd the frowns Nor lov'd the smiles of greatness, but have wrought Their masters will, meet to receive their Crowns (p. 490, 17-20)

41. Wedgwood, Poetry and Politics, p. 22.

42. Helen C. White, Social Griticism in Popular Religious Literature of thé Sixteenth Century (New York, 1944), p. 137ff.

43. Nevo, The Dial of Virtue, p. 76.

44. The popular term, "halcyon days," is discussed at length by C.V. Wedgwood iri Poétry and Politics, pp. 35-36. She explains: "The courtiers frequently congratulated the king and themselves on the era of peace and plenty that he had inaugurated, and compared the tranquillity of England in the midst of European wars to the peace which the^lcyori bird is supposed to create amid the raging of the sea." -187-

45. Hill, in Puritanism and Revolution, p. 325, observes that in the years preceding the Civil War numerous articles had appeared which advanced the millenarian doctrine: in fact, "80 such treatises had appeared in England by 1649....In the sixteen- fifties the doctrine had become almost a commonplace."

46. See above, Chapter III, p. 55, and Chapter IV, pp. 84-85.

47. Hill, p. 323.

48. See above, p. 25, note 44. Andrew Marvell can also-;write in retrospect about the passing.of such a state. His poem, ad­ dressed to the statesman Fairfax, regrets the passing of the idealized 30's:

Oh Thou, that dear and happy Isle The Garden of the World ere while, Thou Paradise of four Seas, Which Heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the World, did guard With watry if not flaming Sword; What luckless Apple did we taste, To make us Mortal, and Thee Waste? ("Upon Appleton House to my Lord Fairfax," p. 72, 321-328.)

This is even more remarkable when it is recalled that Marvell was hardly partisan to the King’s camp.

49. James Roy King, Studies in Six 17th Century Writers, p. 129.

50. These phrases reinforce Wedgwood's observation (p. 98) about the widespread practices among royalists to poke "legitimate if rather bitter fun at the vices which usually flourish at a time of social disorder."

51. See Durr's discussions in Mysticism of the significance of water (and the lack of it) in Vaughan's sacred poetry.

52. Wedgwood, p. 41.

53. Bush, The Renaissance and English Humanism (Toronto, 1939), pp. 55-56.

54. Bush, Renaissance, p. 73. -188-

NOTES

CHAPTER VI

1. The title seems more applicable to the sacred section where nature and some of the pagan concepts are important.

2. Instead, brief references to these concepts within the first division suggest Vaughan's continued preoccupation. For pagan ideas, such as pre-existence, see in Works, p. 645, 29; for emanations, see p. 636, 53-90; for star-fire influence, see p. 643, 1-4; for Graeco-Christian ideas, such as dualistic worlds, see p. 635, 30-40; for the single force to which all returns, see p. 633, 31-36; for the soul’s quest, see p. 631, 8-10.

3. This was a common Renaissance religious belief. See Marilla’s Secular Poems, p. 298.

4. See above, Chapter III, pp. 72-74.

5. It might be recalled that Vaughan’s interest in the Classical writers, especially Juvenal and Virgil, stemmed partly from the social ills common to both the classical age and the seventeenth century.

6. For a discussion of the statesman and the classical politicians, see above, Chapter IV, p. 97ff.

7. See above, Chapter V.

8. Hutchinson lists in Life, pp. 217-218, the six secular poems which were written after 1650 and included in the first division.

9.Naturally, this elegy is distinguished from most of the other poems in the secular division of Thalia Rediviva, for it was written after Vaughan experienced the conversion and at times deals with ideas pecular to Silex Scintillans. But while refer­ ences in the elegy to divine intervention (81-82), to faith in God’s will to redeem (89-92), and to the last judgment (88) rep­ resent the extent of Vaughan’s conversion, they have all been pre­ pared for in one-way or another by the first two secular col­ lections. And thus even the Christian concepts in the later poems reflect a continuous preoccupation. -189-

10. The metaphors in this quotation of "false fires" and the sun are similar to earlier references ih Póéms ("To Amoret, of thè difference," p. 12, 1-9), where Vaughan deals with the Aristotelian concept of the continuance of matter.

