Dr. Grosart hunted out an obscure Neapolitan, Marcus Aurelius Severino, and ascribed to him the originals of these translations. They are of course from the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, and are a continuation of the pieces already printed in Olor Iscanus (pp. 125-143).
P. [245]. Pious Thoughts and Ejaculations.
These are much in the vein of Silex Scintillans. They probably belong to various dates later than 1655, when the second part of that collection appeared. The Nativity (p. 259) is dated 1656, and The True Christmas (p. 261) was apparently written after the Restoration.
P. [261]. The True Christmas.
Vaughan was no Puritan; cf. his lines on Christ's Nativity (vol. i., p. 107)—
"Alas, my God! Thy birth now here
Must not be numbered in the year,"
but he was not much in sympathy with the ideals of the Restoration either; cf. the passage on "our unjust ways" in Daphnis (p. 284).
P. [267]. De Salmone.
On Thomas Powell, cf. p. 57, note.