whose holy
life and
verse gained many pious
Converts (of whom I am the least)." Vaughan's transition from the influence of the Jacobean neoclassical poets to the Metaphysicals was one manifestation of his reaction to the English Civil War. During the time the Church of England was outlawed and radical Protestantism was in ascendancy, Vaughan kept faith with Herbert's church through his poetic response to Herbert's
Temple (1633).
Recent attention to Vaughan's poetic achievement is a new phenomenon. Even though he published many translations and four volumes of poetry during his lifetime, Vaughan seems to have attracted only a limited readership. The second edition of his major work, Silex Scintillans, included unsold pages of the first edition. When, in 1673, his cousin John Aubrey informed him that he had asked Anthony Wood to include information about Vaughan and his brother Thomas in a volume commemorating Oxford poets (later published as Athenæ Oxonienses, 1691, 1692) his response was enthusiastic. He thanked Aubrey in a 15 June letter for remembering "such low & forgotten things, as my brother and my selfe." In a letter to Aubrey dated 28 June, Vaughan confessed, "I never was of such a magnitude as could invite you to take notice of me, & therfore I must owe all these favours to the generous measures of yor free & excellent spirit."
In spite of Aubrey's kindness and Wood's resulting account of Vaughan, neglect of the Welsh poet would continue.
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