was sent early to the university; and there which he manufactured his plays. 'Bayes studied hard, and in a short time became a com--Why, sir, my first rule is the rule of transpetent rhetorician, and no ill disputant. He had version, or regula duplex,-changing verse learned how to erect a thesis, and to defend it 'into prose, or prose into verse, alternative, as pro and con with a serviceable distinction. you please.' Smith-Well, but how is this And so, thinking himself now ripe and qualified 'done by rule, sir?' Bayes-Why thus, sir; for the greatest undertakings and highest fortune, he therefore exchanged the narrowness of nothing so easy when understood. I take a the university for the town; but coming out of book in my hand, either at home or elsewhere, the confinement of the square cap and the quad- for that's all one: if there be any wit in't, as rangle into the open air, the world began to turn there is no book but has some, I transverse round with him, which he imagined, though it it; that is, if it be prose put it into verse, were his own giddiness, to be nothing less than the quadrature of the circle. This accident (but that takes up some time,) and if it be concurring so happily to increase the good opin-verse put it into prose.' 'Johnson-Methinks, ion which he naturally had of himself, he thence- Mr. Bayes, that putting verse into prose forward applied to gain a like reputation with should be called transprosing.' 'Bayesothers. He followed the town life, haunted the By my troth, sir, 'tis a very good notion and best companies; and to polish himself from any hereafter it shall be so.' pedantic roughness, he read and saw the plays with much care, and more proficiency than most of the auditory. But all this while he forgot not the main chance; but hearing of a vacancy with a nobleman, he clapped in, and easily obtained to be his chaplain: from that day you may take the date of his preferments and his ruin; for having soon wrought himself dexter-entertaining a conduct, that, from the king ously into his patron's favor, by short graces and down to the tradesman, his books were read sermons, and a mimical way of drolling upon with great pleasure; that not only humbled the Puritans, which he knew would take both at chapel and at table, he gained a great authority Parker, but the whole party; for the author likewise among all the domestics. They all lis-of the Rehearsal Transprosed had all the tened to him as an oracle; and they allowed men of wit, (or, as the French phrase it, all him, by common consent, to have not only all the laughers,) on his side.' the divinity, but more wit, too, than all the rest of the family put together. . . Nothing now must serve him, but he must be a mad-so ridiculous a light that even his own party man in print, and write a book of Ecclesiastical Polity. There he distributes all the territories of conscience into the Prince's province, and makes the Hierarchy to be but Bishops of the air; and talks at such an extravagant rate in things of higher concernment, that the reader

will avow that in the whole discourse he had not one lucid interval.'*

The success of the Rehearsal was instant and signal. After Parker had for some years entertained the nation with several virulent books,' says Burnet, he was attacked by the liveliest droll of the age, who wrote in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and

In fact, Marvell exhibited his adversary in

The could not keep their countenances. unhappy churchman resembled Gulliver at the court of Brobdignag, when the mischievous page stuck him into the marrow-bone. He cut such a ridiculous figure, that, says the author, even the King and his courtiers could not help laughing at him.

The first part of the Rehearsal elicited several answers. They were written for the most part in very unsuccessful imitation of Marvell's style of banter, and are now wholly forgotten. Marvell gives an amusing account of the efforts which were made to obtain effective replies, and of the hopes of preferment which may be supposed to have inspired their Parker himself for some time deauthors.

The work here mentioned, his Ecclesiastical Polity, was published in the year 1670. But the book which called forth Marvell, was a Preface to a posthumous work of Archbishop Bramhall's, which appeared in 1672. In this piece Parker had displayed his usual zeal against the Nonconformists with more than usual acrimony, and pushed to the uttermost extravagance his favorite maxims of ecclesias-clined any reply. At last came out his Retical tyranny. Like his previous works on proof to the Rehearsal Transprosed, in which similar matters, it was anonymous, though the he urged the Government' to crush the pestiauthor was pretty well known. Marvell dubs lent wit, the servant of Cromwell, and the him 'Mr. Bayes,' under which name the Duke friend of Milton.' To this work Marvell reof Buckingham had ridiculed Dryden in the plied in the second part of the Rehearsal. He well-known play of the Rehearsal; from the was further spirited to it by an anonymous title of which Marvell designated his book, letter, pleasant and laconic enough, left for The Rehearsal Transprosed. The latter him at a friend's house, signed T. G.,' and word was suggested by the scene in which concluding with the words 'If thou darest Mr. Bayes gives an account of the manner in to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the eternal God, I will cut thy throat!' He who wrote it, whoever he was, was igno

* Rehearsal Transprosed-Vol. I. pp. 62-69.

