Editing Henry Vaughan (section)

==Conversion and sacred poetry==
It was not until the writing of ''Silex Scintillans'' that Vaughan received significant acclaim. The period shortly preceding the publication of the first volume of the work (1650) marked an important period of his life. Certain indications in the first volume and explicit statements in the preface to the second volume (1655) suggest that Vaughan suffered a prolonged sickness that inflicted much pain. Vaughan interprets this experience as an encounter with death that alerted him to a "misspent youth". Vaughan believed he had been spared to make amends and start a new course not only in his life but in the literature he would produce. He described his previous work as foul and a contribution to "corrupt literature". Perhaps the most notable mark of Vaughan's conversion is how much it is credited to [[George Herbert]]. Vaughan claims he is the least of Herbert's many "pious converts".<ref name="Bartleby"/> The influence of Herbert's poetry has been widely noted, with many of Vaughan's works based on works by Herbert.<ref>only one publication directly juxtaposes the related works: ''Henry Vaughan & George Herbert: Divine Themes and Celestial Praise'', trans. and introd. Edward Clarke, Contemplative Poetry 9 (Oxford: SLG Press, 2023), ISBN 978-0728303522</ref> It was during this period of Vaughan's life, around 1650, that he adopted the saying "Moriendo, revixi" – by dying, I gain new life.<ref name=Calhoun/>{{Rp |p132}}

The first volume of ''Silex Scintillans'' was followed by ''The Mount of Olives, or Solitary Devotions'' (1652), a prose book of devotions providing prayers for various stages in the day, for prayer in church and for other purposes. It appears as a "companion volume" to the [[Book of Common Prayer]], to which it alludes frequently, although it had been outlawed under the [[English Commonwealth|Commonwealth]]. The work was also influenced by [[Lancelot Andrewes]]'s ''Preces Privatae'' (1615) and [[John Cosin]]'s ''Collection of Private Devotions'' (1627).<ref>[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/henry-vaughan; ''Oxford Companion to English Literature'', s.v. Henry Vaughan Retrieved 24 November 2018.]{{Dead link|date=July 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> ''Flores Solitudinis'' (1654) contains translations from the Latin of two works by the Spanish Jesuit [[Juan Eusebio Nieremberg]], one by a 5th-century Bishop of Lyon, [[Eucherius of Lyon|Eucherius]], and by [[Paulinus of Nola]], of whom Vaughan wrote a prose life.

Vaughan practised medicine, perhaps as early as the 1640s. He attached to the second volume of ''Silex Scintillans'' (1655) a translation of [[Henry Nollius]]'s ''Hermetical Physick''. He went on to produce a translation of Nollius's ''The Chymists Key'' in 1657.<ref name="ReferenceB"/>