discuss, much to Hobbes's disgust, "the freedom of the will, incorporeal
substance, everlasting nows, ubiquities, hypostases, which the people
understand not nor will ever care for."

In the life of Matthew Robinson,[11:1] who went up to Cambridge a little
later than Marvell (June 1645), and was probably a harder reader, we are
told that "the strength of his studies lay in the metaphysics and in
those subtle authors for many years which rendered him an irrefragable
disputant _de quolibet ente_, and whilst he was but senior freshman he
was found in the bachelor schools, disputing ably with the best of the
senior sophisters." Robinson despised the old-fashioned Ethics and
Physics, but with the new Cartesian or Experimental Philosophy he was
_inter primos_. History, particularly the Roman, was in great favour at
both Universities at this time, and young men were taught, so old Hobbes
again grumbles, to despise monarchy "from Cicero, Seneca, Cato and other
politicians of Rome, and Aristotle of Athens, who seldom spake of kings
but as of wolves and other ravenous beasts."[12:1] The Muses were never
neglected at Cambridge, as the University exercises survive to prove,
whilst modern languages, Spanish and Italian for example, were greedily
acquired by such an eager spirit as Richard Crashaw, the poet, who came
into residence at Pembroke in 1631. There were problems to be "kept" in
the college chapel, lectures to be attended, both public and private,
declamations to be delivered, and even in the vacations the scholars
were not exempt from "exercises" either in hall or in their tutors'
rooms. Earnest students read their Greek Testaments, and even their
Hebrew Bibles, and filled their note-books, working more hours a day
than was good for their health, whilst the idle ones wasted their time
as best they could in an unhealthy, over-crowded town, in an age which
knew nothing of boating, billiards, or cricket. A tennis-court there was
in Marvell's time, for in Dr. Worthington's _Diary_, under date 3rd of