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tious retirement, might have been the author of the Rehearsal-apparently with the view of turning the indignation of Government upon the illustrious recluse. Marvell had always entertained towards Milton a feeling of reverence akin to idolatry, and this stroke of deliberate malice was more than he could bear. He generously hastened to throw his shield over his aged and prostrate patron.

rant of Marvell's nature, if he thought there- | to his great friend, John Milton. Parker, by to intimidate him into silence. His in- with his customary malignity, had insinuated trepid spirit was but further provoked by this that the poet, who was then living in cauinsolent threat, which he took care to publish in the title-page of his Reply. To this publication Parker attempted no rejoinder. Anthony Wood himself tells us, that Parker 'judged it more prudent to lay down the cudgels, than to enter the lists again with an untowardly combatant, so hugely well versed and experienced in the then but newly refined art, though much in mode and fashion ever since, of sporting and jeering buffoonery. About three years after the publication of It was generally thought, however, by many the second part of the Rehearsal, Marvell's of those who were otherwise favorers of chivalrous love of justice impelled him again to Parker's cause, that the victory lay on Mar- draw the sword. In 1675, Dr. Croft, Bishop vell's side, and it wrought this good effect on of Hereford, had published a work entitled Parker, that for ever after it took down his The Naked Truth, or the true state of the great spirit.' And Burnet tells us, that he Primitive Church, by a humble Moderator.' withdrew from the town, and ceased writing This work deserved the character of that for some years.' Of this greatest work of sermon which Corporal Trim shook out of Marvell's singular genius it is difficult, even the volume of Stevinus. If you have no obif we had space for it, to present the reader jections,' said Mr. Shandy to Dr. Slop, with any considerable extracts. The allu-Trim shall read it.' 'Not in the least,' resions are often so obscure-the wit of one plied Dr. Slop, for it does not appear on page is so dependent on that of another which side of the question it is wrote; it may the humor and pleasantry are so continuous be a composition of a divine of our church -and the character of the work, from its as well as of yours, so that we run equal very nature, is so excursive, that its merits risks.' 'Tis wrote upon neither side,' quoth can be fully appreciated only on a regular Trim, for it is only upon conscience, an' perusal. We regret to say, also, that there please your honors.' Even so was it with are other reasons which render any very the good Bishop's little piece. It was writlengthened citations undesirable. The work ten on neither side. It enjoined on all rehas faults which would, in innumerable ligious parties the unwelcome duties of forcases, disguise its real merit from modern bearance and charity; but as it especially readers, or rather deter them from giving it exposed the danger and folly of enforcing a a reading altogether. It is characterized by minute uniformity, it could not be suffered to much of the coarseness which was so preva-pass unchallenged in that age of high church lent in that age, and from which Marvell was intolerance. It was petulantly attacked by Dr. by no means free; though, as we shall en- Francis Turner, Master of St. John's Coldeavor hereafter to show, his spirit was far lege, Cambridge, in a pamphlet entitled, from partaking of the malevolence of ordi-Animadversions on the Naked Truth.' This nary satirists. Some few instances of felicitous repartee, or ludicrous imagery, which we have noted in a reperusal of the work, will be found further on.

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provoked our satirist, who replied in a pamphlet entitled, Mr. Smirke, or the Divine in Mode.' He here fits his antagonist with a character out of Etherege's 'Man of Yet the reader must not infer that the Mode'-as he had before fitted Parler only, or even the chief, merit of the Rehear- with one from Buckingham's 'Rehearsal.' sal Transprosed consists in wit and banter. The merits and defects of this pamphlet Not only is there, amidst all its ludicrous are of much the same order as those of levities, a vehemence of solemn reproof, his former work-it is perhaps less disand an eloquence of invective, that awes one with the spirit of the modern Junius;'* but there are many passages of very powerful reasoning in advocacy of truths then but ill understood, and of rights which had been shamefully violated.

Perhaps the most interesting passages of the work are those in which Marvell refers

* D'Israeli.

