Andrew Marvell | Page 4

little
less enthusiasm and a great deal more discretion, to be a model editor,
tells us in his invaluable edition of _The Complete Works in Verse and
Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P._,[8:1] that he had read a number of the
elder Marvell's manuscripts, consisting of sermons and miscellaneous
papers, from which Mr. Grosart proceeds:--
"I gather three things.

"(1) That he was a man of a very brave, fearlessly outspoken character.
Some of his practical applications in his sermons before the Magistrates
are daring in their directness of reproof, and melting in their wistfulness
of entreaty.
"(2) That he was a well-read man. His Sermons are as full of classical
and patristic allusions and pat sayings from the most occult literatures
as even Bishop Andrewes.
"(3) That he was a man of tireless activity. Besides the two offices
named, he became head of one of the Great Hospitals of the Town
(Charter House), and in an address to the Governors placed before them
a prescient and statesmanlike plan for the better management of its
revenues, and for the foundation of a Free Public Library to be
accessible to all."
When at a later day, and in the midst of a fierce controversy, Andrew
Marvell wrote of the clergy as "the reserve of our Christianity," he
doubtless had such men as his father in his mind and memory.
It was at the old Grammar School of Hull, and with his father as his
Orbilius, that Marvell was initiated into the mysteries of the Latin
grammar, and was, as he tells us, put to his
"Montibus, inquit, erunt; et erant submontibus illis; Risit Atlantiades; et
me mihi, perfide, prodis? Me mihi prodis? ait.
"For as I remember this scanning was a liberal art that we learn'd at
Grammar School, and to scan verses as he does the Author's prose
before we did or were obliged to understand them."[8:2]
Irrational methods have often amazingly good results, and the Hull
Grammar School provided its head-master's only son with the
rudiments of learning, thus enabling him to become in after years what
John Milton himself, the author of that terrible Treatise on Education
addressed to Mr. Hartlibb, affirmed Andrew Marvell to be in a written
testimonial, "a scholar, and well-read in the Latin and Greek authors."

Attached to the Grammar School there was "a great garden," renowned
for its wall-fruit and flowers; so by leaving Winestead behind, our
"garden-poet," that was to be, was not deprived of inspiration.
Apart from these meagre facts, we know nothing of Marvell's boyhood
at Hull. His clerical foe, Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford,
writes contemptuously of "an hunger-starved whelp of a country vicar,"
and in another passage, which undoubtedly refers to Marvell, he speaks
of "an unhappy education among Boatswains and Cabin-boys," whose
unsavoury phrases, he goes on to suggest, Marvell picked up in his
childhood. But truth need not be looked for in controversial pages. The
best argument for a married clergy is to be found, for Englishmen at all
events, in the sixty-seven volumes of the Dictionary of National
Biography, where are recorded the services rendered to religion,
philosophy, poetry, justice, and the empire by the "whelps" of many a
country vicar. Parsons' wives may sometimes be trying and hard to
explain, but an England without the sons of her clergy would be shorn
of half her glory.
Marvell's boyhood seems to have been surrounded with the things that
most make for a child's happiness. A sensible, affectionate, humorous,
religious father, occupying a position of authority, and greatly
respected, a mother and three elder sisters to make much of his bright
wit and early adventures, a comfortable yet simple home, and an
atmosphere of piety, learning, and good fellowship. What more is
wanted, or can be desired? The "Boatswains" and "Cabin-boys" of
Bishop Parker's fancy were in the neighbourhood, no doubt, and as
stray companions for a half-holiday must have had their attractions; but
it is unnecessary to attribute Andrew Marvell's style in controversy to
his early acquaintance with a sea-faring population, for he is far more
likely to have picked it up from his great friend and colleague, the
author of Paradise Lost.
Marvell's school education over, he went up to Cambridge, not to his
father's old college, but to the more splendid foundation of Trinity.
About the date of his matriculation there is a doubt. In Wood's
_Athenæ Oxonienses_ there is a note to the effect that Marvell was

admitted "in matriculam Acad. Cant. Coll. Trin." on the 14th of
December 1633, when the boy was but twelve years old. Dr. Lort, a
famous master of Trinity in his day, writing in November 1765 to
Captain Edward Thompson, of whom more later on, told the captain
that until 1635 there was no register of admissions of ordinary