Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/279

 MAESY

MARTIN

which he sustained while he was a child, brought on total blindness in youth, and Marston sought to express his thoughts in poetry. He became a great friend of Rossetti and Swinburne, and shared their scepticism. His three volumes of poems (Songtide, 1871 ; All in All, 1875 ; and Wind Voices, 1883) often refer to death, and are always sceptical about a future life. He directed that he should be buried, without religious ceremony, in uncon- secrated ground. D. Feb. 13, 1887.

MARSY, Frangois Marie de, French writer. B. 1714. Marsy was educated by the Jesuits and joined their Society, but he abandoned the Catholic faith and devoted himself to letters. In 1755 he spent several months in the Bastille for writing an Analyse des ceuvres de Bayle (4 vols.), in which he gave prominence to the most Eationalistic passages of Bayle s Dic tionary. He published Latin poems of great elegance, and several literary afed historical works. D. Dec. 16, 1763.

MARTEN, Henry, B.A., Puritan leader. B. 1602, son of Sir H. Marten. Ed. Oxford (University College). He entered Parliament in 1640, and he was soon recognized as one of the leaders of the popular party. During the Civil War he commanded a troop of horse, and in 1649 he was elected to the Council of State and awarded an annuity of 1,000. He was one of the judges of Charles I, and was not less opposed to Cromwell s seizure of power. At the return of Charles II he was sen tenced to prison for life. Wood tells us (Athen-Oxon, iii, 1241, note) that he &quot; never entered upon religion but with design to laugh both at it and morality &quot; ; but other writers relieve his character of the calumnies which clergy and Royal ists heaped on it. He insisted on tolera tion and saved the lives of many Royalists, though he was assuredly a rare type of &quot; Puritan.&quot; D. Sep. 9, 1680.

MARTIN, Alfred Wilhelm, A.M.,

485

American writer. B. Jan. 21, 1862 (Cologne). Ed. McGill and Harvard Uni versities. Mr. Martin, who was early taken to America, was ordained Unitarian minister in 1888. From that year until 1892 he was pastor at Chelsea (Mass.), and was then for fifteen years pastor of an independent church, having left the Uni tarians. Since 1907 he has been assistant leader of the Ethical Culture Society of New York, University Extension Lecturer, and lecturer for the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. He has written Great Religious Teachers of the East (1911), The Dawn of Christianity (1914), and other works. In a chapter on &quot;The Higher Criticism &quot; in A Generation of Religious Progress (1916) he remarks that astro nomers have &quot; banished from the firma ment the divinities with which a super stitious reverence had endowed the planets and stars &quot; (p. 43).

MARTIN, Professor Bon Louis Henri,

French historian. B. Feb. 20, 1810. Martin studied law, but devoted himself to letters and published a number of historical novels. He early conceived his monu mental history of France, which appeared in fifteen volumes (1837-54). The Academy of Inscriptions awarded him a prize of nine thousand francs, in 1851 the French Academy gave him a further prize (its first award), and in 1869 the Institut granted him twenty thousand francs. After the Revolution of 1848, with which he thoroughly sympathized, being both Rationalist and Republican, he was ap pointed professor of modern history at the Sorbonne, but the renewed reaction caused him to lose his chair. He was elected to the National Assembly in 1871, the Senate in 1876, and the Academy in 1878. Martin was strongly anti-clerical to the end, and occasionally contributed to Rationalist periodicals. D. Dec. 13, 1883.

MARTIN, Emma, writer and lecturer. B. 1812. Mrs. Martin was a Bristol lady whom Southwell converted from Baptistism 486