The third stanza is closely modelled on Donne; cf. Introduction (vol. i., p. xxi). The curious reader may detect many other traces of Donne's manner of writing in these Poems of 1646.
P. [23]. To Amoret Weeping.
Eat orphans ... patent it. The ambition of a courtier under the Stuarts was to get the guardianship of a royal ward, or the grant of a monopoly in some article of necessity. Dr. Grosart quotes from Tustin's Observations; or, Conscience Emblem (1646): "By me, John Tustin, who hath been plundered and spoiled by the patentees for white and grey soap, eighteen several times, to his utter undoing."
P. [26]. Upon the Priory Grove, his usual Retirement.
Mr. Beeching, in the Introduction (vol. i., p. xxiii), states following Dr. Grosart, that the Priory Grove was "the home of a famous poetess of the day, Katherine Phillips, better known as 'the Matchless Orinda.'" Vaughan was certainly a friend of Mrs. Phillips (cf. pp. 100, 164, 211, with notes), whose husband, Colonel James Phillips, lived at the Priory, Cardigan; but she was not married until 1647.
Miss Morgan points out that there is still a wood on the outskirts of Brecon which is known as the Priory Grove. It is near the church and remains of a Benedictine Priory on the Honddu.
P. [28]. Juvenal's Tenth Satire Translated.
This translation has a separate title-page; cf. the Bibliography (vol. ii., p. lvii).
OLOR ISCANUS.
This volume, published in 1651, contains, besides the poems here reprinted, some prose translations from Plutarch and other writers. The separate title-pages of these are given in the Bibliography (vol. ii., p. lviii): the incidental scraps of verse in them appear on pp. 291-293 of the present volume. The edition of 1651 has, besides the printed title-page, an engraved title-page by the well-known engraver, who may or may not have been a kinsman of the poet, Robert Vaughan. It represents a swan on a river shaded by trees. The Olor Iscanus was reissued with a fresh title-page in 1679.