Andrew Marvell: Augustine Birrell
PREFACE
I desire to express my indebtedness to the following editions of
Marvell's Works:--
(1) _The Works of Andrew Marvell, Esq., Poetical, Controversial, and
Political_: containing many Original Letters, Poems, and Tracts
never before printed, with a New Life. By Captain Edward
Thompson. In three volumes. London, 1776.
(2) _The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P._
Edited with Memorial-Introduction and Notes by the Rev. Alexander
B. Grosart. In four volumes. 1872.
(_In the Fuller Worthies Library._)
(3) _Poems and Satires of Andrew Marvell, sometime Member of
Parliament for Hull._ Edited by G.A. Aitken. Two volumes.
Lawrence and Bullen, 1892.
_Reprinted_ Routledge, 1905.
Mr. C.H. Firth's Life of Marvell in the thirty-sixth volume of _The
Dictionary of National Biography_ has, I am sure, preserved me from
some, and possibly from many, blunders.
A.B.
3 NEW SQUARE, LINCOLN'S INN,
June 3, 1905.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 1
CHAPTER II
"THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE" 19
CHAPTER III
A CIVIL SERVANT IN THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH 48
CHAPTER IV
IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 75
CHAPTER V
"THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED" 151
CHAPTER VI
LAST YEARS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 179
CHAPTER VII
FINAL SATIRES AND DEATH 211
CHAPTER VIII
WORK AS A MAN OF LETTERS 225
INDEX 233
ANDREW MARVELL
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
The name of Andrew Marvell ever sounds sweet, and always has, to use
words of Charles Lamb's, a fine relish to the ear. As the author of
poetry of exquisite quality, where for the last time may be heard the
priceless note of the Elizabethan lyricist, whilst at the same moment
utterance is being given to thoughts and feelings which reach far
forward to Wordsworth and Shelley, Marvell can never be forgotten in his
native England.
Lines of Marvell's poetry have secured the final honours, and incurred
the peril, of becoming "familiar quotations" ready for use on a great
variety of occasion. We may, perhaps, have been bidden once or twice too
often to remember how the Royal actor
"Nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,"
or have been assured to our surprise by some self-satisfied worldling
how he always hears at his back,
"Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
A true poet can, however, never be defiled by the rough usage of the
populace.
As a politician Marvell lives in the old-fashioned vivacious
history-books (which if they die out, as they show some signs of doing,
will carry with them half the historic sense of the nation) as the hero
of an anecdote of an unsuccessful attempt made upon his political virtue
by a minister of the Crown, as a rare type of an inflexible patriot, and
as the last member of the House of Commons who was content to take wages
from, instead of contributing to the support of, his constituents. As
the intimate friend and colleague of Milton, Marvell shares some of the
indescribable majesty of that throne. A poet, a scholar, a traveller, a
diplomat, a famous wit, an active member of Parliament from the
Restoration to his death in 1678, the life of Andrew Marvell might _a
priori_ be supposed to be one easy to write, at all events after the
fashion in which men's lives get written. But it is nothing of the kind,
as many can testify. A more elusive, non-recorded character is hardly to
be found. 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 of what we feel sure was the fact, we fail
to find it. Bishop Burnet, in his delightful history, supplies us with
sketches of the leading Parliamentarians of Marvell's day, yet to
Marvell himself he refers but once, and then not by name but as "the
liveliest droll of the age," words which mean much but tell little. In
Clarendon's _Autobiography_, another book which lets the reader into the
very clash and crowd of life, there is no mention of one of the author's
most bitter and cruel enemies. With Prince Rupert, Marvell was credited
by his contemporaries with a great intimacy; he was a friend of
Harrington's; it may be he was a member of the once famous "Rota" Club;
it is impossible to resist the conviction that wherever he went he made
a great impression, that he was a central figure in the lobbies of the
House of Commons and a man of much account; yet no record survives
either to convince posterity of his social charm or even to convey any
exact notion of his personal character.
