Andrew Marvell

of exquisite quality, where for the last time may be heard the priceless note of the Elizabethan lyricist, whilst at the same moment utterance

f becoming "familiar quotations" ready for use on a great variety of occasion. We m

common di

memorabl

se by some self-satisfied worldlin

èd chariot h

never be defiled by the ro

nd. We know all about him, but very little of him. His parentage, his places of education, many of his friends and acquaintances, are all known. He wrote nearly four hundred letters to his Hull constituents, carefully preserved by the Corporation, in which he narrates with much particularity the course of public business at Westminster. Notwithstanding these materials, the man Andrew Marvell remains undiscovered. He rarely comes to the surface. Though both an author and a member of Parliament, not a trace of personal vanity is noticeable, and vanity is a quality of great assistance to the biographer. That Marvell was a strong, shrewd, capable man of affairs, with enormous powers of self-repression, his Hull correspondence clearly proves, but what more he was it is hard to say. He rarely spoke during his eighteen years in the House of Commons. It is impossible to doubt that such a man in such a place was, in Mr. Disraeli's phrase, a "personage." Yet when we look for recognition

ree years afterwards the first edition of his poems made its appearance, it was prefaced by a certificate signed "Mary Marvell," to the effect that everything in the book was printed "according to the copies of my late dear husband." Until after Marvell's deat

r Marvell, also Andrew, being then the parson of the parish. No fitter birthplace for a garden-poet can be imagined. Roses

he hazels

throstle's

gardens, meads, and rivers still

s, magic,

-they are set

and the fi

n thrilled

st been dead

ho sings t

re immorta

the life of

d steed, from Cambridge to Meldreth, where the Elizabethan manor-house, long known as "the Marvells'," agreeably embodied the tradition that here it was that the poet's father was born in 1586. The Church Registers have disappeared. Proof is impossible. That there were Marvells in the neighbourhood is certain. The famous Cambridge antiq

ined till 1624, in which year he went to Hull as master of the Grammar School and lecturer, that is preacher, of Trinity Church. The elder Marvell belonged, from the beginning to the end of his useful and even heroic life, to the Reformed Church of England, or, as his

elder Marvell is too g

he was wont to say that he would cross the common proverb which called Saturday the working-day and Monday the holyday of preachers. It happened that Anno Dom. 1640, Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a Barrow boat, the same was sandwarpt, and he was drowned therein (with Mrs. Skinner, daughter to Sir Edward Coke,

on the 22nd of October 1612, to Anne Pease, a member of a family destined to become widely known throughout the north of England. Of this marriage there were five children, all born at Win

The Popples also had children, one of whom, William Popple, was a correspondent of his uncle the poet's, and a merchant of repute, who became in 1696 Secretary to the Board of Trade, and the friend of the most famous man who ever sat at the table of that Board, John Locke. A son of this William Popple led a very comfortable eighteenth-century life, which is

remote Be

an's bosom

dle a gentleman was almost bound to be a bad poet a

e, a certain Thomas More, or Moore, a Fellow of Magdalen College,

g career of usefulness, never having fallen into that condition of decay and disrepute from which so many similar endowments have been of late years rescued by the beneficent and, of course, abused action of the Charity Commissioners. Andrew Marvell the elder

and a great deal more discretion, to be a model editor, tells us in his invaluable edition of The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell,

er thre

of his practical applications in his sermons before the Magistrates are darin

l of classical and patristic allusions and pat sayings f

ls of the Town (Charter House), and in an address to the Governors placed before them a prescient and statesmanlike pl

rew Marvell wrote of the clergy as "the reserve of our Christianit

r as his Orbilius, that Marvell was initiated into the myste

, erunt; et erant

es; et me mihi,

i prod

rn'd at Grammar School, and to scan verses as he does the Auth

of learning, thus enabling him to become in after years what John Milton himself, the author of that terrible Treatise on Education add

d for its wall-fruit and flowers; so by leaving Winestead behind,

among Boatswains and Cabin-boys," whose unsavoury phrases, he goes on to suggest, Marvell picked up in his childhood. But truth need not be looked for in controversial pages. The best argument for a married clergy is to be found, for Englishmen at all events, in the sixty-seven volumes of the Dictionar

nd early adventures, a comfortable yet simple home, and an atmosphere of piety, learning, and good fellowship. What more is wanted, or can be desired? The "Boatswains" and "Cabin-boys" of Bishop Parker's fancy were in the neighbourhood, no doubt, and as stray companions for a half

