into the measures of the court." Among his intimate friends, he numbered the duke of Devonshire; and particularly Milton, with whom his friendship was early formed, and terminated only by death. He has the honour of being the first, together with Dr. Barrow, of exciting the attention of the undiscerning public to the unrivalled merit of the "Paradise Lost." He died in August 1678, in the 58th year of his age, as it was thought, by poison. He was never married; his manners reserved among strangers, were delightful and instructive among friends. His constitution, naturally strong, was fortified by habitual temperance; and he enjoyed uninterrupted health to the last,

His works consist of

1. Poems.

2. The Rehearsal Transprosed, first and second part.

3. Mr. Smirk, or the Divine in Mode; being 'certain Annotations on the Animadversions on the "Naked Truth;" together with a short historical essay concerning General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions in Matters of Religion; published in 1676, under the name of Andreas Rivetus junior,

4. An Account of the Growth of Popery, and Arbitrary Government in England; more particularly from the long Prorogation of November, 1675, ending the 15th of February 1676, till the last meeting of Parliament, the 16th of July 1677.

In the Rehearsal Transprosed Marvel ridicules Dr. Parker, (afterwards archbishop,) under the name of Bayes.-A name by which Dryden had been formerly satyrised in the comedy of "The Rehearsal."

This gentleman, (Dr. Parker) as I have heard, after he had read Don Quixot, and the Bible, besides such school-books as were necessary for his age, was sent early to the university, and there studied hard, and in a short time became a competent rhetorician, and no ill disputant. He had learnt how to erect a thesis, and to defend it pro or con with a serviceable distinction; while the truth, as his camarade Mr. Bayes hath it on another occasion,

Before a full pot of ale you can swallow,

Was here with a whoop, and gone with a hollow.

And so, thinking himself now ripe and qualified, for the greatest undertakings, and highest fortune,

he therefore exchanged the narrowness of the university for the town: but coming out of the confinement of the square-cap and quadrangle, into the open air, the world began to turn round with him; which he imagined, though it were his own giddiness, to be nothing less than the quadrature of the circle. This accident concurring so happily to increase the good opinion he naturally had of himself, he thenceforward applied to gain a like reputation with others. He followed the town life, haunted the best companies; and to polish himself from any pedantic roughness, he read and saw the plays, with much care, and more proficiency than most of the auditory. But all this while, he forgot not the main chance, but hearing of a vacancy with a nobleman, he clapped in, and easily obtained to be his chaplain. From that day you may take the date of his preferments and his ruin. For having soon wrought himself dexterously into his patron's favour, by short graces and sermons, and a mimical way of drolling upon the puritans, which he knew would take both at chapel and table; he gained a great authority likewise among all the domestics. They all listened to him as an oracle; and they allowed him by common consent to have not only all the divinity, but more wit too than all the rest of the family put together. This thing alone elevated him exceedingly in his own conceit, and raised his hypochondria into

the region of the brain and his head swelled like any bladder with wind and vapour. But after he was stretched to such an height in his own fancy, that he could not look down from top to toe, but his eyes dazzled at the precipice of his stature; there fell out, or in, another natural chance, which pushed him headlong. For being of an amorous complexion, and finding himself, as I told you, the cock-dirine and the cock-wit of the family, he took the privilege to walk among the hens; and thought it was not impolitic to establish his new-acquired reputa→ tion upon the gentlewomen's side. And they that perceived he was a rising man, and of pleasant conversation, dividing his day among them into canonical hours, of reading now the common prayer, and now the romances, were very much taken with him. The sympathy of silk began to stir and attract the tippet to the petticoat and the petticoat toward the tippet. The innocent ladies found a strange unquietness in their minds, and could not distinguish whether it were love or devotion. Neither was he wanting on his part to carry on the work, but shifted himself every day with a clean surplice, and as oft as he had occasion to bow, he directed his reverence towards the gentlewomen's pew, till, having before had enough of the libertine, and undertaken his calling only for preferment, he was transported now with the sanctity of his office, even to extacy; and

like the bishop over Maudlin College altar, or like Maudlin de la Croix, he was seen in his prayers to be lifted up sometimes in the air, and once particularly so high that he cracked his scull against the chapel ceiling. I do not hear for all this that he had ever practised upon the honour of the ladies, but that he preserved always the civility of a Platonic knight-errant. For all this courtship had no other operation than to make him still more in love with himself; and if he frequented their company, it was only to speculate his own baby in their eyes. But being thus without competitor or rival, the darling of both sexes in the family, and his own minion, he grew beyond all measure elated, and that crack of his scull, as in broken looking-glasses, maltiplied him in self-conceit and imagination, &c. &c.

The following is a very burlesque and lively description of the conduct of the orthodox divines, on king Charles the Second's publishing the declaration of indulgence to tender consciences. Still addressing the doctor under the name of Bayes, he proceeds:

I suppose you cannot be ignorant, that some of your superiors of your robe did, upon the publishing that declaration, give the word and deliver orders.