A somewhat solitary man he would appear to have been, though fond of
occasional jollity. He lived alone in lodgings, and was much immersed in
business, about a good deal of which we know nothing except that it took
him abroad. His death was sudden, and when three 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 death we never hear of Mrs. Marvell, and with this
signed certificate she disappears. In a series of Lives of Poets' Wives
it would be hard to make much of Mrs. Andrew Marvell. For different but
still cogent reasons it is hard to write a life of her famous husband.
Andrew Marvell was born at Winestead in Holdernesse, on Easter Eve, the
31st of March 1621, in the Rectory House, the elder Marvell, also
Andrew, being then the parson of the parish. No fitter birthplace for a
garden-poet can be imagined. Roses still riot in Winestead; the
fruit-tree roots are as mossy as in the seventeenth century. At the
right season you may still
"Through the hazels thick espy
The hatching throstle's shining eye."
Birds, fruits and flowers, woods, gardens, meads, and rivers still make
the poet's birthplace lovely.
"Loveliness, magic, and grace,
They are here--they are set in the world!
They abide! and the finest of souls
Has not been thrilled by them all,
Nor the dullest been dead to them quite.
The poet who sings them may die,
But they are immortal and live,
For they are the life of the world."
Holdernesse was not the original home of the Marvells, who would seem to
have been mostly Cambridgeshire folk, though the name crops up in other
counties. Whether Cambridge "men" of a studious turn still take long
walks I do not know, but "some vast amount of years ago" it was
considered a pleasant excursion, either on foot or on a hired 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 antiquary, William Cole,
perhaps the greatest of all our collectors, has included among his
copies of early wills those of several Marvells and Mervells of Meldreth
and Shepreth, belonging to pre-Reformation times, as their pious gifts
to the "High Altar" and to "Our Lady's Light" pleasingly testify. But
our Andrew was a determined Protestant.
The poet's father is an interesting figure in our Church history.
Educated at Emmanuel College, from whence he proceeded a Master of Arts
in 1608, he took Orders; and after serving as curate at Flamborough, was
inducted to the living of Winestead in 1614, where he remained 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 son puts it, "a
conformist to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England, though
I confess none of the most over-running and eager in them." The younger
Marvell, with one boyish interval, belonged all through his life to the
paternal school of religious thought.
Fuller's account of the elder Marvell is too good to be passed over:--
"He afterwards became Minister at Hull, where for his lifetime he was
well beloved. Most facetious in discourse, yet grave in his carriage,
a most excellent preacher who, like a good husband, never broached
what he had new brewed, but preached what he had pre-studied some
competent time before. Insomuch that 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, a very religious gentlewoman) by the carelessness, not to say
drunkenness of the boatmen, to the great grief of all good men. His
excellent comment upon St. Peter is daily desired and expected, if
the envy and covetousness of private persons _for their own use_
deprive not the public of the benefit thereof."[6:1]
This good man, to whom perhaps, remembering the date of his death, the
words may apply, _Tu vero felix non vitæ tantum claritate sed etiam
opportunitate mortis_, was married at Cherry Burton, 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 Winestead, viz. three daughters, Anne,
Mary, and Elizabeth, and two sons, Andrew and John, the latter of whom
died a year after his birth, and was buried at Winestead on the 20th
September 1624.
The three daughters married respectively James Blaydes of Sutton,
Yorkshire, on the 29th of December 1633; Edmund Popple, afterwards
Sheriff of Hull, on the 18th of August 1636; and Robert More. Anne's
eldest son, Joseph Blaydes, was Mayor of Hull in 1702, having married
the daughter of a preceding Mayor in 1698. The descendants of this
branch still flourish. 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 in strong contrast with that of his
grand-uncle, for, having entered the Cofferers' Office about 1730, he
was made seven years later Solicitor and Clerk of the Reports to the
Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and in 1745 became in
succession to a relative, one Alured Popple, Governor of the Bermudas, a
post he retained until his death, which occurred not
"Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,"
but at his house in Hampstead. So well placed and idle a gentleman was
almost bound to be a bad poet and worse dramatist, and this William
Popple was both.
