Spare Hours Part 19

[45] We confess to being considerably affected when we look at this odd little fellow, as he sits there with his innocent upturned toes, and a certain forlorn dignity and meek sadness, as of "one who once had wings." What is he? and whence? Is he a surface or a substance? is he smooth and warm? is he glossy, like a blackberry? or has he on him "the raven down of darkness," like an unfledged chick of night?

and if we smoothed him, would he smile? Does that large eye wink? and is it a hole through to the other side? (whatever that may be;) and is that a small crescent moon of darkness swimming in its disc? or does the eye disclose a bright light from within, where his soul sits and enjoys bright day? Is he a point of admiration whose head is too heavy, or a quaver or crotchet that has lost his neighbors, and fallen out of the scale? Is he an aspiring Tadpole in search of an idea? What have been and what will be the fortunes of this our small Nigel (_Nigellus_)? Think of "Elia" having him sent up from the Goblin Valley, packed in wool, and finding him lively! how he and "Mary" would doat upon him, feeding him upon some celestial, unspeakable _pap_, "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath." How the brother and sister would croon over him "with murmurs made to bless," calling him their "tender novice" "in the first bloom of his nigritude," their belated straggler from the "rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his sins, their "poor Blot," "their innocent Blackness," their "dim Speck."

We can more easily imagine him as one of those Sprites-

"That do run By the triple Hecat's team, From the presence of the Sun, Following darkness like a dream."

Henry, our poet, was born in 1621; and had a twin-brother, Thomas.

Newton, his birthplace, is now a farm-house on the banks of the Usk, the scenery of which is of great beauty. The twins entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1638. This was early in the Great Rebellion, and Charles then kept his Court at Oxford. The young Vaughans were hot Royalists; Thomas bore arms, and Henry was imprisoned. Thomas, after many perils, retired to Oxford, and devoted his life to alchemy, under the patronage of Sir Robert Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland, himself addicted to these studies. He published a number of works, with such t.i.tles as "_Anthroposophia Theomagica_, or a Discourse of the Nature of Man, and his State after Death, grounded on his Creator's Proto-chemistry;"

"_Magia Adamica_, with a full discovery of the true _Coelum terrae_, or the Magician's Heavenly Chaos and the first matter of all things."

Henry seems to have been intimate with the famous wits of his time: "Great Ben," Cartwright, Randolph, Fletcher, &c. His first publication was in 1646:-"Poems, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished, by Henry Vaughan, Gent." After taking his degree in London as M. D., he settled at his birthplace, Newton, where he lived and died the doctor of the district. About this time he prepared for the press his little volume, "Olor Isca.n.u.s, the Swan of Usk," which was afterwards published by his brother Thomas, without the poet's consent. We are fortunate in possessing a copy of this curious volume, which is now marked in the Catalogues as "_Rariss_." It contains a few original poems; some of them epistles to his friends, hit off with great vigor, wit, and humor.

Speaking of the change of times, and the reign of the Roundheads, he says,-

"Here's brotherly Ruffs and Beards, and a strange sight Of high monumental Hats, tane at the fight Of eighty-eight; while every Burgesse foots The mortal Pavement in eternall boots."

There is a line in one of the letters which strikes us as of great beauty:-

"Feed on the vocal silence of his eye."

And there is a very clever poem _Ad Amic.u.m Foeneratorem_, in defiance of his friend's demand of repayment of a loan.

There is great beauty and delicacy of expression in these two stanzas of an epithalamium:-

"Blessings as rich and fragrant crown your heads, As the mild heaven on roses sheds, When at their cheeks (like pearls) they weare The clouds that court them in a tear.

"Fresh as the houres may all your pleasures be, And healthfull as Eternitie!

Sweet as the flowre's first breath, and close As th' unseen spreadings of the Rose When she unfolds her curtained head, And makes her bosome the Sun's bed!"

The translations from Ovid, Boece, and Ca.s.simir, are excellent.

The following lines conclude an invitation to a friend:-

"Come then! and while the slow isicle hangs At the stifle thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs Benumme the year, blithe as of old let us Mid noise and war, of peace and mirth discusse.

This portion thou wert born for. Why should we Vex at the time's ridiculous miserie?

An age that thus hath fooled itself, 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, and cheat, and who can let them pay, Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day.

Innocent spenders wee! a better use Shall wear out our short lease, and leave the obtuse Rout to their husks. They and their bags at best Have cares in earnest. Wee care for a jest!"

When about thirty years of age, he had a long and serious illness, during which his mind underwent an entire and final change on the most important of all subjects; and thenceforward he seems to have lived "soberly, righteously, and G.o.dly."

