1st Old Man. Pray now, good son, indeed, indeed-
Son.

You shall to school. Away with him; and take
Their wagships with him, the whole cluster of 'em.

Indeed

2nd Old Man. You sha'n't send us now, so you sha'n't3rd Old Man. We be none of your father, so we ben't. Son. Away with 'em, I say; and tell their school-mistress What truants they are, and bid her pay 'em soundly. All three. Oh, oh, oh!

Lady. Alas! will nobody beg pardon for

The poor old boys?

English Traveller. Do men of such fair years

Here go to school?

Gentleman. They would die dunces else.

These were great scholars in their youth; but when
Age grows upon men here, their learning wastes,

And so decays, that if they live until

Threescore, their sons send them to school again;
They'd die as speechless else as new-born children.

English Traveller. 'Tis a wise nation; and the piety
Of the young men most rare and commendable.

Yet give me, as a stranger, leave to beg

Their liberty this day.

Hold up your heads, and thank the gentleman

Like scholars, with your heels now.*

All three.

Gratias, gratias.†

[Exeunt singing.

* He means they are to scrape, and make a bow.

"Thanks, thanks."-They say it in Latin, according to school

custom, and to show their progress.

MARVEL.

BORN 1620-DIED 1678.

ANDREW MARVEL, a thoughtful and graceful poet, a masterly prose-writer and controversialist, a wit of the first water, and, above all, an incorruptible patriot, is thought to have had no mean hand in putting an end to the dynasty of the Stuarts. His wit helped to render them ridiculous, and his integrity added weight to the sting. The enmity, indeed, of such a man was in itself a reproach to them; for Marvel, though bred on the Puritan side, was no Puritan himself, nor a foe to of reasonable and respectable government. He had served Cromwell with his friend Milton, as Latin Secretary, but would have aided Charles the Second as willingly, in his place in Parliament, had the king been an honest man instead of a pensioner of France. The story of his refusing a carte blanche from the king's treasurer, and then sending out to borrow a guinea, would be too well known to need

any

kind

allusion to it in a book like the present, if it did not contain a specimen of a sort of practical wit.

Marvel being pressed by the royal emissary to state what would satisfy his expectations, and finding that there was no other mode of persuading him that he had none, called in his servant to testify to his dining three days in succession upon one piece of mutton.

Even the wise and refined Marvel, however, was not free from the coarseness of his age; and hence I find the same provoking difficulty as in the case of his predecessors, with regard to extracts from the poetical portion of his satire. With the prose I should not have been at a loss. But the moment these wits of old time began rhyming, they seem to have thought themselves bound to give the same after-dinner license to their fancy, as when they were called upon for a song. To read the noble ode on Cromwell, in which such a generous compliment is paid to Charles the First, the devout and beautiful one entitled Bermuda, and the sweet overflowing fancies put into the mouth of the Nymph lamenting the loss of her Faun,-and then to follow up their perusal with some, nay most of the lampoons that were so formidable to Charles and his brother, you would hardly think it possible for the same man to have written both, if examples were not too numerous to the contrary. Fortunately for the reputation of Marvel's wit, with those who

-

chose to become acquainted with it, he wrote a great deal better in prose than verse, and the prose does not take the license of the verse. Hence, as Swift for another reason observes, we can still read with pleasure his answer to his now forgotten antagonist Parker. Of his witty poems, I can only give a single one entire, which is the following. The reader knows the impudent Colonel Blood, who, in the disguise of a clergyman, attempted to steal the crown, in payment (as he said) of dues withheld from him in Ireland. Marvel had not forgotten the days of Laud, and he saw people still on the bench of bishops who were for renewing the old persecutions. Hence the bitterness of the implication made against prelates.

ON BLOOD STEALING THE CROWN.

When daring Blood, his rent to have regain'd,
Upon the British diadem distrain'd,
He chose the cassock, circingle,* and gown,
The fittest mask for one that robs the crown;
But his lay-pity underneath prevail'd,
And whilst he sav'd the keeper's life, he fail'd.
With the priest's vestment had he but put on
The prelate's cruelty, the crown had gone.

* The girdle of a cassock; generally spelt surcingle.

DESCRIPTION OF HOLLAND.1

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed

By English pilots, when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,

Of shipwrecked cockle and the mussel-shell.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fish'd the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl,
Transferring into them their dunghill soul.
How did they rivet with gigantic piles
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their watʼry Babel far more high

To catch the waves than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,

And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come

To show them what's their mare Liberum ;*

A daily deluge over them does boil;

And earth and water play at level-coyl ;†

* A free ocean; for which the Dutch jurists were then contending with the English.

† I cannot discover the meaning of this word, and unfortunately am at a distance from linguists better informed.