SOURCE: "Henry Vaughan and the Theme of Infancy," in Seventeenth Century Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1938, pp. 243-55.

Martin was an English scholar who edited the definitive edition of Vaughan's canon, the two-volume Works of Henry Vaughan (1916). In the following excerpt from an essay contributed to a distinguished Festschrift, he explores the sources of the theme of pre-natal existence in Vaughan's poetry and the influence of that theme upon Wordsworth. He concludes that though the evidence for Vaughan's direct influence upon Wordsworth is inconclusive, Vaughan inherited a rich tradition of literature supporting the theme of children having come into the world in innocence, having but recently enjoyed fellowship with God, and that this same tradition was familiar to Wordsworth and his immediate predecessors.

As the poetry of Henry Vaughan gained standing in the nineteenth century its correspondences with that of Wordsworth were...