Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/334

Marvell and the utmost forces they could by any means rally up, to blacken each other's cause and to set each other out in the most ugly dress : their pieces in the meanwhile, wherein was represented a perfect trial of each other's skill and parts in a jerking, flirting way of writing, entertaining the reader with a great variety of sport and mirth, in seeing two such right cocks of the game so keenly engaging with sharp and dangerous weapons,' The buffoonery which had been so effective a weapon against solid divines like Baxter and Owen proved a weak defence against Marvell's wit, and all the laughers were on Marvell's side.

'From the king down to the tradesman,' adds Burnet, ' his books were read with great pleasure' (, Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, iv. 231 : Burnet, Own Time, ed. 1836, p. 478). Marvell had handled the difference between the royal policy and the clerical policy with such discretion that Charles himself intervened on his behalf when the licenser wished to suppress the second edition of the first part ot the 'Rehearsal Transprosed.' 'Look you, Mr. l'Estrange,' said Lord Anglesey, 'I have spoken to his Majesty about it, and the King says he will not have it suppressed, for Parker has done him wrong, and this man has done him right ' (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 618; cf. art, I/Estrange, Sir Roger), to some extent Marvell's object in writing was attained. Parker was effectually humbled. He made no attempt to answer the second part of the 'Rehearsal Transprosed,' and confined himself to posthumously libelling Marvell (Btshop Parker, History of his own Time, translated by Newlin, p. 332). Burnet goes so far as to say that Parker's party was humbled too.

Encouraged by his success, Marvell made two more essays in ecclesiastical controversy. In 1676 he defended Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, against some 'animadversions' on his pamphlet, 'The Naked Truth,' which had been published by Dr. Francis Turner, master of St. John's College, Cambridge. Turner was ridiculed much as Parker had been, and compared to Mr. Smirke the chaplain in Sir George Etheregea play ' The Man of Mode.' Croft wrote to thank Marvell for the 'humane civility and Christian chanty' with which he had taken up his cause against the 'snarling curs' who had assailed him (, ii. 488-91). In April 1678 Marvell took part in a controversy about predestination between John Howe and Thomas Danson [q.v.], but he was hardly qualified to treat a purely theological question. Much more effective than either of these two pamphlets was the 'Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, which was published towards the end of 1677. It dealt with the history of the reign from the long prorogation of November 1675, and undertook to prove that there had been for many years government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established protestant religion into downright popery,' Written in a plainer and more forcible style than Marvell's earlier pamphlets, and with all the boldness and directness of his satires, it produced an immediate sensation. The government offered a reward of 100/. in the 4 Gazette ' for the discovery of the author, and greater sums were privately promised. Marvell was suspected, but makes a jest of the suspicions in one of his letters. ' Three or four printed books,' he writes, '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 would not have escaped being questioned in Parliament or some other place' (ib. ii. 631). Legal punishment, however, was not the only danger an obnoxious writer had to fear. Marvell's life had been threatened during his controversy with Parker. In a private letter (quoted by Cooke) he mentions ' the insuperable hatred of his foes to him, and their designs of murdering him,' and uses these words : ' Praeterea magis occidere metuo quam occidi ; non quod vitam tanti a?stimem,sed ne imparatus moriar' (Marvell, Works, ed. Cooke T 1772, i. 13). Hence his sudden death, on 18 Aug. 1678, at once gave rise to the rumour that he was poisoned. A contemporary poem on his death concludes with the lines : — Whether Fate or Art untwined his thread Remains in doubt. Fame's tasting register Shall leave his name enrolled as great as theirs Who in Philippi for their country tell.
 * a design carried on to change the lawful

('On his Excellent Friend, Mr. Andrew Marvell,' attributed to Shefheld, duke of Buckingham, Poems on Affairs of State, i. 123, ed. 1702). The suspicion, however, was groundless. Dr. Richard Morton (1635?-1698) [q. v.], in his ' Pyretologia,' published in 1602, describes Marvell as dying of a tertian fever, ' through the ignorance of an old conceited doctor.' An ounce of Peruvian bark would have saved him, but instead of that he was given an opiate, and copiously bled (Grosart, vol. ii. p. xliv). He was buried in London in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, ' under the pews in the south side' (Aubrey, Letters from the Bodleian, ii.