The brothers left for Oxford at the mature age--not a whit too late for
any minds--of seventeen or eighteen. At the University there were other
words than the songs of Apollo. The Great Revolution was already on the
carpet, and it was to be fought out with weapons not found in the logical
armory of Aristotle. The brothers were royalists, of course; and Henry,
before the drama was played out, like many good men and true, tasted the
inside of a prison--doubtless, like Lovelace and Wither, singing his
heartfelt minstrelsy behind the wires of his cage. He was not a fighting
man. Poets rarely are. More than one lyrist--as Archilochus and Horace may
bear witness--has thrown away his shield on the field of battle. Vaughan
wisely retired to his native Wales. Jeremy Taylor, too, it may be
remembered, was locking up the treasures of his richly-furnished mind and
passionate feeling within the walls of those same Welsh hills. Nature,
alone, however, is inadequate to the production of a true poet. Even
Wordsworth, the most patient, absorbed of recluses, had his share of
education in London and travel in foreign cities. Vaughan, too, early
found his way, in visits, to the metropolis, where he heard at the Globe
Tavern the last echoes of that burst of wit and knowledge which had spoken
from the tongue and kindled in the eye of Shakspeare, Spenser and Raleigh.
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