THE RELIGIOUS CONVERSION OF HENRY VAUGHAN

Abstract

On 17 December 1647 Vaughan wrote a dedication for some work (described in the dedication merely as 'these papers') which he did not at once publish. In 1651 his Olor Iscanus (composed of twenty-two original secular poems and twenty-five translations) appeared, the title-page bearing the imprint 'Published by a Friend'. The volume contains the ambiguous dedication of 1647, but 'The Publisher to the Reader' informs us (not altogether accurately): 'The Author had long agoe condemn'd these Poems to Obscuritie . . . I present thee then not onely with a Book, but with a Prey . . . I have not the Author's Approbation to the Fact . In the meantime, Vaughan himself had published Silex Scintillans (1650), consisting entirely of religious verse; and five years later he published an augmented re-issue of this volume, including a preface (30 September 1654) in which he denounces those who continue 'after years of discretion' to write 'vitious verse' and 'idle books', and repents that he has not always been an influence against this evil. These facts are the basis of the theory that at some time between 1647 and i650 Vaughan experienced a religious conversion, renounced his secular poems, and resolved to devote his poetic talents thereafter exclusively to spiritual themes.' I This theory begins with Vaughan's first modern editor, the Rev. H. F. Lyte (Silex Scintillans, 1847, pp. xxx-xxxii), and has gained wide acceptance in subsequent criticism. See, for instance, J. C. Sharp, 'Henry Vaughan, Silurist', The North American Review, CXXXVIII (1884), 125; Anonymous, 'Henry Vaughan', Littell's Living Age, CLXXXVIII (1891), 237; H. C. Beeching, Poems of Henry Vaughan, ed. E. K. Chambers (London, 1896), I, pp. xxiv-xxvi; J. Vaughan, 'Henry Vaughan, Silurist', The Nineteenth Century, LXVII (1910), 495-6; Anonymous, 'Henry Vaughan', The Spectator, CXV (19I5), 543; Percy H. Osmond, The Mystical Poets of the English Church (London, 1919), p. 142; P. E. More, The Demon of the Absolute (Princeton, 1928), pp. 151-5; Elizabeth Holmes, Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy (Oxford, 1932), pp. 12-18; Gwenllian E. F. Morgan, 'Henry Vaughan, Silurist', The Times Literary Supplement, 3 November 1932, p. 815; Anonymous, 'Henry Vaughan', The Times Literary Supplement, 13 October 1932, p. 724; F. E. Hutchinson (a review), The Review of English Studies, X (I934), 232; J. B. Leishman, The Metaphysical Poets (Oxford, 1934), PP. 148-5 I; Ralph M. Wardle, 'Thomas Vaughan's Influence upon the Poetry of Henry Vaughan', P.M.L.A., LI (1936), 938; Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets (New York, 1936), pp. 264-73. Apparently no one has recognized that this interpretation of the problem has a counterpart 15