continuance, the Lords were very well used to the King's presence, and sent the Lord Steward and Lord Chamberlain to him, to know when they might wait as a house on him, to render their humble thanks for the honor he did them. The hour was appointed them, and they thanked him; and he took it well. So this matter, of such importance on all great occasions, seems riveted to them and us for the future, and to all posterity. .... The King has ever since continued his session among them, and says it is better than going to a play."* From this, one can perceive that, whatever might be his faults, Charles II. was a pleasant fellow. Of another kind of pleasantry, arising out of the peculiar relations between members of Parliament and their constituencies, we obtain some curious glimpses from these letters. On more than one occasion it appears that members had sued their constituents for arrears of pay; and that others had threatened to do the like, unless the said constituents would agree to re-elect them at the next election. To-day," says Marvell, (in a letter dated March 3, 1676-7,)" Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Master of the Rolls, moved for a bill to be brought in, to indemnify all counties, cities, and boroughs, for the wages due to their members for the time past, which was introduced by him upon very good reason, both because of the poverty of many people not able to supply so long an arrear, especially new taxes now coming upon them, and also because Sir John Shaw, the Recorder of Colchester, had sued the town for his wages; several other members also having, it seems, threatened their boroughs to do the same, unless they should choose them upon another election to Parliament." We gather further, that electors of those days did not pride themselves very much upon the suffrage, and that there were even instances of unpatriotic boroughs begging to be disfranchised, to escape the burdensome honor of sending representatives! In such a state of things, it was hardly to be expected that the attendance of members should be very prompt or punctual. Such, indeed, was the difficulty of obtaining a "full house" that it was deemed advisable at varions times to threaten severe penalties against the absentees. In one of these letters we are told, "The House was called yesterday, and gave defaulters a fortnight's time, by which, if they do not come up, they may expect the greatest severity." In another, "The House of * Ibid. pp. 417-419. VOL XXV. NO. II Commons was taken up for the most part yesterday in calling over their House, and having ordered a letter to be drawn up from the Speaker to every place for which there is any defaulter, to signify the absence of their members; and a solemn letter is accordingly preparing, to be signed by the Speaker. This is thought a sufficient punishment for any modest man; nevertheless, if they shall not come up hereupon, there is a further severity reserved." These reserved severities, however, could be rarely put in practice, so that the absenteeism of honorable gentlemen was for a long time more or less a standing hindrance to legislation. Among the other unpleasant perplexities incident to the House of Commons in those days, were the frequent disputes into which they were in the habit of falling with the House of Lords. The following is an amusing complication of their relations, and must have been extremely difficult of adjustment: "I have no more time than to tell you that the Lords having judged and fined the East India Company, as we think illegally, upon the petition of one Skyner, a merchant, and they petitioning us for redress, we have imprisoned him that petitioned them, and they have imprisoned several of those that petitioned us." "It is," adds Marvell, "a business of high and dangerous consequence," as indeed it manifestly was, though nothing very serious resulted. As a curious example of the odd accidents on which important events may sometimes depend, the following singular anecdote may be cited. Sir G. Carteret had been charged with embezzlement of public money, "The\ House," says Marvell, “dividing upon the question, the ayes went out, and wondered why they were kept out so extraordinary a time; the ayes proved 138, and the noes 129; and the reason of the long stay then appeared. The tellers for the ayes chanced to be very ill reckoners, so that they were forced to tell several times over in the house; and when at last the tellers for the ayes would have agreed the noes to be 142, the noes would needs say that they were 143;1 whereupon those for the ayes would tell once more, and then found the noes to be indeed but 129, and the ayes then coming in proved to be 138; whereas if the noes had been content with the first error of the tellers, Sir George had been quit upon that observation.""