And stop a month and blaze around her, In which the Greeks and Romans drest, Grammars, prayer-books-oh! 'twere tedious Did I but tell the half, to follow me. Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy, No-nor the hoary Trismegistus, (Whose writings all, thank heav'n! have miss'd us,) E'er fill'd with lumber such a ware-room As this great 'porcus literarum!' ART. VIII. Olor Iscanus. A Collection of some Select Poems and Translations, formerly written by Mr. Henry Vaughan, Silurist. Published by a Friend. "Flumina amo, Sylvasque inglorius."-Virg. Georg. London, printed by T. W. for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his shop, at the signe of the Prince's Arms, in St. Paul's Churchyard. 1651. Small 8vo. This little volume has long lain hid in undeserved oblivion. Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, as he loved to be called, appears to have been a very accomplished individual, though given, as we learn from Anthony Wood, to be "singular and humoursome." He has not, indeed, scaled the highest heaven of invention, nor even succeeded in bestowing fame and celebrity on his favorite river of Isca; but if a considerable command of forcible language, and an occasional richness of imagery, be sufficient to arrest a poet fast falling into total oblivion, we think we shall be justified in selecting the "Olor Iscanus" as the subject of an article. This little production is moreover peculiarly adapted to our purposes. We could not recommend a reprint of the whole, though the poetry only runs to sixty-four small octavo pages, for there are many parts in which the author falls into dulness or obscurity, or where, following the cold and vapid taste of the times, he spends his strength on frigid and bombastic conceits; but, at the same time, Vaughan possessed both feeling and imagination, flowers which not unfrequently shew themselves above the weeds which the warped judgment of the age encouraged to grow up in too great luxuriance. Added to this, he is a translator of no little skill; and has succeeded in turning many of the metrical pieces of Boëtius, and some of the odes of Casimir, into free and forcible English. It is very much to be lamented, that he did not give more of his attention to this good service; for we cannot help thinking there are very few versions in the language executed with more ability than those which we shall presently submit to the reader. These poems chiefly come under the head of what is usually termed occasional poetry, a species of writing ill adapted to carry the fame of the author down to Posterity, a personage generally too busy in pursuing her own trifles, to attend to those which may have caught the attention of an individual of a former age. Sometimes, however, the occasion is a general one; and at others, the writer rises above his subject, and making it but the stepping-stone of his course, wings a lofty and enduring flight. Probably, Henry Vaughan contemplated some more lasting and worthy theme than eulogies and elegies upon his friends, if we may judge from the following address to his native Isca, the theme of the first poem in this volume: "But Isca, whensoe'er those shades I see, And those lov'd arbours must no more know me, By this "precious and enduring ray" is intended, we presume, the identical little book from which we have been brushing the cobwebs and wiping the dust, and whose " scattered beams" we are about to let fall once more on the public, who, most unaccountably, as the Silurist would think, are little aware of their brightness, though rivers have not left to run, nor men to read. After celebrating the Isca, our author proceeds to the charnelhouse, his reflections on which are written with a vigorous pen. It may be that, in this following quotation from it, there are few new ideas; but it breathes forth a vigorous strain of morality, which shall be "as a modicum of salt to charm away the rottenness of oblivion :" "Where are you, shoreless thoughts, vast-tenter'd * hope, Whose stretch'd excess runs on a string too high, And on the rack of self-extension die? Cameleons of state, air-mongring + band, Whose breath (like gunpowder) blows up a land, As th' elements by circulation pass From one to th' other, and that which first was *Tenter'd, extended. + Air-mongring, dealing in air, or unsubstantial visions. The other takes. Think, then, that in this bed As stern and subtle as your own; that hath Check'd him who thought the world too strait a room. A beauty, able to undo the race Of easy man? I look but here, and straight Was but a smoother clay. That famish'd slave, But these, and more, which the weak vermins swell, Which I could scatter; but the grudging sun Calls home his beams, and warns me to be gone : Day leaves me in a double night, and I Must bid farewell to my sad library, Yet with these notes. Henceforth with thought of thee I'll season all succeeding jollity, Yet damn not mirth, nor think too much is fit: Excess hath no religion, nor wit; But should wild blood swell to a lawless strain, One check from thee shall channel it again." The following is part of an address to an usurer, who had obliged the poet with loans of money; the whole is written with vast freedom and richness of expression: "But wilt have money, Og? must I dispurse? Will nothing serve thee but a poet's curse? Wilt rob an altar thus; and sweep at once What, Orpheus-like, I forced from stocks and stones? In thy dark chest. Talk not of shrieves, or gaol- And chrystal springs shall drop thee melody. Thou must, then, (if live thus,) my nest of honey! These spirited verses and the following copy to a friend, complaining of the general poverty of poets, make us fear that our author did not find the flowery paths of poesy and philosophy (which Wood says he followed, instead of the study of the law) a fortunate choice. The spirit, however, of the man, rich or poor, is to be envied, who could thus console himself. Speakof poets, he says: ing "Woeful profusion! at how dear a rate Are we made up! all hope of thrift and state |