Marvell's third sister, Elizabeth, does not seem to have had issue, a
certain Thomas More, or Moore, a Fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge,
whose name occurs in family records, being her stepson.
In the latter part of 1624 the elder Marvell resigned the living of
Winestead, and took up the duties of schoolmaster and lecturer, or
preacher, at Hull. Important duties they were, for the old Grammar
School of Hull dates back to 1486, and may boast of a long 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 succeeded to and was succeeded
by eminent headmasters. Trinity Church, where the poet's father preached
on Sundays to crowded and interested congregations, was then what it
still is, though restored by Scott, one of the great churches in the
north of England.
The Rev. Andrew Marvell made his mark upon Hull. Mr. Grosart, who lacked
nothing but the curb upon a too exuberant vocabulary, a little less
enthusiasm 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, M.P._,[8:1] that he had read a number of the elder
Marvell's manuscripts, consisting of sermons and miscellaneous papers,
from which Mr. Grosart proceeds:--
"I gather three things.
"(1) That he was a man of a very brave, fearlessly outspoken
character. Some of his practical applications in his sermons before
the Magistrates are daring in their directness of reproof, and
melting in their wistfulness of entreaty.
"(2) That he was a well-read man. His Sermons are as full of
classical and patristic allusions and pat sayings from the most
occult literatures as even Bishop Andrewes.
"(3) That he was a man of tireless activity. Besides the two offices
named, he became head of one of the Great Hospitals of the Town
(Charter House), and in an address to the Governors placed before
them a prescient and statesmanlike plan for the better management of
its revenues, and for the foundation of a Free Public Library to be
accessible to all."
When at a later day, and in the midst of a fierce controversy, Andrew
Marvell wrote of the clergy as "the reserve of our Christianity," he
doubtless had such men as his father in his mind and memory.
It was at the old Grammar School of Hull, and with his father as his
_Orbilius_, that Marvell was initiated into the mysteries of the Latin
grammar, and was, as he tells us, put to his
"Montibus, inquit, erunt; et erant submontibus illis;
Risit Atlantiades; et me mihi, perfide, prodis?
Me mihi prodis? ait.
"For as I remember this scanning was a liberal art that we learn'd at
Grammar School, and to scan verses as he does the Author's prose
before we did or were obliged to understand them."[8:2]
Irrational methods have often amazingly good results, and the Hull
Grammar School provided its head-master's only son with the rudiments of
learning, thus enabling him to become in after years what John Milton
himself, the author of that terrible _Treatise on Education_ addressed
to Mr. Hartlibb, affirmed Andrew Marvell to be in a written testimonial,
"a scholar, and well-read in the Latin and Greek authors."
Attached to the Grammar School there was "a great garden," renowned for
its wall-fruit and flowers; so by leaving Winestead behind, our
"garden-poet," that was to be, was not deprived of inspiration.
Apart from these meagre facts, we know nothing of Marvell's boyhood at
Hull. His clerical foe, Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, writes
contemptuously of "an hunger-starved whelp of a country vicar," and in
another passage, which undoubtedly refers to Marvell, he speaks of "an
unhappy education 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 _Dictionary of National Biography_, where
are recorded the services rendered to religion, philosophy, poetry,
justice, and the empire by the "whelps" of many a country vicar.
Parsons' wives may sometimes be trying and hard to explain, but an
England without the sons of her clergy would be shorn of half her glory.
Marvell's boyhood seems to have been surrounded with the things that
most make for a child's happiness. A sensible, affectionate, humorous,
religious father, occupying a position of authority, and greatly
respected, a mother and three elder sisters to make much of his bright
wit and 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-holiday must have had their attractions; but it is unnecessary to
attribute Andrew Marvell's style in controversy to his early
acquaintance with a sea-faring population, for he is far more likely to
have picked it up from his great friend and colleague, the author of
_Paradise Lost_.
