Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678
The poet's grand-nephew, Mr. Robert Nettleton, in 1764 placed on the
north side of the present church, upon a black marble slab, a long
epitaph, still to be seen, recording the fact that "near to this place
lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esquire." At no great distance from
this slab is the tombstone, recently brought in from the graveyard
outside, of _Georgius Chapman, Poeta_, a fine Roman monument, prepared
by the care and at the cost of the poet's friend, Inigo Jones. Still
left exposed, in what is now a doleful garden (not at all Marvellian),
is the tombstone of Richard Penderel of Boscobel, one of the five yeomen
brothers who helped Charles to escape after Worcester. Lord Herbert of
Cherbury, in 1648, and Shirley the dramatist, in 1666, had been carried
to the same place of sepulture.
Aubrey describes Marvell "as of middling stature, pretty strong-set,
roundish faced, cherry-cheeked, hazell eye, brown hair. He was, in his
conversation, very modest, and of very few words. Though he loved wine,
he would never drink hard in company, and was wont to say that he would
not play the good fellow in any man's company in whose hands he would
not trust his life. He kept bottles of wine at his lodgings, and many
times he would drink liberally by himself and to refresh his spirit and
exalt his muse. James Harrington (author of _Oceana_) was his intimate
friend; J. Pell, D.D., was one of his acquaintances. He had not a
general acquaintance."
Dr. Pell, one may remark, was a great friend of Hobbes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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