a preface to a posthumous work of Archbishop |.. Bramhall's, which appeared in 1672, had displayed an excessive zeal against the Nonconformists, and with the fiercest acrimony and the uttermost extravagance, had urged those abominable maxims of ecclesiastic tyranny, which were fashionable among the rampant churchmen of the age. The preface was anonymous, but the author was not on that account unknown| his style, perhaps, exposing him. As a champion for tolerance, Marvell took the matter up; and as his adversary presented himself without a name, he facetiously dubbed him "Mr. Bayes," the name under which the Duke of Buckingham had lately ridiculed Dryden in the famous play of the Rehearsal. The title of Marvell's book was, indeed, suggested by a scene in the same play-that in which Bayes states the manner in which he manufactured his dramatic pieces. The passage is as follows:—

“Bayes.—Why, sir, my first rule is the rule of transversion, or regula duplex,-changing verse into prose, or prose into verse, alternativé as you please."

Smith.-Well, but how is this done by rule, sir?" "Bayes.-Why thus, sir; nothing so easy when understood. I take a book in my hand, either at home or elsewhere, for that is all one: if there be any wit in it (as there is no book but has some), transverse it; that is, if it be prose, put it into verse, (but that takes up some time,) and if it be verse, put it into prose."

Johnson.—Methinks, Mr. Bayes, that putting verse into prose shall be called transprosing." "Bayes. By my troth, sir, 'tis a very good notion, and hereafter it shall be so."

Seizing upon this conceit, Marvell called his work the Rehearsal Transprosed; and the ridicule which he heaped on Parker was so unsparing and complete, that it is said even the king and his courtiers could not help laughing at him. The success of the work was signal, immediate, and universal. Bishop Burnet says, in allusion to it, with an evident enjoyment of the humiliation of the victim, "After Parker had for some years entertained the nation with several virulent books, he was attacked by the liveliest droll of the age, who wrote in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and entertaining a conduct, that, from the king down to the tradesman, his books were read with pleasure; that not only humbled Parker, but the whole party; for the author of the Rehearsal Transprosed had all the men of wit (or, as the French phrase it, all the laughers) on his side." To give a faint notion of the ridiculous light in which Marvell exhibited his adversary, and for the reader's entertainment, we may here insert some few sentences from the book. He says:

"This gentleman, as I have heard, after he had read Don Quixote, and the Bible, besides such schoolbooks as were necessary for his age, was sent early to the university; and there studied hard, and in a short time became a competent rhetorician, and no ill disputant. He had learned how to erect a thesis, and to defend it pro and con, with a serviceable distinction

|

And so, thinking himself now ripe and qualified for the greatest undertakings and highest fortune, he therefore exchanged the narrowness of the university for the town; but coming out of the confinement of the square cap and the quadrangle into the open air, the world began to turn round with him, which he imagined, though it were his own giddiness, to be nothing less than the quadrature of the circle. This accident concurring so happily to increase the good opinion which he naturally had of himself, he thenceforward applied to gain a like reputation with others. He followed the town life, haunted the best companies; and to polish himself from any pedantic roughness, he read and saw the plays with much care, and more proficiency than most of the auditory. But all this while he forgot not the main chance; but hearing of a vacancy with a nobleman, he clapped in, and easily obtained to be his chaplain: from that day you may take the date of his preferments and his ruin; for having soon wrought himself dexterously into his patron's favour, by short graces and sermous, and a mimical way of drolling upon the Puritans, which he knew would take both at chapel and at table, he gained a great authority likewise among all the domestics. They all listened to him as an oracle; and they allowed him, by common consent, to have not only all the divinity, but more wit, too, than all the rest of the family put together. Nothing now must serve him, but he must be a madman in print, and write a book of Ecclesiastical Polity. There he distributes all the territories of conscience into the Prince's province, and makes the Hierarchy to be but Bishops of the air; and talks at such an extravagant rate in things of higher concernment, that the reader will avow that in the whole discourse he had not one lucid interval.”