* It appears there is no evidence that Mar 18 *Letters, pp. 125, 126. vell ever spoke in Parliament. He was nearly | last discovered it on a second floor, in a dark twenty years a member, and all the time a court communicating with the Strand. It is silent one. His influence in the House, said, that in groping up the narrow staircase, nevertheless, seems to have been more than he stumbled against the door of the apartusually considerable. The strong and decided ment, which, flying open, revealed to him views which he took on public affairs, the the patriot writing at his desk. A little sursevere, satirical things which he was con- prised, Marvell asked his lordship, with a stantly uttering in conversation, or publishing smile, if he had not missed his way. "No," in pamphlets and addresses, and the stedfast said Danby, in courtly phraseology; “No; and well-known integrity by which his entire not since I have succeeded in finding Mr. conduct was distinguished, rendered him a Marvell." He then proceeded to inform formidable opponent to the government, and him that he came with a message from the even gained for him the secret respect of King, who was impressed with a deep sense some of the court party. Prince Rupert of his merits, and was anxious to serve him. honored him with his friendship, and is said Marvell replied pleasantly, "that his majesty to have remained attached to him when "the had it not in his power to serve him." As rest of the party had honored him by their Danby pressed him seriously, he told his hatred," and to have occasionally visited him lordship at length that he knew well enough at his lodgings. When he voted on Marvell's that he who accepts court favors is naturally side of the House, as not unfrequently hap- expected to vote in conformity with its interpened, it used to be said that he had been ests. On his lordship's saying "that his closeted "with his tutor." Our patriot, majesty only desired to know whether there however, was nowise without his enemieswas any place at court which he would acas indeed every good man necessarily lives cept," the patriot replied, "that he could in antagonism with the bad; and there are accept nothing with honor; for either he no relations hitherto discovered under which must treat the King with ingratitude by rethey can with any permanence be amicably fusing compliance with court measures, or be associated. We find it said that on more a traitor to his country by yielding to them." than one occasion, Marvell was threatened The only favor, therefore, he begged of his with assassination; so that in spite of con- majesty, was to esteem him as a loyal subscious virtue he had need of walking guard-ject, and truer to his actual interests in reedly, and with the strictest circumspection. fusing his offers than he could be by acceptOf his severe probity, his utter inaccessi- ing them. His lordship having exhausted bility to bribery, and the manifold forms of this species of persuasion, had recourse to flattery and temptation which the governing what he probably considered more formida powers employed against him, there are ble logic, and told him that his majesty remany substantial evidences. The account of quested his acceptance of a thousand pounds. his memorable interview with the Lord Trea- But this too was firmly and respectfully resurer Danby, though it has often been re-jected, though, as it is related, soon after peated, and is, perhaps, generally familiar to Danby left him, Marvell was compelled to historical readers, cannot properly be omitted borrow a guinea from a friend, to meet his in any relation having reference to Marvell's immediate expenses. acts and character. It appears that he once spent an evening at Court, and very highly delighted the "merry monarch" by his wit and other personal accomplishments. In this there is nothing to astonish us; as it is known that Charles enjoyed wit and lively conversation almost more than anything. To his excessive admiration of wit and drollery he was indeed continually sacrificing his royal dignity. However, one morning after the above-mentioned interview, he sent Danby to wait on our patriot with a special message of regard. Charles perhaps might think that with a fellow of such humor it would not be impossible to come to an understanding. His lordship had some diffioulty in finding Marvell's residence, but at It has been already hinted, that though no orator in Parliament, Marvell was moderately ready with his pen ; and there can be no one at all acquainted with English literature, who does not know that he was one of the most popular writers of his age. Most of his works, however, were written for temporary purposes, and have accordingly in great part passed out of mind with the circumstances that occasioned them. The production on which his fame as an author may be said principally to rest, is the Rehearsal Transprosed-a piece written in a controversy with Dr. Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, a splendid impersonation of the High-Church militant. Parker, in a preface to a posthumous work of Archbishop Bram hall's, which appeared in 1672, had displayed side." To give a faint notion of the ridicuan excessive zeal against the Nonconformists, lous light in which Marvell exhibited his adand with the fiercest acrimony and the utter-versary, and for the reader's entertainment, most extravagance, had urged those abomi- we may here insert some few sentences from nable maxims of ecclesiastic tyranny, which the book. He says:were fashionable among the rampant church- "This gentleman, as I have heard, after he men of the age. The preface was anony- had read Don Quixote, and the Bible, besides mous, but the author was not on that ac- such school-books as were necessary for his count unknown-his style, perhaps, exposing age, was sent early to the university, and there him. As a champion for tolerance, Marvell | studied hard, and in a short time became a took the matter up; and as his adversary competent rhetorician, and no ill disputant. presented himself without. a name, he face- He had learned how to erect a thesis, and to tiously dubbed him "Mr. Bayes," the name defend it pro and con, with a serviceable disunder which the Duke of Buckingham had tinction. lately ridiculed Dryden in the famous play of the Rehearsal. The title of Marvell's book was, indeed, suggested by a scene in the same play-that in which Bayes states the manner in which he manufactured his dramatic pieces. The passage is as follows: Bayes.-Why, sir, my first rule is the rule of transversion, or regula duplex,changing verse into prose, or prose into verse, alternative as you please." Smith. Well, but how is this done by rule, sir?" "Bayes. Why thus, sir; nothing so easy when understood. I take a book in my hand, either at home or elsewhere, for that is all one: if there be any wit in it, (as there is no book but has some,) I transverse it; that is, if it be prose, put it into verse, (but that up some time,) and if it be verse, put it into prose." takes "4 'Johnson. Methinks, Mr. Bayes, that putting verse into prose shall be called transprosing." "Bayes. By my troth, sir, 'tis a very good notion, and hereafter it shall be so." Seizing upon this conceit, Marvell called his work the Rehearsal Transprosed; and the ridicule which he heaped on Parker was so unsparing and complete, that it is said even the King and his courtiers could not help laughing at him. The success of the work was signal, immediate, and universal. Bishop Burnet says, in allusion to it, with an evident enjoyment of the humiliation of the victim: After Parker had for some years entertained the nation with several virulent books, he was attacked by the liveliest droll of the age, who wrote in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and entertaining a conduct, that, from the King down to the tradesman, his books were read with pleasure; that not only humbled Parker, but the whole party; for the author of the Rehearsal Transprosed had all the men of wit (or, as the French phrase it, all the laughers) on his And so, thinking himself now ripe and quali- * Rehearsal Transprosed, vol. i. pp. 62-69. The Rehearsal soon elicited several replies; some of them written in awkward imitation of Marvell's style of banter, and all now deservedly forgotten. Parker himself remained for a long while silent, but at length came forth with a Reproof of the Rehearsal Transprosed, wherein he urged the Government to crush Marvell as a " pestilent wit," and stigmatized him as "the servant of Cromwell, and the friend of Milton." It was but natural that Marvell should retort, and he accordingly wrote and published what is called the "second part" of the Rehearsal. He was, moreover, constrained to it by a pithy anonymous epistle, signed "T. G.," left for him at a friend's house, and concluding with these words," If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the eternal God, I will cut thy throat!" A man of Marvell's boldness was not to be intimidated, and he straightway printed this pleasant document in the title-page of his reply. To this publication Parker attempted no rejoinder. Anthony Wood informs us that the said 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 newlyrefined art, though much in mode and fashion ever since, of sporting and jeering buffoonery. It was generally thought, however, by many of those who were otherwise favorers of Parker's cause, that the victory lay on Marvell's side, and it wrought this good effect on Parker, that for ever after it took down his great spirit." Burnet tells us further, that he "withdrew from the town, and ceased writing for some years." No adequate notion of this, the most considerable and curious of Marvell's writings, could be given by any such selection of extracts as could be inserted in these pages. Indel it would be very difficult, even with the most copious quotations, to convey any thing like the impression which the work itself must have originally produced. writer in the Edinburgh Review has said, "The allusions are often so obscure-the wit of one page is so dependent on that of another the humor and pleasantry are so continuous-and the character of the work from its very nature is so excursive, that its merits can be fully appreciated only on a regular perusal." There are other reasons also why any lengthened citations cannot be given. "The work has faults which would, in innumerable cases, disguise its real merits from modern readers, or rather altogether deter them from giving it a reading. It is characterized by much of the coarseness which was so prevalent in that age, and from which Marvell was by no means free; though his spirit was far, from partaking of the malevolence of ordinary satirists.