No More Learning

XXXV

awes one with the spirit of a modem Junius;"*
but there are many passages of very powerful
reasoning, in advocacy of truths then but ill under-
stood, and of rights which had been shamefully
violated.

Perhaps the most interesting passages of the
work are those in which Marvell refers to his
great friend, John Milton. Parker, with his cus-
tomary malignity, had insinuated that the poet,
who was then living in cautious retirement, might
have been the author of the Rehearsal — appa-
rently with the view of turning the indignation
of government upon the illustrious recluse. Mar-
vell had always entertained towards Milton a
feeling of reverence akin to idolatry, and this
stroke of deliberate malice was more than he
could bear. He generously hastened to throw his
shield over his aged and prostrate patron.

** J. M. was, and is, a man of great learning and
sharpness of wit as any man. It was his misfortune,
living in a tumultuous time, to be tossed on the wrong
side, and he writ, flagrante BeUo, certain dangerous
treatises of no other nature than that which I men-
tioned to you writ by your own father, only with this
difference, that your father's, which I have by me, was
written with the same design, but with much less wit
or judgment. At his Majesty's happy return, J. M.
did partake, even as you yourself did, of his regal
clemency, and has ever since lived in a most retired

* D^Israeli.



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XXXVl NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR.

silence. It was after that, I well remember it, that
being one day at his house, I there first met you ac-
cidentally.
But there it was, when you, as I told you,
wandered up and down Moorfields, astrologizing on
the duration of his Majesty's government, that you
frc((uentcd J. M. incessantly, and haunted his house
day by day. What discourses you there used he is
too generous to remember. "

About three years after the publication of the
second part of the Behears<dy Marvell's chival-
rous love of justice impelled him again to draw
the sword. In 1675, Dr. Croft, Bishop of Here-
ford, had published a work entitled " The Naked
Truth, or the true state of the Primitive Church,
by a humble Moderator. " It enjoined on all
religious parties the unwelcome duties of forbear-
ance and charity; but as it especially exposed
the danger and folly of enforcing a minute uni-
formity, it could not be suffered to pass unchal-
lenged in that age of high church intolerance. It
was petulantly attacked by Dr. Francis Turner,
Master of St John's College, Cambridge, in a
pamphlet entitled '* Animadversions on the Naked
Truth. " This provoked our satirist, who replied
in a pamphlet entitled, "Mr. Smirke, or the
Divine in Mode. " He here fits his antagonist
with a character out of Etherege's "Man of
Mode " — ^as he had before fitted Parker with one
from Buckingham's " Rehearsal. " The merits
and defects of this pamphlet are of much the



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NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. XXXVll

same order as those of his former work — it is
perliaps less disfigured by coarseness and vehe-
mence. Of Dr.