Marvell's school education over, he went up to Cambridge, not to his
father's old college, but to the more splendid foundation of Trinity.
About the date of his matriculation there is a doubt. In Wood's _Athenæ
Oxonienses_ there is a note to the effect that Marvell was admitted "in
matriculam Acad. Cant. Coll. Trin." on the 14th of December 1633, when
the boy 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 register Marvell's name appears as a Scholar sworn and
admitted on the 13th of April 1638. As, however, Marvell took his B.A.
degree in 1639, he must have been in residence long before April 1638.
Probably Marvell went to Trinity about 1635, just before the register of
pensioners was begun, as a pensioner, becoming a Scholar in 1638, and
taking his degree in 1639.
Cambridge undergraduates do not usually keep diaries, nor after they
have become Masters of Art are they much in the habit of giving details
as to their academic career. Marvell is no exception to this provoking
rule. He nowhere tells us what his University taught him or how. The
logic of 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, and Politics were "tutor's books," and
those young men who loved to hear themselves talk were left free to
discuss, much to Hobbes's disgust, "the freedom of the will, incorporeal
substance, everlasting nows, ubiquities, hypostases, which the people
understand not nor will ever care for."
In the life of Matthew Robinson,[11:1] who went up to Cambridge a little
later than Marvell (June 1645), and was probably a harder reader, we are
told that "the strength of his studies lay in the metaphysics and in
those subtle authors for many years which rendered him an irrefragable
disputant _de quolibet ente_, and whilst he was but senior freshman he
was found in the bachelor schools, disputing ably with the best of the
senior sophisters." Robinson despised the old-fashioned Ethics and
Physics, but with the new Cartesian or Experimental Philosophy he was
_inter primos_. History, particularly the Roman, was in great favour at
both Universities at this 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."[12:1] 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, and even in the vacations the scholars
were not exempt from "exercises" either in hall or in their tutors'
rooms. Earnest students read their Greek Testaments, and even their
Hebrew Bibles, and filled their note-books, working more hours a day
than was good for their health, whilst the idle ones wasted their time
as best they could in an unhealthy, over-crowded town, in an age which
knew nothing of boating, billiards, or cricket. A tennis-court there was
in Marvell's time, for in Dr. Worthington's _Diary_, under date 3rd of
April 1637, it stands recorded that on that day and in that place that
learned man received "a dangerous blow on the Eye."[12:2]
The only incident we know of Marvell's undergraduate days is remarkable
enough, for, boy though he was, he seems, like the Gibbon of a later
day, to have suddenly become a Roman Catholic. This occurrence may 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 afterwards
happened at Oxford, and has left so much agreeable literature behind it.
Fuller in his history of the University of Cambridge tells us a little
about this highly interesting and important movement:--
"Now began the University (1633-4) to be much beautified in
buildings, every college either casting its skin with the snake, or
renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts or at least
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 liberal arts,
how could it be quarrelled at in an University if they sang with
understanding both of the matter and manner thereof. Yet some took
great distaste thereat as attendancie to superstition."[13:1]
The chapel at Peterhouse, we read elsewhere, which was built in 1632,
and consecrated by Bishop White of Ely, had a beautiful ceiling and a
noble east window. "A grave divine," Fuller tells us, "preaching before
the University at St. Mary's, had this 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 Popery_
and yet _no Popery_, _there was your man_. And indeed it now began to be
the general complaint of most moderate men that many in the University,
both in the schools and pulpits, approached the opinions of the Church
of Rome nearer than ever before."
Archbishop Laud, unlike the bishops of Dr. Newman's day, favoured the
Catholic revival, and when Mr. Bernard, the lecturer of St. Sepulchre's,
London, preached a "No Popery" sermon at St. Mary's, Cambridge, he was
dragged into the High Commission Court, and, 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. Thereupon he was sent back to prison, where
he died. "If," adds Fuller, "he was miserably abused in prison by the
keepers (as some have reported) to the shortening of his life, He that
maketh inquisition for blood either hath or will be a revenger
thereof."[14:1]
By the side of this grim story the much-written-about incidents of the
Oxford Movement seem trivial enough.
