And does in the pomegranates close Thus sung they in the English boat, Among the satirical poems attributed to him, there are some so flat and dull and so offensively coarse, that we cannot for our lives believe that they were ever written by the friend and bosom companion of Milton. Marvell, as we have said, put forth a good many of his productions anonymously. On the title-page of other pieces he placed some fictitious fanciful name, which other writers of the day, according to a prevalent practice, may have assumed after him for their frouzy trash. He has been very unfortunate in his editor, Captain Edward Thompson, who collected and published his works in 1776, in three vols. 4to. This captain, who wrote the bombastical inscription for the portrait, to which we have alluded, had much zeal and reverence for his author, but no taste, no critical discrimination, nor any other qualification for the task he undertook. He challenges for Marvell the authorship of two very sweet poems which were written long after Marvell's time, the one by Addi son, and the other by Mallet.* This is decisive as to his authority in such matters. From his utter want of taste and literary information he was not competent to select and decide upon the anonymous productions of his author; and he certainly swelled his volumes by printing much which Marvell had not written. Bishop Burnet, who vilifies Marvell by calling him the "liveliest droll of the age," assures us, that "his books were the delight of all classes, from the king to the tradesman "—a sentence which, as Mr. Hartley Coleridge has remarked, accidentally points out the limits of reading in those days. As a senator honest Andrew's character does indeed appear to have been unimpeachable. He was above corruption when nearly all were corrupt: his untiring attention to the interests of his constituents, and to parliamentary business in general, might make him a model for parliamentary men, now that gross and direct corruption at least has ceased. * Addison's Ode 'The spacious firmament on high,' &c.; and Mallet's ballad of William and Margaret.' THE materials for the personal life of Barrow may be found in the Biographia Britannica,' with full references to authorities, particularly to Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors,' also in Martin's Biographia Philosophica,' the Biographie Universelle,' and the life by Abraham Hill, prefixed to Tillotson's edition of Barrow's works. In this part we have followed the firstmentioned work in the facts and anecdotes cited. Isaac Barrow was the eldest son of Thomas Barrow, linendraper to Charles I., and descended of a respectable Suffolk family. His father's brother, named also Isaac Barrow, was fellow of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and ejected from thence by the Presbyterians about 1644. After the Restoration he was successively bishop of Man and St. Asaph, and died in 1680. Isaac Barrow, the nephew, is supposed to have been born in October, 1630, but this has been disputed on the strength of an expression of his own, reported by a friend, im |