SOURCE: "Henry Vaughan," in The Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne, 1934. Reprint by Russell & Russell, 1963, pp. 145-87.

An English educator and translator, Leishman was the author of The Metaphysical Poets (1934) and Themes and Variations in Shakespeare's Sonnets (1961). In the following excerpt from a reprint edition of the former, he surveys Vaughan's poetry and highlights several key thematic characteristics.

About 1643 [Vaughan] he began to practise as a physician at Brecknock, and in 1646 he published his first volume of poems, with the title Poems, with the tenth Satyre of luvenal Englished. There is little that is distinctively 'metaphysical' in the style of these poems—most of them are in the sprightly manner of the popular Cambridge poet, Thomas Randolph, and other members of the Tribe of Ben; although there are two poems ["To Amoret gone from him" and "To Amoret, of the difference twixt him, and other Lovers, and what...