mankind that your proud heart would break before it would bend to.  They do not think fit to require any thing that is impossible, unnecessary or wanton of their people, but are fain to consider the very temper of the climate in which they live, the constitution and laws under which they have been formerly bred, and upon all occasions to give them good words and humour them like children.  They reflect upon the histories of former times and the present transactions to regulate themselves by in every circumstance....  They (Kings) do not think fit to command things unnecessary."[168:1]

These extracts, however fatal to Marvell’s traditional reputation in the eighteenth century as a Puritan and a Republican, call for no apology.

An example of Marvell’s Interludes ought to be given.  There are many to choose from.

“There was a worthy divine, not many years dead, who in his younger time, being of a facetious and unlucky humour, was commonly known by the name of Tom Triplet; he was brought up at Paul’s school under a severe master, Dr. Gill, and from thence he went to the University.  There he took liberty (as ’tis usual with those that are emancipated from School) to tel tales and make the discipline ridiculous under which he was bred.  But not suspecting the doctor’s intelligence, coming once to town he went in full school to give him a visite and expected no less than to get a play day for his former acquaintances.  But instead of that he found himself hors’d up in a trice, though he appeal’d in vain to the priviledges of the University, pleaded adultus and invoked the mercy of the spectators.  Nor was he let down till the master had planted a grove of birch in his back-side for the terrour and publick example of all waggs that divulge the secrets of Priscian and make merry with their teachers.  This stuck so with Triplet that all his life-time he never forgave the doctor, but sent him every New Year’s tide an anniversary ballad to a new tune, and so in his turn avenged himself of his jerking pedagogue."[168:2]

Marvell’s game of picquet with a parson plays such a part in Parker’s Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed that it deserves to be mentioned:—­

“’Tis not very many years ago that I used to play at picket; there was a gentleman of your robe, a dignitory of Lincoln, very well known and remembered in the ordinaries, but being not long since dead, I will save his name.  Now I used to play pieces, and this gentleman would always go half-a-crown with me; and so all the while he sate on my hand he very honestly ‘gave the sign’ so that I was always sure to lose.  I afterwards discovered it, but of all the money that ever I was cheated of in my life, none ever vexed me so as what I lost by his occasion."[169:1]

There is no need to pursue the controversy further.  It is still unsettled.