The Rehearsal soon elicited several replies; some of them written in awkward imitation of Marvell's style of banter, and all now deservedly forgotten. Parker himself remained for a long while silent, but at length came forth with a Reproof of the Rehearsal Transprosed, wherein he urged the Government to crush Marvell as a "pestilent wit," and stigmatized him as "the servant of Cromwell, and the friend of Milton." It was but natural that Marvell should retort, and he accordingly wrote and published what is called the "second part" of the Rehearsal. He was, moreover, constrained to it by a pithy anonymous epistle, signed "T. G.," left for him at a friend's house, and concluding with these words,-"If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the eternal God, I will cut thy throat!" A man of Marvell's boldness was not to be intimidated, and he straightway printed this pleasant document in the title-page of his reply. To this publication Parker attempted no rejoinder. Anthony Wood informs us that the said Parker "judged it more prudent to lay down the cudgels, than to enter the lists again with an untowardly combatant, so hugely well versed and experienced in the then newly-refined art, though much in mode and

(1) Rehearsal Transprosed, vol. i. pp. 62-69.

peaceably in his bed, on the 16th August, 1678-the year in which his obnoxious work on the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government was published; but as he was in vigorous health immediately before, strong suspicions have been entertained that he was poisoned. We know of no evidence in support of these suspicions, so that, probably, there were no grounds for them, as we are all aware that strong and vigorous men have not unseldom died suddenly.

"I told you at our last meeting, the winter was the fittest time for business; and truly I thought so, till my lord-treasurer assured me the spring was the best season for salads and subsidies . . . Some of you, perhaps, will think it dangerous to make me too rich; but I do not fear it, for I promise you faithfully, whatever you give me, I will always want; and although in other things my word may be thought a slender authority, yet in that, you may rely on, I will never break it. . . . I can bear my straits with Aubrey describes Marvell as being in person "of a patience; but my lord-treasurer does protest to me, middling stature, pretty strong-set, roundish-faced, that the revenue, as it now stands, will not serve him cherry-checked, hazel-eyed, brown-haired,”—the very and me too. One of us must pinch for it, if you do figure of a jolly Yorkshireman. He adds, that in connot help me. . . . What shall we do for ships then? versation he was modest and of very few words; and I hint this to you, it being your business, not mine. was wont to say, "he would not drink high or freely I know by experience I can live without ships. I with any one with whom he could not trust his life." lived ten years abroad without, and never had my Who would? Of his collected works, we believe health better in my life; but how you will be without, there is no complete edition. Cooke's edition, pubI will leave to yourselves to judge, and therefore hint lished in 1726, contains only his poems and some of this only by-the-by. I don't insist upon it. There his private letters. That of Captain Thompson, in is another thing I must press more earnestly, and three volumes quarto, published in 1776, is not conthat is this-it seems a good part of my revenue sidered quite complete, and is very indifferently will expire in two or three years, except you will be edited. There may be other editions, but if so, they pleased to continue it. I have to say for it,-Pray, are unknown to the present writer. The "Life of why did you give me so much as you have done, Andrew Marvell, with Extracts from his Prose and unless you resolve to give on as fast as I call for it? Poetical Works, by John Dove," (1832,) is, we believe, The nation hates you already for giving so much, and the fullest and most recent account we have of this I will hate you too, if you do not give me more. So distinguished patriot; and, perhaps, the passages that, if you do not stick to me, you will not have a selected will, to ordinary readers, prove the most friend in England. . . . Therefore, look to it, and interesting and agreeable portions of his writings. take notice, that if you do not make me rich enough to undo you, it shall lie at your door. For my part, I wash my hands on it. . . . I have converted my natural sons from Popery. ... Twould do one's heart good to hear how prettily George can read already in the Psalter. They are all fine children, God bless 'em, and so like me in their understandings! But, as I was saying, I have, to please you, given a pension to your favourite, my Lord Lauderdale, not so much that I thought he wanted it, as that you would take it kindly. . . . I know not, for my part, what factious men would have, but this I am sure of, my predecessors never did anything like this, to gain the good-will of their subjects. So much for your religion; and now for your property. . . . I must now acquaint you, that by my lord-treasurer's advice, I have made a considerable retrenchment upon my expenses in candles and charcoal, and do not intend to stop, but will, with your help, look into the late | embezzlements of my dripping-pans and kitchen-stuff, of which, by the way, upon my conscience, neither my lord-treasurer nor my Lord Lauderdale are guilty." All this is very pleasant and facetious. But it seems Marvell's intrepid patriotism and witty writings rendered him extremely odious to the court, and especially to James, Duke of York, and heir presumptive to the crown. As already mentioned, he was frequently compelled to conceal himself out of dread of assassination. He died, however, to all appearance,

...

