Volume IV Part 14 (1/2)

Wilt thou all the glory have That war or peace commend?

Half the world shall be thy slave, The other half thy friend.

SOUL.

What friends, if to my self untrue?

What slaves, unless I captive you?

PLEASURE.

Thou shalt know each hidden cause; And see the future time: Try what depth the centre draws; And then to heaven climb.

SOUL.

None thither mounts by the degree Of knowledge, but humility.

CHORUS.

Triumph, triumph, victorious Soul; The world has not one pleasure more; The rest does lye beyond the pole, And is thine everlasting store.

We shall conclude the life of Mr. Marvel, by presenting the reader with that epitaph, which was intended to be inscribed upon his tomb, in which his character is drawn in a very masterly manner.

Near this place Lieth the body of ANDREW MARVEL, Esq; A man so endowed by nature, So improved by education, study, and travel, So consummated, by experience and learning; That joining the most peculiar graces of wit With a singular penetration and strength of judgment, And exercising all these in the whole course of his life, With unalterable steadiness in the ways of virtue, He became the ornament and example of his age, Beloved by good men, fear'd by bad, admired by all, Tho' imitated, alas! by few; And scarce paralleled by any.

But a tombstone can neither contain his character, Nor is marble necessary to transmit it to posterity.

It is engraved in the minds of this generation, And will be always legible in his inimitable writings.

Nevertheless He having served near twenty-years successively in parliament, And that, with such wisdom, integrity, dexterity, and courage, As became a true patriot, The town of Kingiton upon Hull, From whence he was constantly deputed to that a.s.sembly, Lamenting in his death the public loss, Have erected this monument of their grief and grat.i.tude, 1688.

He died in the 58th year of his age On the 16th day of August 1678.

Heu fragile humanum genus! heu terrestria vana!

Heu quem spectatum continet urna virum!

[Footnote A: A disappointment occasioned our throwing this life out of the chronlogical order. But we hope the candid reader will pardon a fault of this kind: we only wish he may find nothing of more consequence to accuse us of.]

[Footnote B: Cook's Life of Andrew Marvel, Esq; prefixed to the first volume of Mr. Marvel's Works, London 1726.]

[Footnote C: Life ubi supri.]

[Footnote D: Mr. John Oxenbridge, who was made fellow of Eton College curing the civil war, but ejected at the Restoration; he died in New England, and was a very enthusiastic person.]

Mrs. ELIZABETH THOMAS,

This lady, who is known in the world by the poetial name of Corinna, seems to have been born for misfortunes; her very bitterest enemies could never brand her with any real crime, and yet her whole life has been one continued scene of misery[A]. The family from which she sprung was of a rank in life beneath envy, and above contempt. She was the child of an ancient, and infirm parent, who gave her life when he was dying himself, and to whose unhappy const.i.tution she was sole heiress. From her very birth, which happened 1675, she was afflicted with fevers and defluxions, and being over-nursed, her const.i.tution was so delicate and tender, that had she not been of a gay disposition, and possessed a vigorous mind, she must have been more unhappy than she actually was. Her father dying when she was scarce two years old, and her mother not knowing his real circ.u.mstances, as he was supposed from the splendour of his manner of life to be very rich, some inconveniencies were incurred, in bestowing upon him a pompous funeral, which in those times was fas.h.i.+onable. The mother of our poetess, in the bloom of eighteen, was condemned to the arms of this man, upwards of 60, upon the supposition of his being wealthy, but in which she was soon miserably deceived. When the grief, which so young a wife may be supposed to feel for an aged husband, had subsided, she began to enquire into the state of his affairs, and found to her unspeakable mortification, that he died not worth one thousand pounds in the world. As Mrs. Thomas was a woman of good sense, and a high spirit, she disposed of two houses her husband kept, one in town, the other in the county of Ess.e.x, and retired into a private, but decent country lodging. The chambers in the Temple her husband possessed, she sold to her brother for 450 l. which, with her husband's books of accounts, she lodged in her trustee's hands, who being soon after burnt out by the fire in the paper buildings in the temple (which broke out with such violence in the dead of night, that he saved nothing but his life) she lost considerably. Not being able to make out any bill, she could form no regular demand, and was obliged to be determined by the honour of her husband's clients, who though persons of the first fas.h.i.+on, behaved with very little honour to her. The deceased had the reputation of a judicious lawyer, and an accomplished gentleman, but who was too honest to thrive in his profession, and had too much humanity ever to become rich. Of all his clients, but one lady behaved with any appearance of honesty. The countess dowager of Wentworth having then lost her only daughter the lady Harriot (who was reputed the mistress of the duke of Monmouth) told Mrs. Thomas, 'that she knew she had a large reckoning with the deceased, but, says she, as you know not what to demand, so I know not what to pay; come, madam, I will do better for you than a random reckoning, I have now no child, and have taken a fancy to your daughter; give me the girl, I will breed her as my own, and provide for her as such when I die.' The widow thank'd her ladys.h.i.+p, but with a little too much warmth replied, 'she would not part with her child on any terms;' which the countess resented to such a degree, that she would never see her more, and dying in a few years, left 1500 l. per annum inheritance, at Stepney, to her chambermaid.

Thus were misfortunes early entailed upon this lady. A proposal which would have made her opulent for life, was defeated by the unreasonable fondness of her mother, who lived to suffer its dismal consequences, by tasting the bitterest distresses. We have already observed, that Mrs. Thomas thought proper to retire to the country with her daughter.

The house where she boarded was an eminent Cloth-worker's in the county of Surry, but the people of the house proved very disagreeable.

The lady had no conversation to divert her; the landlord was an illiterate man, and the rest of the family brutish, and unmannerly.