Honor is
due, as in all great struggles, to both parties. Vaughan's lot was cast
with the conquered cause.
His youth was happy, as all poets' should be, and as the genius of all
true poets, coupled with that period of life, will go far to make it.
There must be early sunshine far the first nurture of that delicate plant:
the storm comes afterward to perfect its life. Vaughan first saw the
light in a rural district of great beauty. His songs bear witness to it.
Indeed he is known by his own designation, a fragrant title in the sweet
fields of English poesy, as the Swan of the Usk, though he veiled the
title in the thin garb of the Latin, "Olor Iscanus." Another fortunate
circumstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of
a rural Welsh rector, with whom, his twin brother for a companion, he
passed the years of youth in what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths
of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek
and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be
less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving
powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized
in their waters.
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