Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678
"_Charing Cross._ But canst them devise when things will be mended?
_Wool-Church._ When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended.
_Charing Cross._ Then England, rejoice, thy redemption draws nigh;
Thy oppression together with kingship shall die.
_Chorus._ A Commonwealth, a Commonwealth we proclaim to the nation,
For the gods have repented the King's restoration."
These probably are the lines which spread the popular, but mistaken,
belief that Marvell was a Republican.
Andrew Marvell died in his lodgings in London on the 16th of August
1678. Colonel Grosvenor, writing to George Treby, M.P. (afterwards Chief
of the Common Pleas), on the 17th of August, reports "Andrew Marvell
died yesterday of apoplexy." Parliament was not sitting at the time.
What was said of the elder Andrew may also be said of the younger: he
was happy in the moment of his death. The one just escaped the Civil
War, the other the Popish Plot.
Marvell was thought to have been poisoned. Such a suspicion in those bad
times was not far-fetched. His satires, rough but moving, had been
widely read, and his fears for the Constitution, his dread of
"The grim Monster, Arbitrary Power,
The ugliest Giant ever trod the earth,"
infested many breasts, and bred terror.
"Marvell, the Island's watchful sentinel,
Stood in the gap and bravely kept his post."
The post was one of obvious danger, and
"Whether Fate or Art untwin'd his thread
Remains in doubt."[220:1]
The doubt has now been dissipated by the research of an accomplished
physician, Dr. Gee, who in 1874 communicated to the _Athenaeum_ (March 7,
1874) an extract from Richard Morton's {Greek: Pyretologia} (1692),
containing a full account of Marvell's sickness and death. Art "untwin'd
his thread," but it was the doctor's art. Dr. Gee's translation of
Morton's medical Latin is as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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