ANDREW MARVELL. IT is the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of illustrious persons. ANDREW MARVELL has therefore become a celebrated name, and is now known as one of the most incorruptible Patriots that England, or any other country, ever produced. A character so exalted and pure, astonished a corrupt age, and overawed even majesty itself. His morals and his manners were Roman:-he lived on the turnip of Curtius, and would have bled at Philippi. As a Poet, too, Marvell possessed no vulgar genius; and as a Satirist, he was one of the keenest in the luxuriant age of Charles II. It is to be regretted that our notices of him are less ample and continuous than his personal merit deserves, or his exalted walk of public action would induce us to expect. His name, indeed, is generally known-a few anecdotes of his honesty are daily repeated--and a single copy of verses, no adequate sample of his poetic powers, keeping its station in the vestibule of Paradise Lost, records him as the friend and admirer of Milton. But the detail of his daily life-the simple background of the stirring picture-the inestimable transactions which should make up the unity and totality of his history-might indeed be easily supplied by imagination, but cannot be derived from document, or tradition. The mind of Marvell, like the street and the wall of Jerusalem, was built in troublous times. From his youth upwards, he was inured to peril and privation; and, though he does not appear to have been personally engaged in civil conflict, he could not escape the tyrannous trials of those 'evil days'-reproach and wicked solicitation, and sundering of dearest ties, by violent death, and exile, and crueller alienation. Yet if his heart was often wounded, it was never hardened. He ever retained and cherished his love of the gentle, the beautiful, and the imaginative. His virtue, firm and uncompromising, was never savage; nor did his full reliance on his own principles make him blind to perceive, or dumb to acknowledge, whatever goodness appeared in men of other faith and allegiance. He was a wit and poet, and as these qualities made him no worse a patriot or christian, so they probably made him a more agreeable man. MARVELL was born at Kingston-upon-Hull, on the 15th of November, 1620. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Cambridge, and admitted of Trinity College. His academical progress was proportionate to the growing powers and native energy of his mind. But error, which youth can never wholly escape, peculiarly besets the nonage of an active intellect. And none are more obnoxious to the attacks of the wicked spirits "that lie like truth," than the young and ardent, to whom truth is a passion, and a deity. The JESUITS, the subtlest spawn of the subtle serpent, who were then compassing sea and land to make one proselyte, and like all proselytists, religious and political, directed their machinations especially against boys and women, had stolen into the Universities. Young Marvell was a tempting prize; and their plausible equivocations so far prevailed over his inexperience, as to seduce him to London. It was one of the devices of Jesuitism, which held all means indifferent or laudable, whereby the power of their church was to be sustained and enlarged, to pretend a zeal for civil liberty, and to speak lightly of the jus divinum. Probably by this means they ingratiated themselves with Marvell, who in his innocence might not perceive, that not popular freedom, but the despotism of an order, was to be substantiated for regal prerogative. Moreover, the Catholics, and the Catholic priesthood in particular, were at that time the objects of mob fury, and legal pillage, sometimes timidly protected, and sometimes nearly given up by the Court. It is not the least evil of intolerance, that it oftentimes sets the Martyr's crown on the brow of the bigot and the traitor, without recollecting, that it is the saint which makes the martyr, not the martyr the saint. But the Jesuits' craft could not sophisticate the filial duty of Marvell, though their principles on this head were as lax as those of the Pharisees. His excellent father pursued him to the Metropolis, and quickly restored him to the University. On the 13th of April, 1638, as appears in his own hand writing, young Marvell was again received at Trinity College. From this time till the year 1640, it seems that he pursued his studies with unremitting application, when his father's lamentable death gave a new turn to his mind. The Rev. ANDREW MARVELL, A. M., father of the patriot, was a native of Cambridge, and in that University he completed his studies. He was a student of Emanuel College, where he took the degree of Master of Arts. Afterwards he was elected master of the Grammar School at Hull, and in 1624, made Lecturer of Trinity Church. In the year 1640, a melancholy accident put an end to this good man's life; the particulars of which are thus related :-" On that shore |