In his Preface to the "_Silex Scintillans_," he says, "The G.o.d of the spirits of all flesh hath granted me a further use of mine than I did look for in the body; and when I expected and had prepared for a message of death, then did he answer me with life; I hope to his glory, and my great advantage; that I may flourish not with leafe only, but with some fruit also." And he speaks of himself as one of the converts of "that blessed man, Mr. George Herbert."

Soon after, he published a little volume, called "_Flores Solitudinis_,"

partly prose and partly verse. The prose, as Mr. Lyte justly remarks, is simple and nervous, unlike his poetry, which is occasionally deformed with the conceit of his time.

The verses ent.i.tled "St. Paulinus to his wife Theresia," have much of the vigor and thoughtfulness and point of Cowper. In 1655, he published a second edition, or more correctly a re-issue, for it was not reprinted, of his _Silex Scintillans_, with a second part added. He seems not to have given anything after this to the public, during the next forty years of his life.

He was twice married, and died in 1695, aged 73, at Newton, on the banks of his beloved Usk, where he had spent his useful, blameless, and, we doubt not, happy life; living from day to day in the eye of Nature, and in his solitary rides and walks in that wild and beautiful country, finding full exercise for that fine sense of the beauty and wondrousness of all visible things, "the earth and every common sight," the expression of which he has so worthily embodied in his poems.

In "The Retreate," he thus expresses this pa.s.sionate love of Nature-

"Happy those early dayes, when I s.h.i.+n'd in my Angell-infancy!

Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, Celestiall thought; When yet I had not walkt above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back, at that short s.p.a.ce, Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded Cloud or flowre My gazing soul would dwell an houre, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My Conscience with a sinfule sound, Or had the black art to dispence A sev'rall sinne to ev'ry sence, But felt through all this fleshly dresse Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.

O how I long to travell back, And tread again that ancient track!

That I might once more reach that plaine, Where first I left my glorious traine; From whence th' Inlightned spirit sees That shady City of Palme trees."

To use the words of Lord Jeffrey as applied to Shakspeare, Vaughan seems to have had in large measure and of finest quality, "that indestructible love of flowers, and odors, and dews, and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight, which are the material elements of poetry; and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion which is its essence and its vivifying power."

And though what Sir Walter says of the country surgeon is too true, that he is worse fed and harder wrought than any one else in the parish, except it be his horse; still, to a man like Vaughan, to whom the love of nature and its scrutiny was a constant pa.s.sion, few occupations could have furnished ampler and more exquisite manifestations of her magnificence and beauty. Many of his finest descriptions give us quite the notion of their having been composed when going his rounds on his Welsh pony among the glens and hills, and their unspeakable solitudes.

Such lines as the following to a Star were probably direct from nature on some cloudless night:-

"Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below Attracts thee thus, and makes thee stream and flow, And winde and curle, and wink and smile, s.h.i.+fting thy gate and guile."

He is one of the earliest of our poets who treats external nature subjectively rather than objectively, in which he was followed by Gray (especially in his letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some measure by Warton, until it reached its consummation, and perhaps its excess, in Wordsworth.

We shall now give our readers some specimens from the reprint of the _Silex_ by Mr. Pickering, so admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, himself a true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have made very free use.

THE TIMBER.

"Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs, Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers Past o'er thy head: many light Hearts and Wings, Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.

"And still a new succession sings and flies; Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot Towards the old and still enduring skies; While the low Violet thriveth at their root.

"But thou beneath the sad and heavy Line Of death dost waste all senseless, cold and dark; Where not so much as dreams of light may s.h.i.+ne, Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.

"And yet, as if some deep hate and dissent, Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee, Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent, Before they come, and know'st how near they be.

"Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breath Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease; But this thy strange resentment after death Means only those who broke in life thy peace."

This poem is founded upon the superst.i.tion that a tree which had been blown down by the wind gave signs of restlessness and anger before the coming of a storm from the quarter whence came its own fall. It seems to us full of the finest fantasy and expression.

THE WORLD.

"I saw Eternity the other night Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world And all her train were hurl'd."

There is a wonderful magnificence about this; and what a Bunyan-like reality is given to the vision by "_the other night_"!

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, Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs, Early as well as late, Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs:

"I would, said I, my G.o.d would give The staidness of these things to man! for these To His divine appointments ever cleave, And no new business breaks their peace; The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine, The flowres without clothes live, Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.

"Man hath still either toyes or Care; He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd, But ever restless and Irregular About this Earth doth run and ride.

He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where; He says it is so far, That he hath quite forgot how to go there.