have picked it up from his great friend and colleague, the author of
_Paradise Lost_.

Marvell's school education over, he went up to Cambridge, not to his
father's old college, but to the more splendid foundation of Trinity.
About the date of his matriculation there is a doubt. In Wood's _Athenæ
Oxonienses_ there is a note to the effect that Marvell was admitted "in
matriculam Acad. Cant. Coll. Trin." on the 14th of December 1633, when
the boy was but twelve years old. Dr. Lort, a famous master of Trinity
in his day, writing in November 1765 to Captain Edward Thompson, of whom
more later on, told the captain that until 1635 there was no register of
admissions of ordinary students, or pensioners, as they are called, but
only a register of Fellows and Foundation Scholars, and in this
last-named register Marvell's name appears as a Scholar sworn and
admitted on the 13th of April 1638. As, however, Marvell took his B.A.
degree in 1639, he must have been in residence long before April 1638.
Probably Marvell went to Trinity about 1635, just before the register of
pensioners was begun, as a pensioner, becoming a Scholar in 1638, and
taking his degree in 1639.

Cambridge undergraduates do not usually keep diaries, nor after they
have become Masters of Art are they much in the habit of giving details
as to their academic career. Marvell is no exception to this provoking
rule. He nowhere tells us what his University taught him or how. The
logic of the schools he had no choice but to learn. Molineus, Peter
Ramus, Seton, Keckerman were text-books of reputation, from one or
another of which every Cambridge man had to master his _simpliciters_,
his _quids_, his _secundum quids_, his _quales_, and his _quantums_.
Aristotle's Physics, Ethics, and Politics were "tutor's books," and
those young men who loved to hear themselves talk were left free to