Part 35

P. 21. To Amoret.

The third stanza is closely modelled on Donne; cf. Introduction (vol. i., p. xxi). The curious reader may detect many other traces of Donne's manner of writing in these Poems of 1646.

P. 23. To Amoret Weeping.

Eat orphans ... patent it. The ambition of a courtier under the Stuarts was to get the guardianship of a royal ward, or the grant of a monopoly in some article of necessity. Dr. Grosart quotes from Tustin's Observations; or, Conscience Emblem (1646): "By me, John Tustin, who hath been plundered and spoiled by the patentees for white and grey soap, eighteen several times, to his utter undoing."

P. 26. Upon the Priory Grove, his usual Retirement.

Mr. Beeching, in the Introduction (vol. i., p. xxiii), states following Dr. Grosart, that the Priory Grove was "the home of a famous poetess of the day, Katherine Phillips, better known as 'the Matchless Orinda.'" Vaughan was certainly a friend of Mrs. Phillips (cf. pp. 100, 164, 211, with notes), whose husband, Colonel James Phillips, lived at the Priory, Cardigan; but she was not married until 1647.

Miss Morgan points out that there is still a wood on the outskirts of Brecon which is known as the Priory Grove. It is near the church and remains of a Benedictine Priory on the Honddu.

P. 28. Juvenal's Tenth Satire Translated.

This translation has a separate title-page; cf. the Bibliography (vol. ii., p. lvii).

OLOR ISCANUS.

This volume, published in 1651, contains, besides the poems here reprinted, some prose translations from Plutarch and other writers. The separate title-pages of these are given in the Bibliography (vol. ii., p. lviii): the incidental scraps of verse in them appear on pp. 291-293 of the present volume. The edition of 1651 has, besides the printed title-page, an engraved title-page by the well-known engraver, who may or may not have been a kinsman of the poet, Robert Vaughan. It represents a swan on a river shaded by trees. The Olor Iscanus was reissued with a fresh title-page in 1679.

P. 52. Ad Posteros.

On the account of Vaughan's life here given, see the Biographical note (vol. ii., p. xxx).

Herbertus. Matthew Herbert, Rector of Llangattock. Cf. the poem to him on p. 158, with its note.

Castae fidaeque ... parentis, i.e., perhaps, his mother the Church.

Nec manus atra fuit. Dr. Grosart omitted the fuit, together with the final s of the preceding line. In this he is naïvely followed by Mr. J. R. Tutin, in his selection of Vaughan's Secular Poems.

P. 53. To the ... Lord Kildare Digby.

Lord Kildare Digby was the eldest son of Robert, first Baron Digby, in the peerage of Ireland. He succeeded to the title in 1642. He was about 21 at the time of this dedication, and died in 1661 (Dr. Grosart)

The date of the dedication is 17th of December, 1647. A volume was therefore probably prepared for publication at that date, and afterwards, as we learn from the publisher's preface, "condemned to obscurity," and given surreptitiously to the world. At the same time, as Miss Morgan points out to me, some of the poems in Olor Iscanus must be of later date than 1647. The death of Charles I. is apparently alluded to in the lines Ad Posteros, and certainly in the "since Charles his reign" of the Invitation to Brecknock (p. 74). This event took place on January 30th, 1648/9. The Epitaph upon the Lady Elizabeth (p. 102), again, cannot be earlier than her death on September 8th, 1650.

P. 54. The Publisher to the Reader.

Augustus vindex. The lives of Vergil attributed to Donatus and others relate that the poet, in his will, directed that his unfinished Aeneid should be burnt. Augustus, however, interfered and ordered its publication.

P. 57. Commendatory Verses.

These are signed by T. Powell, Oxoniensis; I. Rowlandson, Oxoniensis; and Eugenius Philalethes, Oxoniensis. Thomas Powell, one of the Powells of Cantreff, in Breconshire, was born in 1608. He matriculated from Jesus College on January 25th, 1627/8, took his B.A. in 1629 and his M.A. in 1632, and became a Fellow of the College. He was Rector of Cantreff and Vicar of Brecknock, but was ejected by the Commissioners for the Propagation of the Gospel and went abroad. At the Restoration he returned to Cantreff and was made D.D. and Canon of St. David's. But for his death, on the 31st December, 1660, he would probably have become Bishop of Bristol. He was the author of several books of no great importance. He appears to have been a close friend of Vaughan, who addresses various poems to him, and contributed others to his books. See Olor Iscanus, pp. 97, 159; Thalia Rediviva, pp. 178, 200, 267; Fragments and Translations, pp. 323-326. Powell, in return, wrote commendatory poems to both the Olor Iscanus and the Thalia Rediviva.

I. Rowlandson. This may have been John Rowlandson, of Queen's College, Oxford, who matriculated the 17th October, 1634, aged 17, took his B.A. in 1636, and his M.A. in 1639. Either he or his father, James Rowlandson, also of Queen's College, was sequestered by the Westminster Assembly to the vicarage of Battle, Sussex, in 1644. He left it shortly after and "returned to his benefice from whence he was before thence driven by the forces raised against the parliament." (See Addl. MS. 15,669, f. 17). There was also another James Rowlandson, son of James Rowlandson, D.D., Canon of Windsor, who matriculated from Queen's College on the 9th November, 1632, aged 17, and took his B.A. in 1637.--G. G.

Eugenius Philalethes. The author's brother, Thomas Vaughan. See the Biographical Note (vol. ii., p. xxxiii).

P. 39. that lamentable nation, i.e. the Scotch.

P. 61. Olor Iscanus.

Ausonius. The famous schoolmaster, rhetorician and courtier of the early fourth century, was born at Bordeaux. One of his most famous poems is the Mosella (Idyll X), a description of the river and its fish.