Of

figured by coarseness and vehemence.
Dr. Croft's pamphlet, he beautifully expresses
a feeling, of which we imagine few of us can
have been unconscious when perusing any
work which strongly appeals to our reason
and conscience, and in which, as we pro-
ceed, we seem to recognize what we have
often thought, but never uttered. 'It is a
book of that kind, that no Christian can pe-
ruse it without wishing himself to have been

One

the author, and almost imagining that he is so: sciousness of its political degradation. the conceptions therein being of so eternal jeu d'esprit-a parody on the speeches of an idea, that every man finds it to be but a Charles II.-in which the flippancy and easy copy of the original in his own mind.' impudence of those singular specimens of royal eloquence are happily mimicked and scarcely caricatured, is very characteristic of his caustic humor. A few sentences may not displease the reader.

To this little brochure was attached, 'A Short Historical Essay concerning general Councils, Creeds, and Impositions in matters of Religion.' It is characterized by the same strong sense and untiring vivacity as his other writings, and evinces a creditable acquaintance with ecclesiastical history; but it is neither copious nor profound enough for the subject.

In 1677, Marvell published his last controversial piece, elicited like the rest by his disinterested love of fair play. It was a defence of the celebrated divine, John Howe, whose conciliatory tract on the Divine Prescience' had been rudely assailed by three several antagonists. This little volume, which is throughout in Marvell's vein, is now extremely scarce, is not included in any edition of his works, and was evidently unknown to any of his biographers.

His last work of any extent was entitled, 'An Account of the growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England.' It first appeared in 1678. It is written with much vigor-boldly vindicates the great principles of the constitution-and discusses the limits of the royal prerogative. The gloomy anticipations expressed by the author were but too well justified by the public events which transpired subsequently to his death. But the fatal consequences of the principles and policy he denounced, were happily averted by the Revolution of 1688.

'I told you at our last meeting, the winter was the fittest time for business, and truly I thought so, till my lord-treasurer assured me the spring was the best season for salads and subsidies. gerous to make me too rich; but I do not fear Some of you, perhaps, will think it danit, for I promise you faithfully, whatever you give me, I will always want; and, although in other things my word may be thought a slender authority, yet in that, you may rely on me, I will never break it. . . . . I can bear my straits with patience; but my lord-treasurer does protest to me, that the revenue, as it now stands, will not serve him and me too. One of us must pinch for it, if you do not help me. . . . What shall we do for ships then? I hint this only to you, it being your business, not mine. I know by experience I lived ten years I can live without ships. abroad without, and never had my health better in

my life; but how you will be without, I will leave to yourselves to judge, and therefore hint this only by-the-bye. I don't insist upon it. There is another thing I must press more earnestly, and that is this: it seems a good part of my revenue will expire in two or three years, except you will be pleased to continue it. I have to say for itpray, why do you give me so much as you have done, unless you resolve to give on as fast as I call for it? The nation hates you already for giving so much, and I will hate you too if you do not give me more. So that, if you do not stick to me you will not have a friend in England. . .

A reward was offered by the Government Therefore look to it, and take notice, that if for the discovery of the author of this libel,' you do not make me rich enough to undo you, it as it was pleasantly designated. Marvell shall lie at your door. For my part I wash my hands on it. . . I have converted my natural seems to have taken the matter very coolly, sons from Popery. . . . 'Twould do one's heart and thus humorously alludes to the subject in good to hear how prettily George can read ala private letter to Mr. Ramsden, dated June ready in the Psalter. They are all fine children, 10, 1678—There came out about Christmas Good bless 'em, and so like me in their underlast, here, a large book concerning the growth standings! But, as I was saying, I have, to of Popery and arbitrary government. There please you, given a pension to your favorite, my have been great rewards offered in private, wanted it, as that you would take it kindly. . . . Į Lord Lauderdale, not so much that I thought he and considerable in the Gazette, to any one know not, for my part, what factious men would who could inform of the author or printer, have; but this I am sure of, my predecessors but not yet discovered. Three or four print-never did any thing like this, to gain the gooded books since have described, as near as it will of their subjects. So much for your religion, was proper to go, (the man being a member of Parliament,) Mr. Marvell to have been the author; but, if he had, surely he should not have escaped being questioned in Parliament, or some other place.'

and now for your property. . . . I must now acquaint you, that by my lord-treasurer's advice, I have made a considerable retrenchment upon intend to stop; but will, with your help, look into my expenses in candles and charcoal, and do not the late embezzlements of my dripping-pans and kitchen-stuff, of which by the way, upon my con

Marvell also published, during the latter years of his life, several other political pamph-science, neither my lord-treasurer nor my Lord lets, which, though now forgotten, were doubt- Lauderdale are guilty."*

less not without their influence in unmasking

corruption and rousing the nation to a con- * Marvell's Works.-Vol. 1. p. 428, 429.

