crescent moon of darkness
swimming in its disc? or does the eye disclose a bright
light from within, where his soul sits and enjoys bright
day? Is he a point of admiration whose head is too heavy, or
a quaver or crotchet that has lost his neighbors, and fallen
out of the scale? Is he an aspiring Tadpole in search of an
idea? What have been and what will be the fortunes of this
our small Nigel (_Nigellus_)? Think of "Elia" having him
sent up from the Goblin Valley, packed in wool, and finding
him lively! how he and "Mary" would doat upon him, feeding
him upon some celestial, unspeakable _pap_, "sweeter than
the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath." How the
brother and sister would croon over him "with murmurs made
to bless," calling him their "tender novice" "in the first
bloom of his nigritude," their belated straggler from the
"rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not
deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his
sins, their "poor Blot," "their innocent Blackness," their
"dim Speck."

We can more easily imagine him as one of those Sprites--

"That do run
By the triple Hecat's team,
From the presence of the Sun,
Following darkness like a dream."

Henry, our poet, was born in 1621; and had a twin-brother, Thomas.
Newton, his birthplace, is now a farm-house on the banks of the Usk, the
scenery of which is of great beauty. The twins entered Jesus College,
Oxford, in 1638. This was early in the Great Rebellion, and Charles then
kept his Court at Oxford. The young Vaughans were hot Royalists; Thomas
bore arms, and Henry was imprisoned. Thomas, after many perils, retired
to Oxford, and devoted his life to alchemy, under the patronage of Sir
Robert Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland, himself addicted to
these studies. He published a number of works, with such titles as
"_Anthroposophia Theomagica_, or a Discourse of the Nature of Man, and
his State after Death, grounded on his Creator's Proto-chemistry;"
"_Magia Adamica_, with a full discovery of the true _Coelum terrae_, or
the Magician's Heavenly Chaos and the first matter of all things."

Henry seems to have been intimate with the famous wits of his time:
"Great Ben," Cartwright, Randolph, Fletcher, &c. His first publication
was in 1646:--"Poems, with the Tenth Saty