Not a few Cambridge scholars of this period, Richard Crashaw among the
number, found permanent refuge in Rome.
The story of Marvell's conversion is emphatic but vague in its details.
The "Jesuits," who were well represented in Cambridge at the time, are
said to have persuaded him to leave Cambridge secretly, and to take
refuge in one of their houses in London. Thither the elder Marvell
followed 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 at Hull a fragment of a letter without signature,
address, or date, which throws some sort of light on the incident. This
letter was evidently, as Mr. Grosart surmises, sent to the elder Marvell
by some similarly afflicted parent. In its fragmentary state the letter
reads as follows:--
"Worthy S^r,--M^r Breerecliffe being w^th me to-day, I related vnto
him a fearfull passage lately at Cambridg touching a sonne of mine,
Bachelor of Arts in Katherine Hall, w^ch was this. He was lately
inuited to a supper in towne by a gentlewoman, where was one M^r
Nichols a felow of Peterhouse, and another or two masters of arts, I
know not directly whether felowes or not: my sonne hauing noe
p'ferment, but liuing meerely of my penny, they pressed him much to
come to liue at their house, 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 Nicols let fall: I p'ceive by
M^r Breercliffe some such prank vsed towards y^r sonne: I desire to
know what y^u did therin: thinking I cannot doe god better seruice
then bring it vppon the stage either in Parliament if it hold: or
informing some Lords of the Counsail to whom I stand much oblieged if
a bill in Starchamber be meete To terrify others by making these some
publique spectacle: for if such fearfull practises may goe vnpunished
I take care whether I may send a child ... the lord."[15:1]
The reference to Dr. Cosens, or Cosin, being Vice-Chancellor gives a
clue to the date, for Cosin was chosen Vice-Chancellor on the 4th of
November 1639.[15:2]
Though we can know nothing of the elder Marvell's methods of
re-conversion, they were more successful than the elder Gibbon's, who,
as we know, packed 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, whereas Marvell, once out of the hands of these
very shadowy "Jesuits," remained the staunchest of Christian Protestants
to the end of his days.
This strange incident, and two college exercises or poems, one in
Greek, the other in Latin, both having reference to an addition to the
Royal Family, and appearing in the _Musa Cantabrigiensis_ for 1637, are
all the materials that exist for weaving the story of Marvell, the
Cambridge undergraduate. The Latin verses, which are Horatian in style,
contain one pretty stanza, composed apparently before the sex of the
new-born infant was known at Cambridge.
"Sive felici Carolum figura
Parvulus princeps imitetur almae
Sive Mariae decoret puellam
Dulcis imago."
After taking his Bachelor's degree in 1639, Marvell, being still a
Scholar of the college, must have gone away, for the Conclusion Book of
Trinity, under date September 24, 1641, records as follows:--
"It is agreed by y^e Master and 8 seniors y^t M^r Carter and D^r
Wakefields, D^r Marvell, D^r Waterhouse, and D^r Maye in regard y^t
some of them are reported to be married and y^t others look not after
y^eir days nor Acts shall receave no more benefitt of y^e Coll and
shall be out of y^ier places unless y^ei shew just cause to y^e Coll
for y^e contrary in 3 months."
Dr. Lort, in his amiable letter of 1765, already mentioned, points out
that this entry contains no reflection on Marvell's morals, but shows
that he was given "notice to quit" for non-residence, "then much more
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 enjoyned
by the statutes." Dr. Lort adds, "It does not appear, by any subsequent
entry, whether Marvell did or did not comply with this order." We may
now safely assume he did not. Marvell's Cambridge days were over.