Marvell's intrepid patriotism and bold writ-gests ludicrous images and analogies is asings had now made him so odious to the cor- tonishing; he often absolutely startles us by rupt court, and especially to the bigoted heir the remoteness and oddity of the sources from presumptive James, that he was compelled which they are supplied, and by the unexpectfrequently to conceal himself for fear of as- ed ingenuity and felicity of his repartees. sassination. He makes an affecting allusion to this in one of his private letters.- Magis occidere,' says he, metuo quam occidi; non quod vitam tanti æstimem, sed ne imparatus moriar.'t

He died August 16, 1678, the very year that his obnoxious work on the growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government appeared; and as he was in vigorous health just before, strong suspicions were entertained that he had been poisoned.

His forte, however, appears to be a grave ironical banter, which he often pursues at such a length that there seems no limit to his fertility of invention. In his endless accumulation of ludicrous images and allusions, the untiring exhaustive ridicule with which he will play upon the same topics, he is unique ; yet this peculiarity not seldom leads him to drain the generous wine even to the dregsto spoil a series of felicitous railleries by some far-fetched conceit or unpardonable extravagance.

In person, according to the description of Aubrey, who knew him well, Marvell' was of But though Marvell was so great a master a middling stature, pretty strong set, round- of wit, and especially of that caustic species ish-faced, cherry-cheeked, hazel-eyed, brown- which is appropriate to satirists, we will venhaired. In his conversation he was modest, ture to say that he was singularly free from and of very few words. He was wont to say, many of the faults which distinguish that irhe would not drink high or freely with any ritable brotherhood. Unsparing and mercione with whom he could not trust his life.' less as his ridicule is, contemptuous and ludiCaptain Thompson gives a somewhat differ- crous as are the lights in which he exhibits ent account of his complexion and the color his opponent; nay, further, though his invecof his eyes; but, as is too often the case, he tives are not only often terribly severe, but does not mention his authority. It seems (in compliance with the spirit of the age) ofprobable that he has been giving us a de- ten grossly coarse and personal, it is still imscription from the impression conveyed by his possible to detect a single particle of maligportraits, of which there are two, without al-nity. His general tone is that of broad lowing for the effects of time; so that we have but the picture of a picture.

Of the editions of Marvell's collected works, that of 1726, in two volumes duodecimo, contains only his poems and some of his private letters. That of Captain Thompson, in three volumes quarto, was published in 1776. Yet even this, as already said, omits one treatise. The Captain's diligence is indeed worthy of commendation, and his enthusiasm may be pardoned. But he was far from being a correct or judicious editor; and is often betrayed by his indiscriminate admiration into excessive and preposterous eulogy. The only separate biography is, we believe, the little volume mentioned at the head of this article.

laughing banter, or of the most cutting invec-
tive; but he appears equally devoid of malev-
olence in both. In the one, he seems amus-
ing himself with opponents too contemptible
to move his anger; in the other to lay on
with the stern imperturbable gravity of one
who is performing the unpleasant but neces-
sary functions of a public executioner. This
freedom from the usual faults of satirists may
be traced to several causes; partly to the
bonhommie which, with all his talents for sa-
tire, was a peculiar characteristic of the man,
and which rendered him as little disposed to
take offence, and as placable when it was of
fered, as any man of his time; partly to the
integrity of his nature, which, while it
prompted him to champion any cause in
which justice had been outraged or inno-
cence wronged, effectually preserved him from
the wanton exercise of his wit for the gratifi-
cation of malevolence; partly, perhaps prin-
cipally, to the fact, that both the above quali-
ties restricted him to encounters in which he
had personally no concern.
keen sword, it was a most peaceable and gen-
tlemanly weapon; it never left the scabbard
except on the highest provocation, and even
then, only on behalf of others. His magnani-
mtiy, self-control, and good temper, restrained
him from avenging any insult offered to him-

