The first part of The Rehearsal Transprosed, though its sub-title is “Animadversions upon a late book intituled a Preface shewing what grounds there are of Fears and Jealousies of Popery,” deals after Marvell’s own fashion with all three of Parker’s books, the Ecclesiastical Politie, the Bramhall Preface, and the Defence of the Ecclesiastical Politie.  It is by no means so easy to give a fair notion of the Rehearsal Transprosed in a short compass, as it was of Parker’s line of argument.  The parson wrote more closely than the Member of Parliament.  I cannot give a better description of Marvell’s method than in Parker’s own words in his preface to his Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed, which appeared in 1673 and gave rise to Marvell’s second part:—­

“When,” writes Parker, “I first condemned myself to the drudgery of this Reply, I intended nothing but a serious prosecution of my Argument, and to let the World see that it is not reading Histories or Plays or Gazettes, nor going on pilgrimage to Geneva, nor learning French and Italian, nor passing the Alps, nor being a cunning Gamester that can qualify a man to discourse of Conscience and Ecclesiastical Policy; in that it is not capping our Argument with a story that will answer it, nor clapping an apothegm upon an assertion that will prove it, nor stringing up Proverbs and Similitudes upon one another that will make up a Coherent Discourse.”

Allowing for bias this is no unfair account of Marvell’s method, and it was just because this was Marvell’s method that he succeeded so well in amusing the king and in pleasing the town, and that he may still be read by those who love reading with a fair measure of interest and enjoyment.

Witty and humorous men are always at a disadvantage except on the stage.  The hum-drum is the style for Englishmen.  Bishop Burnet calls Marvell “a droll,” Parker, who was to be a bishop, calls him “a buffoon.”  Marvell is occasionally humorous and not infrequently carries a jest beyond the limits of becoming mirth; but he is more often grave.  Yet when he is, his gravity was treated either as one of his feebler jokes or as an impertinence.  But as it is his wit alone that has kept him alive he need not be pitied overmuch.

The substance of Marvell’s reply to Parker, apart altogether from its by-play, is to be found in passages like the following:—­

“Here it is that after so great an excess of wit, he thinks fit to take a julep and re-settle his brain and the government.  He grows as serious as ’tis possible for a madman, and pretends to sum-up the whole state of the controversy with the Nonconformists.  And to be sure he will make the story as plausible for himself as he may; but therefore it was that I have before so particularly quoted and bound him up with his own words as fast as such a Proteus could be pinion’d.  For he is as waxen as the first matter, and no form