Works of Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes)

There are, however, no registers of births for that period in the district, nor for almost a century later. We shall find further on that importance attaches to the birth-date of Thomas Vaughan, and it is necessary therefore to note at this point that there is a minimum element of uncertainty hereon.^1

Thomas and Henry Vaughan became famous respectively in the annals of two departments of literature, the first as a mystic and alchemist whose little books have long been sought eagerly and prized highly by students, the second as a beautiful, though very unequal, religious poet. With vocations sufficiently distinct, they yet belonged to one another in the spirit as well as in the blood, for after his own manner Thomas was also a poet, or at least a maker of pleasant verse, while Henry was drawn into occult paths as a translator^2 and indeed otherwise, as a record of his repentance testifies.^3 Between and above both there stands the saintly figure of George Herbert, their contemporary and kinsman by marriage, albeit in remote degree.^4 The paths of the secret sciences were beyond his ken entirely, and this is one distinction in the triad. But there is another of more living importance. Herbert was an artist in verse, "beautiful exceedingly" in workmanship, and if he did not attain the heights which were reached in rare moments by

^1 There is extant a letter from Henry Vaughan to John Aubrey, dated June 15, 1673. It is said that he and his brother were born in 1621, but as a second letter mentions that Thomas Vaughan died in 1666 in his forty-seventh year, there is a mistake on one side or the other, and the birth-date is still open to question.
^2 See Appendix IX of the present volume, p. 489.
^3 See The Importunate Fortune, written to Dr Powell of Llanheff. The poet commits his body to earth, his "growing faculties . . . to the humid moon," his cunning arts to Mercury, his "fond affections" to Venus, his pride—"if there was aught in me"—to the royalty of Sol, his rashness and presumption to Mars, the little he has had of avarice to Jupiter;

And my false Magic, which I did believe,
And mystic lies, to Saturn I do give."
^4 Grosart: WORKS of Henry Vaughan, vol. i, p. xxiv. Another kinsman was the antiquary, John Aubrey.