If he carried a

self; his chivalrous love of justice instantly as little disguise the malice of their nature, roused all the lion within him on behalf of as Marvell, with all his coarseness, can make the injured and oppressed. It is perhaps us doubt his benevolence. Through the veil well for Marvell's fame that his quarrels were not personal: had they been so, it is hardly probable that such powers of sarcasm and irony should have been so little associated with bitterness of temper.

of their language (of beautiful texture, but too transparent) we see chagrin poorly simulating mirth; anger struggling to appear contempt, and failing; scorn writhing itself into an aspect of ironical courtesy, but with grim distortion in the attempt; and sarcasms urged by the impulses which, under different circumstances, and in another country, would have prompted to the use of the stiletto.

It is impossible, indeed, not to regret the coarseness, often amounting to buffoonery, of Marvell's wit; though, from the consideration just urged, we regard it with the more forbearance. Other palliations have been adverted to, derived from the character of his

the spirit of the age. The last is the strongest. The tomahawk and the scalping-knife were not yet discreditable weapons, or thrown aside as fit only for savage warfare; and it is even probable, that many of the things which we should regard as gross insults would then pass as pardonable jests. It is difficult for us, of course, to imagine that callousness which scarcely regards any thing as an insult but what is enforced by the argumentum baculinum. Between the feelings of our forefathers and our own, there seems to have been as great a difference as between those of the farmer and the clergyman, so ludicrously described by Cowper, in his 'Yearly Distress :'

This freedom from malignity is highly honorable to him. In too many cases it must be confessed that wit has been sadly dissociated from amiability and generosity. It is true, indeed, that there is no necessary connexion between that quality of mind and the malevolent passions, as numberless illustrious examples sufficiently prove. But where wit is conjoined with malevolence, the latter more effectually displays itself; and even where there is originally no such conjunc-adversaries, the haste with which he wrote, and tion, wit is almost always combined with that constitutional irritability of genius which it so readily gratifies, and which, by gratifying, it transforms into something worse. Half the tendencies of our nature pass into habits only from the facilities which encourage their development. We will venture to say, that there is not a tithe of the quarrels in the world that there used to be when all men were accustomed to wear arms; and we may rest assured, that many a waspish temper has become so, principally from being in possession of the weapon of satire. Not seldom, too, it must with sorrow be admitted, the most exquisite sense of the ridiculous has been strangely combined with a morbid, gloomy, saturnine temperament, which looks on all things with a jaundiced imagination, and surveys human infirmities and foibles with feelings not more remote from those of compassionate benevolence than of good-humored mirth. Happy when, as in the case of CowThe haste with which Marvell wrote must per, the influence of a benign heart and un- also be pleaded as an excuse for the inequalfeigned humility, prevents this tendency from ties of his works. It was not the age in degenerating into universal malevolence. which authors elaborated and polished with There are few things more shockingly in-care, or submitted with a good grace to the congruous than the ghastly union of wit and misanthropy. Wit should be ever of open brow, joyous, and frank-hearted. Even the severest satire may be delicious reading, when penned with the bonhommie of Horace, or of Addison, or the equanimity of Plato, or of Pascal. Without pretending that Marvell had aught of the elegance or the delicacy of any of those immortal writers, we firmly believe he had as much kindly feeling as any of them. Unhappily the two by no means go together; there may be the utmost refinement without a particle of good-nature; and a great deal of good nature without any refinement. It were easy to name writers, who with the most exquisite grace of diction can

"O, why are farmers made so coarse,
Or clergy made so fine?

A kick that scarce would move a horse,
May kill a sound divine."

lime labor; and if it had been, Marvell allowed himself no leisure for the task. The second part of the 'Rehearsal,' for example, was published in the same year in which Parker's Reproof' appeared.-We must profess our belief, that no small portion of his writings stand in great need of this apology. Exhibiting, as they do, amazing vigor and fertility, the wit is by no means always of the first order.

We must not quit the subject of his wit, without presenting the reader with some few of his pleasantries; premising that they form but a very small part of those which we had marked in the perusal of his works; and that, whatever their merit, it were easy to