The vacations, no inconsiderable part of the year, were probably spent
by Marvell under his father's roof at Hull, where his two elder sisters
were married and settled. It is not to be wondered at that Andrew
Marvell should, for so many years, have represented Hull in the House of
Commons, for both he and his family were well known in the town. The
elder Marvell added to his reputation as 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 cholera upon large towns, and the plague was worse than
the cholera many times over. The Hull preacher, despite the stigma of
_facetiousness_, which still clings to him, stuck to his post, visiting
the sick, burying the dead, and even, which seems a little superfluous,
preaching and afterwards printing "by request" their funeral sermons. A
brave man, indeed, and one reserved for a tragic end.
In April 1638 the poet's mother died. In the following November the
elder Marvell married a widow lady, but his own end was close upon him.
The earliest consecutive account of this strange event is in Gent's
_History of Hull_ (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 prevented the designed happy union
thro' a violent storm which overset the boat and put a period to all
their lives, nor were there any remains of them or the vessel ever after
found, tho' earnestly sought for on distant shores."
Thus died by drowning a brave man, a good Christian, and an excellent
clergyman of the Reformed Church of England. The plain narrative just
quoted has been embroidered by many long-subsequent 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 breeze fair, and the company gay, yet
when stepping into the boat "the reverend man exclaimed, 'Ho for
Heaven,' and threw his staff ashore and left it to Providence to fulfil
its awful warning."
So melancholy an occurrence naturally excited great attention, and long
lingered in local memories. Everybody in Hull knew who was their
member's father.
There is an obstinate tradition quite unverifiable that Mrs. Skinner,
the mother of the beautiful young lady who was drowned with the elder
Marvell, adopted the young Marvell as a son, sending to Cambridge for
him after his father's death, and providing him 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 Milton in immortal verse to enjoy himself whilst the
mood was on him, having been Mayor of Hull. The lady, doubtless, had
money, and Andrew Marvell was in need of money, and appears to have been
supplied with it. It is quite possible the tradition is true.
FOOTNOTES:
[6:1] Fuller's _Worthies_ (1662), p. 159.
[8:1] "The Fuller Worthies Library," 4 vols., 1872. Hereafter referred
to as _Grosart_.
[8:2] _Mr. Smirke or the Divine in Mode._--Grosart, iv. 15.
[11:1] _Autobiography of Matthew Robinson_. Edited by J.E.B. Mayor,
Cambridge, 1856.
[12:1] _Behemoth_, Hobbes' Works (Molesworth), vol. vi., see pp. 168,
218, 233-6.
[12:2] Worthington's _Diary_, vol. i. p. 5 (Chetham Society).
[13:1] Fuller, _History of Cambridge University_ (1655), p. 167.
[14:1] Fuller, p. 166.
[15:1] Grosart, I., xxviii.
[15:2] See Worthington's _Diary_, vol. i. p. 7.
CHAPTER II
"THE HAPPY GARDEN-STATE"
The seventeenth century was the century of travel for educated
Englishmen--of long, leisurely travel. Milton's famous Italian tour
lasted fifteen months. John Evelyn's _Wander-Jahre_ occupied four years.
Andrew Marvell lived abroad in France, Spain, Holland, and Italy from
1642 to 1646, and we have Milton's word for it that when the traveller
returned he was well acquainted with the French, Dutch, Spanish, and
Italian languages. Andrew Marvell was a highly cultivated man, living in
a highly cultivated age, in daily converse with scholars, poets,
philosophers, and men of very considerable scientific attainments. In
reading Clarendon and Burnet, and whilst turning over Aubrey's
delightful gossip, it is impossible not to be struck with the width and
variety of the learning as well as with the wit of the period.
Intellectually it was a great age.
No record remains of Marvell's travels during these years. Up and down
his writings the careful reader will come across pleasant references to
foreign manners and customs, betokening the keen humorous observer, and
the possession of that wide-eyed faculty that takes a pleasure, half
contemplative, half the result of animal spirits, in watching the way of
the world wherever you may chance to be. Of another and an earlier
traveller, Sir Henry Wotton, we read in "Walton's _Life_."
"And whereas he was noted in his youth to have a sharp wit and apt to
jest, _that_ by time, travel, and conversation was so polished and
made useful, that his company seemed to be one of the delights of
mankind."