* It is not to be inferred, however, that the merit of the Rehearsal Transprosed consists solely in wit and banter. Amidst all its ludicrous levities, there is, as D'Israeli has remarked, "a vehemence of solemn reproof, and an eloquence of invective, that awes one with the spirit of the modern Junius;" and, as the critic above quoted subjoins, "there are many passages of very powerful reasoning, in advocacy of truths then but ill understood, and of rights which had been shamefully violated." About three years after the publication of the second part of the Rehearsal, Marvell's "chivalrous love of justice" impelled him into another controversy. In 1675, Dr. Croft, Bishop of Hereford, had published a work entitled, "The Naked Truth; or, the true state of the Primitive Church; by a humble Moderator." This work enjoined on all religious parties the unwelcome duties of charity and forbearance; but as it especially exposed the danger and folly of enforcing a minute uniformity, such as was then so generally demanded by the High-Church intol erants, it could not be suffered to pass unchallenged by the leaders and guides of that trenchant faction. It was accordingly attacked, with a considerable display of petulance, by Dr. Francis Turner, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, in a pamphlet entitled, "Animadversions on the Naked Truth." Provoked by the unfairness and asperity of this production, our satirist replied to it in another pamphlet, which he entitled, "Mr. Smirke; or, the Divine in Mode." He here fits the object of his banter with a characte out of Etheredge's "Man in Mode," as he had before fitted Parker with one from Buckingham's "Rehearsal." The merits and defects of this performance are considered to be of much the same order as those of his former work, though it is, perhaps, somewhat less disfigured by vehemence and coarseness. On Dr. Croft's pamphlet he has one remark which beautifully expresses his admiration of the work, and indicates a feeling of which many persons must have been conscious, when perusing other works of eminent superiority, "It is a book of that kind," says he, "that no Christian can persue without wishing himself to have been the author, * Ed. Rev. No. 159. and almost imagining that he is so: the conceptions therein being of so eternal an idea, that every man finds it to be but a copy of the original in his own mind." Two years after the appearance of the "Divine in Mode," namely, in 1677,Mode,"-namely, Marvell published his last controversial piece, elicited, like the rest, by his disinterested love of fairness. It was a defence of the celebrated John Howe, whose conciliatory tract on the "Divine Prescience" had been rudely assailed by three several antagonists. This little volume is not included in any edition of Marvell's works, and is now extremely scarce, it being, presumably, unknown to any of his biographers. We are indebted to the writer in the "Edinburgh" before quoted for drawing attention to its existence. ... I was the fittest time for business; and truly So 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 it,-Pray, why did you give me so much as you have done, unless you resolve to give on as fast as 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. that, if you do not stick to me, you will not have a friend in England. . . . Therefore, look to it, and take notice, that if you do not make me rich enough to undo you, it shall lie at your door. For my part, I wash my hands on it. . . I have converted my natural sons from Popery. . . . 'Twould do one's heart good to hear how prettily George can read already in the Psalter. They are all fine children, God bless 'em, and so like me in their understandings! But, as I was say Marvell's latest work of any extent was entitled, "An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England." This appeared in 1678. It was construed by the Government into a "libel," and a reward was offered for the discovery of the author. Marvell, however, does not appear to have been alarmed by these proceedings, nor to have been any way called to account for the publication. He thus humorously alludes to the subject in a private letter, written some months after the work was published:" There came out about Christmas last, here, a large book concerning the growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government. There have been great rewards offered i private, and considerable in the Gazette, t any one who could inform of the author or printer, but not yet discovered. Three or four printed books since have described, as near as it 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.' During the latter years of his life, Marvelling, I have, to please you, given a pension to published several other political pamphlets, which, though now forgotten, are considered to have been influential at the time in unmasking corruption, and rousing the nation to a consciousness of its political degradaAmong these is a clever parody on the speeches of Charles II., in which the flippancy and easy impudence of those singular specimens of royal eloquence are said to be happily mimicked, and scarcely, if in any degree, caricatured. Let us, for a few sentences, hear the witty Charles, as our caustic author represents him speaking: "I told you at our last meeting, the winter your favorite, my Lord Lauderdale, not so |