Andrew Marvell by Augustine Birrell
page 20 of 307 (06%)
page 20 of 307 (06%)
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The reference to Dr. Cosens, or Cosin, being Vice-Chancellor gives a clue to the date, for Cosin was chosen Vice-Chancellor on the 4th of November 1639.[15:2] Though we can know nothing of the elder Marvell's methods of re-conversion, they were more successful than the elder Gibbon's, who, as we know, packed the future historian off to Lausanne and a Swiss pastor's house. What Gibbon became on leaving off his Romanism we can guess for ourselves, whereas Marvell, once out of the hands of these very shadowy "Jesuits," remained the staunchest of Christian Protestants to the end of his days. This strange incident, and two college exercises or poems, one in Greek, the other in Latin, both having reference to an addition to the Royal Family, and appearing in the _Musa Cantabrigiensis_ for 1637, are all the materials that exist for weaving the story of Marvell, the Cambridge undergraduate. The Latin verses, which are Horatian in style, contain one pretty stanza, composed apparently before the sex of the new-born infant was known at Cambridge. "Sive felici Carolum figurâ Parvulus princeps imitetur almae Sive Mariae decoret puellam Dulcis imago." After taking his Bachelor's degree in 1639, Marvell, being still a Scholar of the college, must have gone away, for the Conclusion Book of Trinity, under date September 24, 1641, records as follows:-- |
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