A FEW beautiful verses, an acquaintanceship with the immortal Milton, and a traditional reputation for great political honesty in a most corrupt age, have given Marvell a permanent and honourable place among the worthies of his country. His public life was never illustrated by any great or very conspicuous deed, and of his private life very little, with any certainty, is known. Yet is his name familiar to every Englishman that loves his country and his country's literature, and that reveres the associations of genius.

Andrew Marvell was born in the city of Hull, on the 15th of November, 1620; towards the close of the reign of James I., when religious and political differences already announced the convulsion which took place under Charles I., twenty years later. His father was Andrew Marvell, a native of Cambridge, and M. A. of Emanuel College, then a recent foundation, and strongly imbued with Puritanism. Having taken orders, this Andrew,

the father, was elected Master of the Grammar School at Hull; which place he occupied when his son was born. Some four years after the birth of young Andrew, he became lecturer of Trinity Church, Hull. He was reputed both a learned and pious man. His puritanism did not sour his temper or extinguish his wit or humour. Echard the historian calls him "the facetious Calvinistical minister of Hull." The son inherited this facetious humour. Fuller, the wittiest of divines, thus records some of the virtues of the elder Marvell :-" He was a most excellent preacher, who, like a good husband, never broached what he had new-brewed, but preached what he had studied some competent time before: insomuch that he was wont to say that he would cross the common proverb, which called Saturday the working-day, and Monday the holiday of preachers." * Like his son, he

was a man of courage and fortitude, and was not to be driven from his duty by any sense of danger. In the year 1637, when the plague was desolating Hull, and when all who could fled into the country, the worthy lecturer of Trinity church remained in the town, and scrupulously and zealously performed all his clerical duties, as if there had been no pest, or peril of any kind.

This high-minded father probably educated his promising boy himself, for no school is named as having been honoured by the boy that was destined to be the companion and friend of the author of 'Paradise Lost,' and the advocate of honesty and patriotism at the period when they were all but lost. Whoever instructed young Andrew, the boy must have been well taught. At the early age of fifteen, he was admitted of Trinity College, Cambridge, with an exhibition belonging to Hull, his native place. Here his progress on learning is said to have been very rapid. But he had not been long up at Cambridge, ere he was dazzled and ensnared by some Jesuits, who, in disguise, haunted the University, and applied themselves more especially to the conversion or perversion of inexperienced, ingenuous youths. As An

* Worthies.

drew Marvell's best biographer remarks,* these Romanists pretended a zeal for civil liberty, a scorn of the assumed divine right of kings, and a respect for the doctrine of the lawfulness of popular resistance to the kingly power whenever that power was abused. They had other esoteric doctrines of a sort highly captivating to generous and enthusiastic dispositions; and their learning, their general refinement of taste and of personal manners, rendered them the most prevailing of missionaries among the educated classes, the most formidable of propagandists. Like Chillingworth, and others of riper years, the youthful Andrew Marvell was induced by these disciples of Loyola to quit his college and follow them up to London. But the boy was not long hoodwinked. His excellent father pursued him to the metropolis and restored him to sanity and his studies.Ӡ On the 13th of December, 1638, as appears from his own hand-writing, Master Andrew was again received at Trinity College. It appears that he steadily pursued his studies, until the autumn or winter of 1640, when the sudden and most unexpected loss of his father again withdrew him from Cambridge. The narrations-for there are more than one, and they slightly differ-of the circumstances attending the catastrophe of "the facetious Calvinistical minister of Hull," embalm his memory, and give a beauty to his sudden death. The most received account runs thus-" On that shore of the Humber opposite Kingston, lived a lady whose virtue and good sense recommended her to the esteem of Mr. Marvell, as his piety and understanding caused her to take particular notice of him. From this mutual approbation arose an intimate acquaintance, which was soon improved into a strict friendship. This lady had an only daughter, whose duty, devotion, and

*Hartley Coleridge." Biographia Borealis, or Lives of Distinguished Northerns."-Leeds and London, 1833. + Hartley Coleridge.

The old, full name of Hull, where the elder Marvell resided, was Kingston-upon-Hull." For brevity it was frequently called Kingston, in those days.

exemplary behaviour had endeared her to all who knew her, and rendered her the darling of her mother, whose fondness for her arose to such a height that she could scarcely bear her temporary absence. Mr. Marvell, desiring to perpetuate the friendship between the families, requested the lady to allow her daughter to come over to Kingston, to stand godmother to a child of his; to which, out of her great regard for him, she consented, though depriving herself of her daughter's company for a longer space of time than she would have agreed to on any other consideration. The young lady went over to Kingston accordingly, and the ceremony was performed. The next day, when she came down to the river side, in order to return home, it being extremely rough, so as to render the passage dangerous, the watermen earnestly dissuaded her from any attempt to cross the river that day. But she, who had never wilfully given her mother a moment's uneasiness, and knowing how miserable she would be, insisted on going, notwithstanding all that could be urged by the watermen, or by Mr. Marvell, who earnestly entreated her to return to his house, and wait for better weather. Finding her resolutely bent to venture her life rather than to disappoint a fond parent, he told her, as she had brought herself into that perilous situation on his account, he thought himself obliged, both in honour and conscience, to share the danger with her; and having, with difficulty, persuaded some watermen to attempt the passage, they got into the boat. Just as they put off, Mr. Marvell threw his gold-headed cane on shore, to some of his friends, who attended at the water-side, telling them, that as he could not suffer the young lady to go alone, and as he apprehended the consequence might be fatal, if he perished he desired them to give that cane to his son, and bid him remember his father. Thus armed with innocence, and his fair charge with filial duty, they set forward to meet their inevitable fate. The boat was upset, and they were both lost."

According to another version there was no dissuasion of watermen, and no rough weather to cause it, or create