Henry Vaughan, the major English poet of the Commonwealth period, has been among the writers benefiting most from the twentieth-century revival of interest in the poetry of John Donne and his followers. Vaughan's early poems, notably those published in the Poems of 1646 and Olor Iscanus of 1651, place him among the "Sons of Ben," in the company of other imitators of Ben Jonson, such as the Cavalier poets Sir William Davenant and Thomas Carew. His poetry from the late 1640s and 1650s, however, published in the two editions of Silex Scintillans (1650, 1655), makes clear his extensive knowledge of the poetry of Donne and, especially, of George Herbert.

Even though Vaughan would publish a final collection of poems with the title Thalia Rediviva in 1678, his reputation rests primarily on the achievement of Silex Scintillans. In the preface to the 1655 edition Vaughan described Herbert as a "blessed man ... whose holy life and...