"The characteristic attribute of Marvell's genius," says the Edinburgh critic already quoted, “was unquestionably wit, in all the attributes of which-brief sententious sarcasm, fierce invective, light raillery, grave irony, and broad laughing humour-he seems to have been by nature almost equally fitted to excel. To say that he has equally excelled in all would be untrue, though striking examples of cach might easily be selected from his writings. The activity with which his mind suggests ludicrous images and analogies is astonishing. He often absolutely startles us by the remoteness and oddity of the sources from which they are supplied, and by the unexpected ingenuity and felicity of his repartees. His forte, however, appears to be a grave ironical banter, which he often pursues at such a length, that there seems no limit to his fertility of invention. In his endless accumulation of ludicrous images and allusions, the untiring exhaustive ridicule with which he will play upon the same topics, he is unique; yet this peculiarity not seldom leads him to drain the generous wine even to the dregs, to spoil a series of felicitous railleries by some far-fetched conceit or unpardonable extravagance."

But whoever supposes Marvell to have been nothing but a wit, simply on account of the predominance of that quality, will do him great injustice. As the same writer remarks:-"It is the common lot of such men, in whom some one faculty is found on a great scale, to fail of part of the admiration due to other endowments; possessed in more moderate degree,

indeed, but still in a degree far from ordinary. We corruption. By exposing and rendering contemptible are subject to the same illusion in gazing on mountain the False, he vindicated and did honour to the True. scenery. Fixing our eye on some solitary peak, which Thus, he did not live his life in vain; nor did the towers far above the rest, the groups of surrounding influence of his activity or of his example, cease when hills look positively diminutive, though they may, in his own existence terminated. Though dead, and fact, be all of great magnitude." Though wit was imperfectly remembered, he nevertheless speaketh his most predominating endowment, the rest of through that transmitted and ever-present power Marvell's talents were all of a high order of develop-which belongs inseparably to goodness. The uttered ment. His judgment was remarkably clear and sound, his logic ingenious and adroit, his sagacity in practical affairs admirable, his talents for business apparently of the first order, and his industry in whatever he undertook steady and indefatigable. He had all the qualities which would have enabled him to succeed in almost any department of exertion; while in regard to candour, strict integrity, and all the solid merits which render a man honourable and worthy, he was not surpassed by any man of his generation.

Marvell has some, though not very considerable reputation as a poet. His poems are, for the most part, quaint, fantastic, uncouth in rhythm; but there are a few pieces which display both beauty of thought, and no indifferent elegance of expression. The "Emigrants in Bermudas," a "Dialogue between Body and Soul," "The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Fawn," and a "Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure," though all more or less unequal, contain nevertheless many sweet and pleasant lines. Besides these, there are some satirical pieces, which though largely disfigured by the characteristic defects of the age, are upon the whole highly felicitous and amusing. A few lines from a whimsical Satire on Holland may not be unacceptable, by way of enlivening the growing dulness of the present paper :—

"Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead;
Or what by th' ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwreck'd cockle and the muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour fish'd the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergrease,
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;

For as with pigmies, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reignз,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun commands:
But who could first discern the rising lands."

Though Marvell's works are now but little read, and are not unlikely to be by-and-by forgotten, there can be no question that they considerably modified the character of his own generation. With his keen weapons of satire, he did manful service in the cause of virtue, by assailing, and to sonic extent subduing various principalities and powers of despicability and

word may cease to be repeated, but the spirit of truth, whose manifestation and embodiment it was, departs not out of the world, but like an invisible electric current, circulates with an enduring efficacy throughout the whole development of humanity.

Personally, Marvell is memorable mainly for his high integrity and moral worth. It is this which attracts, and will continue to attract the admiration of posterity, more than anything which he actually accomplished by means of his particular endowments. His steadfast and inflexible abidance by an individual uprightness and sincerity, when all the rewards and enticements of life thronged round him like syren shapes to beguile him into apostasy, is a grand and striking spectacle, the rarity and the beauty whereof will never fail to command the earnest homage of mankind. Admiring men have called him the "British Aristides," and certainly no other man connected with our history can be mentioned who has more honestly deserved the honour thus attributed.

1

NELLY NOWLAN'S EXPERIENCE IN
SERVICE AND OTHER MATTERS.

COMMUNICATED BY MRS. S. C. HALL.

"Ir's asy talking with you, so it is, Aunt Peggy; it's asy talking with you that had never the experience but of one sweetheart in ye'r born days-and he a bocher."

"He was no bocher, Nelly Nowlan," interrupted "Aunt Peggy;" "He was no bocher-he had the use of his limbs as well as yerself has the use of ye'r tongue; and that's limber and active enough for anything, I'm thinking."

Well, it was blind he was, any way," said the cancy girl, laughing.

"Only of one eye, Nelly."

