Vaughan, Henry
Vaughan, Henry (1622–95). Poet and mystic. After two years at Oxford, Vaughan commenced legal training in London but returned home to Breconshire at the outbreak of war in 1642. Briefly clerk to a royalist judge, and possibly on military service until 1646 when the puritans controlled south Wales, he turned his attention to medicine, and practised successfully, though no degree or licence has been traced. He began to publish poetry in 1646, but George Herbert's influence led to rejection of ‘idle books’, and it is for his religious poems that he is now best known, though they were largely disregarded in his own day; Silex Scintillans (‘The Glittering Flint’, 1650, Part II 1655) and the prose The Mount of Olives (1652) reflect his spiritual rapture and fresh creativeness. Welsh sentiment led Vaughan to assume the title ‘Silurist’, since his native county had formerly been inhabited by a local tribe called the Silures.
A. S. Hargreaves
More From encyclopedia.com
NEARBY TERMS
Vaughan, Henry