In all Marvell's work, as poet, as Parliamentarian, as controversialist,
we shall see the travelled man. Certainly no one ever more fully grasped
the sense of the famous sentence given by Wotton to Milton, when the
latter was starting on his travels: "_I pensieri stretti ed il viso
sciolto._"
Marvell was in Rome about 1645. I can give no other date during the
whole four years. This, our only date, rests upon an assumption. In
Marvell's earliest satirical poem he gives an account of a visit he paid
in Rome to the unlucky poetaster Flecknoe, who was not in Rome until
1645. If, therefore, the poem records an actual visit, it follows that
the author of the poem was in Rome at the same time. It is not very
near, but it is as near as we can get.
Richard Flecknoe was an Irish priest of blameless life, with a passion
for scribbling and for printing. His exquisite reason for both these
superfluous acts is worth quoting:--
"I write chiefly to avoid idleness, and print to avoid the imputation
(of idleness), and as others do it to live after they are dead, I do
it only not to be thought dead whilst I am alive."[20:1]
Such frankness should have disarmed ridicule, but somehow or another
this amiable man came to be regarded as the type of a dull author, and
his name passed into a proverb for stupidity, so much so that when
Dryden in 1682 was casting about how best to give pain to Shadwell, he
devised the plan of his famous satire, "MacFlecknoe," where in biting
verse he describes Flecknoe (who was happily dead) as an aged Prince--
"Who like Augustus young
Was called to empire and had governed long;
In prose and verse was owned, without dispute,
Through all the realms of nonsense absolute."
Dryden goes on to picture the aged Flecknoe,
"pondering which of all his sons was fit
To reign and wage immortal war with Wit,"
and fixing on Shadwell.
"Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity:
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense."
Thus has it come about that Flecknoe, the Irish priest, whom Marvell
visited in his Roman garret in 1645, bears a name ever memorable in
literature.
Marvell's own poem, though eclipsed by the splendour of Glorious John's
resounding lines, has an interest of its own as being, in its roughly
humorous way, a forerunner of the "Dunciad" and "Grub Street"
literature, by which in sundry moods 'tis "pleasure to be bound." It
describes seeking out the poetaster in his lodging "three staircases
high," at the sign of the Pelican, in a room so small that it seemed "a
coffin set in the stair's head." No sooner was the rhymer unearthed than
straightway he began to recite his poetry in dismal tones, much to his
visitor's dismay:--
"But I who now imagin'd myself brought
To my last trial, in a serious thought
Calm'd the disorders of my youthful breast
And to my martyrdom prepared rest.
Only this frail ambition did remain,
The last distemper of the sober brain,
That there had been some present to assure
The future ages how I did endure."
To stop the cataract of "hideous verse," Marvell invited the scarecrow
to dinner, and waits while he dresses. As they turn to leave, for the
room is so small that the man who comes in last must be the first to go
out, they meet a friend of the poet on the stairs, who makes a third at
dinner. After dinner Flecknoe produces ten quires of paper, from which
the friend proceeds to read, but so infamously as to excite their
author's rage:--
"But all his praises could not now appease
The provok't Author, whom it did displease
To hear his verses by so just a curse
That were ill made, condemned to be read worse:
And how (impossible!) he made yet more
Absurdities in them than were before:
For his untun'd voice did fall or raise
As a deaf man upon the Viol plays,
Making the half-points and the periods run
Confus'der than the atoms in the sun:
Thereat the poet swell'd with anger full,"
and after violent exclamations retires in dudgeon back to his room. The
faithful friend is in despair. What is he to do to make peace? "Who
would commend his mistress now?" Marvell
"counselled him to go in time
Ere the fierce poet's anger turned to rhyme."
The advice was taken, and Marvell, finding himself at last free from
boredom, went off to St. Peter's to return thanks.
This poem is but an unsatisfactory _souvenir de voyage_, but it is all there is. |
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