11. Sometimes a poem will open with a classical ref­ erence which serves to introduce a major Christian idea. "Look­ ing back," a poem from the sacred: division (p. 660), begins by the speaker longing for the pre-existent age ("my first happy age"), but he finds that he must settle for glimpses of God's "Back-side," a Biblical allusion to the Christian notion that one cannot look directly into the face of God. See above, Chapter V, pp. 115-116, for a discussion about Vaughan’s similar treatment of classical-Christian ideas.

12. The theme of retirement involves a desire to retreat to nature, where one can find contentment in the simplicity and purity of the country life; nearer the end of the sacred division, the speaker rejects this world and all that is in it.

13. This poem is not to be confused with "The World" in Silex Scintillans.

14. What he once felt essential to life—for example, friendship and seasoned pleasures—no longer is important. See above. Chapter IV, p. 89, and Chapter V, pp. 126-127.

15. See Martin, Works, p. 760.

16. I cannot find another clear expression of this pref­ erence in preceding collections. The rejection of a church- related religion is one more indication of withdrawal.

17. See Hutchinson's Life, p. 219. He observes that "Dis­ cipline" and "The Request," both written after the restoration of the Church, describe "the licence which followed the king’s re­ turn and which must have distressed Vaughan’s sober mind."

18. Earlier in "The King Disguis’d" (1647),in the first division, Vaughan could count on the "Royal Saint," the king, to subdue the rebellion within the Church.

19. A reference to the new astronomy is in "The Character, to Etesia," p. 644, 19-24; and a reference to Harvey's discovery is expressed in "Efesia absent" p. 647, 1-6. Marilla makes similar observations in Sécúlar Póéms, pp. 329 and 334. -190- -t

NOTES

CONCLUSION

1. Pettet, Of Paradise and Light, p. 52.

2. See above, Chapter 3, p. 50, where Vaughan’s "natural classicism" is discussed in more detail.

3. White, The Metaphysical Poets, p. 257. LIST OF WORKS CITED -191-

A LIST OF WORKS CITED

Aristotle. Introduction to Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York, 1947.

Saint Augustine. An Augustine Synthesis, arranged by Erich Przywara. New York, 1958.

______. The City of God, tr. John Healey, with an'Introduc- _?by Ernest Barker. London, 1931.

______The Confessions of St. Augustine, tr. E.B. Pusey. London, 1924.

Blunden, Edmund. On the Poems of Henry Vaughan: Characteristics and Intimations. London, 1927.

Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy, tr. W.V. Cooper. New York, 1943.

Saint Bonaventura. Thé Mind1s Road to God, tr. George Boas. New York, 1953.

Burtt, Edwin A. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. Rev. ed. New York, 1951.

Bush, Douglas. English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century 1600-1660. New York, 1945.

. The Rénàissance and English Humanism. Toronto, 1939.

Chambers, L. "Henry Vaughan’s Allusive Technique: Biblical Allusions in ’The Night,MLQ, XXVII (1964), 47-52.

Charlton, Kenneth. Education in Renaissance England. London, 1965

Cheek, Philip Macon. "The Latin Element in Henry Vaughan," SP, XLIV (1947), 69-88.

Collard, Lorna. "Henry Vaughan and the Region Elenore," The Occult Review, LII (1930), 299-308.

Curtis, Mark H. Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558-1642. Oxford, 1965. -192-

Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste. Du Bartas: His Devine Weeks and Works, tr. Joshua Sylvester, in Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, Gainsville, Florida, 1965.

Durr, Robert Allen. On the Mystical Póétry of Henry Vaughan. Cambridge, Mass., 1962.

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