was but twelve years old. Dr. Lort, a famous master of Trinity in his day, writing in November 1765 to Captain Edward Thompson, of whom more later on, told the captain that until 1635 there was no register of admissions of ordinary students, or pensioners, as they are called, but only a register of Fellows and Foundation Scholars, and in this last-named regi

f the schools he had no choice but to learn. Molineus, Peter Ramus, Seton, Keckerman were text-books of reputation, from one or another of which every Cambridge man had to master his simpliciters, his quids, his secundum quids, his quales, and his quantums. Aristotle's Physics, Ethics, a

his time, and young men were taught, so old Hobbes again grumbles, to despise monarchy "from Cicero, Seneca, Cato and other politicians of Rome, and Aristotle of Athens, who seldom spake of kings but as of wolves and other ravenous beasts."1 The Muses were never neglected at Cambridge, as the University exercises survive to prove, whilst modern languages, Spanish and Italian for example, were greedily acquired by such an eager spirit as Richard Crashaw, the poet, who came into residence at Pembroke in 1631. There were problems to be "kept" in the college chapel, lectures to be attended, both public and private, declamations to be delivered, a

serve to remind us how, during Marvell's time at Trinity, the University of Cambridge (ever the precursor in thought-movements) had a Catholic revival of her own, akin to that one which two hundred years af

their fronts and Gatehouses repaired and adorned. But the greatest alteration was in their Chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of organs. And seeing musick is one of the libera

his smart passage in his Sermon-that as at the Olympian Games he was counted the Conqueror who could drive his chariot wheels nearest the mark yet so as not to hinder his running or to stick thereon, so he who in his Sermons could preach near Pope

, as the hateful practice then was, a practice dear to the soul of Laud, was bidden to subscribe a formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to do, though professing his sincere sorrow and penitence for any oversights and hasty expressions in his sermon.

much-written-about incidents of the

period, Richard Crashaw among the n

ed in pursuit, and after search came across his son in a bookseller's shop, where he succeeded both in convincing the boy of his errors and in persuading him to return to Trinity. An odd story, and not, as it stands, very credible; but Mr. Grosart discovered among the Marvell papers

and for chamber and extraordinary bookes they promised farre: and then earnestly moued him to goe to Somerset house, where they could doe much for p'ferring him to some eminent place, and in conclusion to popish arguments to seduce him soe rotten and vnsauory as being ouerheard it was brought in question before the heads of the Uniuersity: Dr. Cosens, being Vice Chancelor noe punishment is inioined him: but on Ash-wednesday next a recantation in regent house of some popish tenets Nic

hancellor gives a clue to the date, for Cosin was c

acked the future historian off to Lausanne and a Swiss pastor's house. What Gibbon became on leaving off his Romanism we can guess for ourselves,

and appearing in the Musa Cantabrigiensis for 1637, are all the materials that exist for weaving the story of Marvell, the Cambridge undergraduate. The

ici Carol

rinceps im

ae decore

is i

Scholar of the college, must have gone away, for the Conclusion B

ard yt some of them are reported to be married and yt others look not after yeir days nor Acts shall receave no more b

strictly enjoined than it is now." The days referred to in the entry were, so the master obligingly explains, "the certain number allowed by statute to absentees," whilst the "acts mean the Exercises also enjo

a teacher and preacher the character of a devoted servant of his flock in the hour of danger. The plague twice visited Hull during the time of the elder Marvell, first in 1635 and again in 1638. In those days men might well pray to be delivered from "plague, pestilence, and famine." Hull suffered terribly on both occasions. We have seen, in comparatively recent times, the effect of the c

(1735):-"This year, 1640, the Rev. Mr. Andrew Marvell, Lecturer of Hull, sailing over the Humber in company with Madame Skinner of Thornton College and a young beautiful couple who were going to be wedded; a speedy Fate prev

t writers in the interests of those who love presentiments and ghostly intimations of impending events, and in one of these versions it is recorded, that though the morning was clear, the br

attention, and long lingered in local memories. Ev

im with the means of travel, and that afterwards she bequeathed him her estate. Whether there is any truth in this story cannot now be ascertained. The Skinners were a well-known Hull family, one of them, a brother of that Cyriac Skinner who was urged by

Worthies (1

brary," 4 vols., 1872. Here

the Divine in Mode

ew Robinson. Edited by J. E

rks (Molesworth), vol. vi

Diary, vol. i. p. 5

of Cambridge Univer

uller,

sart, I.

ington's Diary