66

And that was the eye always next you when you war courting-wasn't it?"

"I never courted, Miss Nelly Nowlan-I defy any man to say that I ever showed him favour or affection from one gale day to another. I defy any man to say whether I had black or blue eyes, for I never looked off my knitting or my straw plait, when a boy was in the place, but kept myself to myself, clane, dacent, and respectable-to be what I am."

And Aunt Peggy drew herself up, and looked even more demure than usual.

Larry Lacey's, because you said against it; and I found myself covering the buckle in my stockingvamps, as if there never was a pump in the world!Oh, Aunt Peggy!" added the young girl earnestly“Aunt Peggy, a-coushla, it isn't me that's in it at all, or I could not have said that hard word to the only friend I have in the world!"

"The only friend?" repeated her aunt. "Why don't you marry Tom, at once, and have two friends: you'll never get such another chance, a clean likely boy-steady."

"Very steady," said Nell, relapsing.
"He ought to be steady at thirty."

"He'll never see the sunny side of thirty-five."
"With a farm of ten acres."

"Half bog, the other half mountain," interrupted the incorrigible Ellen.

"Two cows, a stone house, with fittings and furnishings as good as the priest's-the cleanest and finest pigs in the country, and

"A widow-man, with three soft children!" concluded Nelly.

"And what are you, to object to a widow-man, I wonder!" said her Aunt.

"I'm your own darling Nell!" was the reply, and then drawing herself up with an enormous increase of self-esteem, she added—“ And if ye come to that, I'm "To be what you are,—an ould maid that nobody good enough wife for any boy in the parish-though cares for," said her niece, spitefully enough. I don't think I'm very like the mother of three roar"That no one cares for!" repeated poor Peggy, bend-ing, red-headed bog-trotters, the eldest almost as big ing as closely over the grey worsted stocking she was knitting, as if she had dropped a stitch-" that nobody cares for, Nelly?-well-may be so!" There was a deep pathetic tone in her voice, and in another minute something very like a tear was glittering on the needles she plied with such unceasing industry.

as myself."

"Nelly, ma vourneen gra', ye'll sup sorrow before ye'll be wise; ye'r mother was wilful, and your father was wild, and never kept in his own country."

Well, Aunt," interrupted the girl, "the truth is, I'll never settle 'till I've seen something of the world; and before I marry Tom, if ever I do marry him, I'll just take a summer or two out of myself in England. I'll go as servant, lady's-maid, or house-maid, in some great family, where they give great wages, and come home like a queen, with money and means. I'll have more knowledge then, you know, to-to manage the

Nelly, rosy and pouting, sat opposite her aunt; the half-twisted thread had fallen from her fingers, and her foot rested upon the step of her idle wheel: the wilful and the affectionate feelings of her bright, yet capricious nature, had but a short struggle; for before the quarter round of stiches were off the needle, she had flung her arms round her aunt's neck, and en--three children!" she added with a merry laugh. treated forgiveness.

"And it's I that should not say the like of that to you, my own darling Aunty," exclaimed the repentant girl, "who took me from my dead mother's bosom, and slaved to rear me in decency and honesty, when my father never did a hand's turn to save me from starving. Oh, deelish-a-vouneen, forgive me!-I don't know what's come over me, that I'm grown so fractious and vicious in myself; I'm sure I do my best against it; I've fasted harder than ever this Lent, and sure enough it was asier fasting, than feasting on the patatees, that have water enough in their hearts to bile themselves! I've been to the Priest's knee, when as his Reverence knows the thrifle of sin wasn't worth listening to-I double my prayers night and morning, and bite my tongue twenty times a-day, striving to keep it quiet. I lent my pumps to my cousin Anty, just that I mightn't be able to go to the hop at

Aunt Peggy stared, and Aunt Peggy wept; she had, in her humble way, high expectations of Ellen, like most Irish women.

She was a bad reasoner, but a fervent declaimer. She knew that Nelly had a brave bright spirit, which nothing could intimidate, and yet she pictured England in the way the poor Irish are taught to regard it, and the more dangerous she made it seem, the firmer became her niece's determination to seek her fortune, like some of the heroes she had read of in her storybooks. She had a cousin married to a tradesman in Newcastle, and as many ladies in the neighbourhood had wooed Nelly to go to service, knowing how well she spun, and knit, and stitched, and made butter, and that every one invited her to assist at great bakings, and brewings, and " 'big washes," Ellen Nowlan entertained no doubt of finding it easy to obtain service in England, and by this means free herself