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.

P. 272. The Bee.

_Hilarion's servant, the sage crow._ There seems to be some confusion
between Hilarion, an obscure fourth-century Abbot, and Paul the Hermit,
of whom it is related in his _Life by S. Jerome_ that for sixty years he
was daily provided with half a loaf of bread by a crow.

P. 278. Daphnis.

The subject of the Eclogue appears to be Vaughan's brother Thomas, who
died 27th February, 1666. On him _see_ the _Biographical Note_ (vol.
ii., p. xxxiii).

_true black Moors_; an allusion, perhaps, to Thomas Vaughan's
controversy with Henry More.

_Old Amphion_; perhaps Matthew Herbert, on whom see note to p. 158.

_The Isis and the prouder Thames._ Thomas Vaughan was buried at Albury,
near Oxford.

_Noble Murray._ Thomas Vaughan's patron, himself a poet and alchemist,
Sir Robert Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland. His poems have been
collected by the Hunterian Club.

FRAGMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS.

The larger number of the verses in this section are translated
quotations scattered through Vaughan's prose-pamphlets. Dr. Grosart
identified some of the originals; I have added a few others; but the
larger number remain obscure and are hardly worth spending much labour
upon. The title-pages of the pamphlets will be found in the
_Bibliography_ (vol. ii., p. lvii).

P. 289. From Eucharistica Oxoniensia.

I have already, in the _Biographical Note_ (vol. ii., p. xxviii), given
reasons for doubting whether this poem is by the Silurist. It was first
printed as his by Dr. Grosart. Charles the First was in Scotland, trying
to settle his differences with the Scots, during the closing months of
1641.

P. 291. Translations from Plutarch and Maximus Tyrius.

These, together with a translation of Guevara's _De vitae rusticae
laudibus_, were appended to