Dr. Grosart thinks that T. Lewes was "probably of Maes-mawr, opposite Newton, on the south side of the Usk." Miss Southall identifies him with Thomas Lewis, incumbent in 1635 of Llanfigan, near Llansantffread. He was expelled from his living, but returned to it at the Restoration.
P. [100]. To the most excellently accomplished Mrs. K. Philips.
Katherine Philips, by birth Katherine Fowler, became the wife in 1647 of Colonel James Philips, of the Priory, Cardigan. She was a wit and poetess, and well-known to a large circle of friends as "the matchless Orinda." Each member of her coterie had a similar fantastic pseudonym, and it is possible that this may account for the Etesia and Timander, the Fida and Lysimachus, of Vaughan's poems. The poems of Orinda were surreptitiously published in 1664, and in an authorised version in 1667. They include her poem on Vaughan, afterwards prefixed to Thalia Rediviva (cf. p. 169), but are not accompanied by the present verses nor by those to her editor in Thalia Rediviva (p. 211).
A Persian votary—i.e., a Parsee, or fire-worshipper.
P. [102]. An Epitaph upon the Lady Elizabeth, Second Daughter to his late Majesty.
Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I., was born in 1635. She suffered from ill-health and grief after her father's execution, and died at Carisbrooke on September 8, 1650. This poem, therefore, like others in the volume, must be of later date than the dedication.
P. [104]. To Sir William Davenant, upon his Gondibert.
Davenant's Gondibert was first published in 1651. It does not contain Vaughan's verses.
thy aged sire. Is this an allusion to the story that Davenant was in reality the son of William Shakespeare?
Birtha, the heroine of Gondibert.