Henry Vaughan, The Complete Poems, ed. Alan Rudrum (Hammondsworth : Penguin Books, 1976). 718. $9.95 Excellent complete texts of Vaughan’s verse are already in print: French Fogle’s paper-cover edition (Norton) and L. C. Martin’s Oxford English Texts edition of The Works (2nd ed., 1957), with full critical apparatus. What can Penguin do more? The answer is that Professor Rudrum’s edition is by far the most useful of existing editions for undergraduates and no doubt many graduates. It also contains some matters of interest to scholars. Martin’s standard work annotates succinctly, assumes its reader’s mastery of Latin, and notes only representative biblical allusions. Fogle’s edition is lightly an notated. Rudrum appends 250 pages of closely printed commentary to over 400 pages of verse. He includes a table of dates and an expertly selected list of books and essays, mainly in English (from which nonetheless the omission of R. Ellrodt’s study in Les poètes métaphysiques anglais, Paris, i960, is regrettable). He gives accurate translations for all the Latin and has greatly increased the notation of biblical allusions, generally printing the biblical text. Indeed, Rudrum has demonstrated for the first time the extent of Vaughan’s saturation in the Bible, and thus provides the student with the materials to study Vaughan’s use of Scripture and his blending of Scripture with hermeticism . The annotation documents this blending in the major poems espe cially (“The World,” “The Night,” “And do they so,” “They are all gone into the world of light,” “The Water-fall,” “Cock-Crowing,” “Quickness,” among others). For these poems Rudrum provides bibliographical headnotes listing important commentaries. He also notes historical and biographical information and interpretation. He has added substantially to the clarifica tion of Vaughan’s meaning, frequently keying obsolete or difficult uses to the O.E.D. and printing illustrative parallels from other Renaissance writers. Rudrum has firmly documented Vaughan’s characteristic diction, natural imagery, and patterns of thought (his concern, for example, with light, vision, magnetism, the world of creatures, and the restoration of all things). The notation of possible word play is both acute and judicious: while Rudrum draws attention to Vaughan’s verbal and intellectual subtlety, he shears off the exuberances of some commentators. Rudrum has traced for the first time Vaughan’s apparently deliberate use of different biblical translations (A.V., Geneva, Trimellius, Beza), at times conflating two versions in the printed text. Rudrum has increased the number of cross-references to other works by Vaughan (slightly) and by other writers, especially Herbert. (See, for ex ample, the splendid annotation to “The Lamp,” p. 543.) Yet Rudrum has dropped many of Martin’s references to Donne and, again especially, Her bert, and some cross-references to Vaughan’s works. Some of the cancella- tions seem just but not others. “The Charnel-House,” for example, echoes Donne and Herbert extensively, though Rudrum, referring precisely to other writers, includes but a single reference to Donne, none to Herbert. Vaughan has assimilated the work of many other writers, and Rudrum has documented this process extensively and judiciously, but the careful student will need to consult both Rudrum and Martin for help in assessing Vaughan’s indebted ness. While Rudrum has increased the total number of cross-references to Vaughan’s poetry, omissions are almost all regrettable. An inexplicable omis sion is the echo in “To J. Morgan,” lines 37-38, of “To the River Isca,” line 60 (noted in Martin). The striking phrase “wind the clue” (“The Constella tion,” line 14) gets no comment by Rudrum, though Martin gives two crossreferences . “The World” (11), line 2, “clue,” has a useful cross-reference to “Son-days,” line 21, but not vice-versa. The commentary shows scrupulous study and evaluation of all the work that has been devoted to Vaughan. Rudrum is often careful to attribute his material to its exact sources, but there are misleading lapses in attribution. These lapses are misleading because Rudrum has added so much of his own and plausibly explained many obscurities for the first time; but a reader can not safely conclude that unattributed material in the notes is original. Rudrum warns in his...