Henry Vaughan and his twin brother Thomas were born in 1622, at Newton St. Bridget, on the Usk, in South Wales, hence he chose to style himself "Silurist" from the name of the ancient tribe of that region. There is some confusion between him and his brother Thomas, who certainly went (1638) to Jesus College, Oxford, while Henry's name is not on the books. Henry is said to have studied law in London. In the Civil War he may have taken up arms, at least he saw, if he did not fight in the battle of Rowton Heath (24 Sept., 1645) and he commemorates in a poem the courage of a friend, Mr. R. W., who fell on the Cavalier side. In some humorous verses about a huge cloak borrowed from another friend he speaks of wearing it during the Royalist retreat from the Dee, and about the Puritan soldiery that seized him. In a Latin poem, "Ad Posteros," he says that he merely lamented the war; in any case he won no laurels and probably shed no blood. "The Bard does not fight," says a Gaelic proverb. He studied medicine, and lived retired at Brecknock. His first verses (1641) congratulate Charles I on his return from Scotland. In 1646 appeared his "Poems," including a rather tame translation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal on "The Vanity of Human Wishes," with some pretty love lyrics to Amoret. Unlike Suckling and Carew, these volatile hearts, I not for an hour did love, Or for a day desire, But with my soul had from above This endless holy fire. He "courted the mind," not the body. His volume, "Olor Iscanus" (the swan of Usk) appeared in 1651, opening with a eulogy of his beautiful native river, in smooth rhymed octosyllabic verse, mixed with decasyllabic couplets. There are also epistles to friends, one deplores the antiquated dullness of Brecknock, another celebrates the matchless Orinda, Mrs. Phillips, and there are translations from Latin verse. Vaughan lives, not by these poems, nor by "Thalia Rediviva," but by his "Silex Scintillans," the sparkling flint, sacred poems of 1650-1655. He professedly follows George Herbert, being "the least of his many pious converts". Direct imitations of Herbert are not infrequent in these hymns, which, like Herbert, sigh for the far-away days when angels sat at Abraham's board, O, how familiar then was heaven! There is a party who prefer Herbert to Vaughan, another that prefer Vaughan to Herbert. The Silurist perhaps strikes the higher and the deeper note, when he does strike it, for all the Cavalier poets, sacred or secular, blossomed but rarely into perfect and memorable song: they would excel in an opening verse, in a phrase, but their full inspiration was occasional. A line like the second in "Vanity of Spirit" is rare:-- Quite spent with thoughts, I left my cell and lay Where a shrill spring tuned to the early day. "The Retreat":-- Happy those early days, when I Shone in my angel infancy is perfect, and has a forenote of Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality".