“Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill My perspective still as they pass; Or else remove me hence unto that hill Where I shall need no glass!” “Thy grave, to which my thoughts shall move Like bees in storms unto their hive.” To arraign Vaughan is to vindicate him. In the too liberal assizes of literature, an idea becomes the property of him who best expresses it. Herbert’s odd and fresh metaphors, his homing bees and pricks of conscience and silent tears, the adoring star and the comrade bird, even his famous female scarf, go over bodily to the spoiler. In many an instance something involved and difficult still characterizes Herbert’s diction; and it is diverting to watch how the interfering hand sorts and settles it at one touch, and sends it, in Mr. Matthew Arnold’s word, to the “centre.” Vaughan’s mind, despite its mysticism, was full of despatch and impetuosity. Like Herbert, he alludes to himself, more than once, as “fierce”; and the adjective undoubtedly belongs to him. There is in Vaughan, at his height, an imaginative rush and fire which Herbert never knew, a greater clarity and conciseness, a far greater restraint, a keener sense both of color and form, and so much more deference for what Mr. Ruskin calls “the peerage of words,” that the younger man could never have been content to send forth a line which might mean its opposite, such as occurs in the fine stanza about glory in the beautiful _Quip_. It is only on middle ground that the better poet and the better saint collide. Vaughan never could have written “O that I once past changing were Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!” or the tranquil confession of faith: “Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust, Thy hands made both, and I am there: Thy power and love, my love and trust Make one place everywhere!” For his best is not Herbert’s best, nor his worst Herbert’s worst. It is not Vaughan who reminds us that “filth” lies under a fair face. He does the “fiercer” thing: he goes to the Pit’s mouth in a trance, and “hears them yell.” Herbert’s noblest and most winning art still has its stand upon the altar steps of _The Temple_; but Vaughan is always on the roof, under the stars, like a somnambulist, or actually above and out of sight, “pinnacled dim in the intense inane”; absorbed in larger and wilder things, and stretching the spirits of all who try to follow him. Herbert has had his reward in the world’s lasting appreciation; and though Vaughan had a favorable opinion of his own staying powers, nothing would have grieved him less than to step aside, if the choice had lain between him and his exemplar. Or re-risen, he would cry loyally to him, as to that other Herbert, the rector of Llangattock and his old tutor: “_Pars vertat patri, vita posthuma tibi_.”