Andrew Marvell by Augustine Birrell
page 10 of 307 (03%)
page 10 of 307 (03%)
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I confess none of the most over-running and eager in them." The younger
Marvell, with one boyish interval, belonged all through his life to the paternal school of religious thought. Fuller's account of the elder Marvell is too good to be passed over:-- "He afterwards became Minister at Hull, where for his lifetime he was well beloved. Most facetious in discourse, yet grave in his carriage, a most excellent preacher who, like a good husband, never broached what he had new brewed, but preached what he had pre-studied some competent time before. Insomuch that he was wont to say that he would cross the common proverb which called Saturday the working-day and Monday the holyday of preachers. It happened that Anno Dom. 1640, Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a Barrow boat, the same was sandwarpt, and he was drowned therein (with Mrs. Skinner, daughter to Sir Edward Coke, a very religious gentlewoman) by the carelessness, not to say drunkenness of the boatmen, to the great grief of all good men. His excellent comment upon St. Peter is daily desired and expected, if the envy and covetousness of private persons _for their own use_ deprive not the public of the benefit thereof."[6:1] This good man, to whom perhaps, remembering the date of his death, the words may apply, _Tu vero felix non vitæ tantum claritate sed etiam opportunitate mortis_, was married at Cherry Burton, on the 22nd of October 1612, to Anne Pease, a member of a family destined to become widely known throughout the north of England. Of this marriage there were five children, all born at Winestead, viz. three daughters, Anne, Mary, and Elizabeth, and two sons, Andrew and John, the latter of whom died a year after his birth, and was buried at Winestead on the 20th September 1624. |
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