Part 15 (1/2)
Of Archbishop Laud and Charles the First, Marvell says:--
”I am confident the Bishop studied to do both God and his Majesty good service; but alas, how utterly was he h so learned, so pious, so wise abeyond Cereun, with that ended, and thereby deforn of the best prince that ever wielded the English sceptre For his late Majesty, being a prince truly pious and religious, was therefore the y And thence, though hi, yet he could not trust it better than in their treatment Whereas every man is best at his own post, and so the preacher in the pulpit”[167:2]
Kings, Marvell points out to Parker, must take wider views than parsons
”'Tis not with them as with you You have but one cure of souls, or perhaps two as being a nobleman's chaplain, to look after, and if you ht, you would find you had work sufficient without writing your 'Ecclesiastical Policies'
But they are the incudoms, and the rectorshi+p of the coy The care I say of all this rests on thes for peace sake and the quiet of mankind that your proud heart would break before it would bend to They do not think fit to require any thing that is impossible, unnecessary or wanton of their people, but are fain to consider the very temper of the climate in which they live, the constitution and laws under which they have been forood words and humour them like children They reflect upon the histories of forulate thes) do not think fit to cos unnecessary”[168:1]
These extracts, however fatal to Marvell's traditional reputation in the eighteenth century as a Puritan and a Republican, call for no apology
An exaiven There are many to choose from
”There was a worthy divine, notof a facetious and unlucky humour, was coht up at Paul's school under a severe master, Dr Gill, and from thence he went to the University
There he took liberty (as 'tis usual with those that are emancipated from School) to tel tales and make the discipline ridiculous under which he was bred But not suspecting the doctor's intelligence, coive hiet a play day for his former acquaintances
But instead of that he found hih he appeal'd in vain to the priviledges of the University, pleaded _adultus_ and invoked the mercy of the spectators Nor was he let down till the rove of birch in his back-side for the terrour and publick exae the secrets of Priscian and make merry with their teachers This stuck so with Triplet that all his life-tiave the doctor, but sent him every New Year's tide an anniversary ballad to a new tune, and so in his turn avenged hiame of picquet with a parson plays such a part in Parker's _Reproof_ to the _Rehearsal Transprosed_ that it deserves to be o that I used to play at picket; there was a gentlenitory of Lincoln, very well known and re since dead, I will save his naentleo half-a-croith me; and so all the while he sate on n_' so that I was always sure to lose I afterwards discovered it, but of all the money that ever I was cheated of in my life, none ever vexed me so as what I lost by his occasion”[169:1]
There is no need to pursue the controversy further It is still unsettled
Parker's _Reproof_, published in 1673, is less arguh more personal than the _Ecclesiastical Politie_ Any use I now raphical Let us see Andrew Marvell depicted by an angry parson--not in passages of _ ”Thou dastard Craven, thou Swad, thou Mushroom, thou coward in heart, word and deed, thou Judas, thou Crocodile”; for epithets such as these are of no use to a biographer--but in places where Marvell is at least made to sit for the portrait, however ill-natured
”And if I would study revenge I could easily have requited you with the Novels of a certain Jack Gentle cabin-boys, and sent from school to the University and froeasily rooked by the old Gae and experience, and beyond sea saw the Bears of Berne and the large race of Capons at Geneva, and a great hts beside, and so returned home as accomplished as he went out, tries his fortune once entleth cheated of all at Picquet””And now to conclude; is it not a sad thing that a well-bred and fashi+onable gentleman that has frequented Ordinaries, that has worn Perukes and muffs and Pantaloons and was once Master of a Watch, that has travelled abroad and seen as many men and countries as the famous Vertuosi, Sorbier and Coriat, that has heard the City Lions roar, that has past the Alps and seen all the Tredescin rarities and old stones of Italy, that has sat in the Porphyric Chair at Rome, that can describe the methods of the Elections of Popes and tell stories of the tricks of Cardinals, that has been eues of State at home, that has read Plays and Histories and Gazettes; that I say a Gentleman thus accomplished and embellished within and without and all over, should ever live to that unhappy dotage as at last to dishonour his grey hairs and his venerable age with such childish and impotent endeavours at wit and buffoonery”--(_Reproof_, pp 270, 274-5)[170:1]
Marvell was very little over fifty years of his age at this tiarded as truthful in any other particular--yet so the way he is abused by those ant to abuse hih no orator, or even debater, was the stuff of which controversialists are made In a letter, printed in the Duke of Portland's papers, and dated May 3, 1673, he writes:--
”Dr Parker will be out the next week I have seen it--already three hundred and thirty pages and it will be es) I perceive by what I have read that it is the rudest book, one or other, that ever was published, I h it handles hly, yet I am not at all amated by it But I must desire the advice of some few friends to tell me whether it will be proper for me and in ay to answer it However I will for mine own private satisfaction forthwith draw up an answer that shall have as much of spirit and solidity in it as e we live in will endure I aood Providence to interument But I desire that all the discourse of ht to be expected to so scurrilous a book”--(_Hist MSS Coe of the Second Part of the _Rehearsal Transprosed_ is a curiosity:--
THE REHEARSALL TRANSPROS'D:
THE SECOND PART
Occasioned by Two Letters: The first Printed by a nameless Author, Intituled, A Reproof, etc
The Second Letter left for me at a Friends House, Dated Nov 3, 1673 Subscribed JG and concluding with these words; If thou darest to Print or Publish any Lie or Libel against Doctor Parker, By the Eternal God I will cut thy Throat
Answered by ANDREW MARVEL
LONDON,
Printed for Nathaniel Ponder at the Peacock in Chancery Lane near Fleet-Street, 1673