on the republican model of Venice. These and other equally bold satires were probably handed round in MS., or secretly printed, and it was not until after the Revolution that they were collected with those of other writers in Poems on Affairs of State (3 pts., 1689; 4 pts., 1703–1707). Marvell’s controversial prose writings are wittier than his verse satires, and are free from the scurrility which defaces the “Last Instructions to a Painter.” A short and brilliant example of his irony is “His Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament” (printed in Grosart, ii. 431 seq.), in which Charles is made to take the house into the friendliest confidence on his domestic affairs.
Marvell was among the masters of Jonathan Swift, who, in the “Apology” prefixed to the Tale of a Tub, wrote that his answer to Samuel Parker could be still read with pleasure, although the pamphlets that provoked it were long since forgotten. Parker had written a Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politye (1670) and other polemics against Dissenters, to which Marvell replied in The Rehearsal Transposed (2 pts., 1672 and 1673). The book contains some passages of dignified eloquence, and some coarse vituperation, but the prevailing tone is that of grave and ironical banter of Parker as “Mr Bayes.” Parker was attacked, says Bishop Burnet (Hist. of His Own Time, ed. 1823, i. 451), “by the liveliest droll of the age, who writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and entertaining a conduct, that, from the king down to the tradesman, his books were read with great pleasure.” He certainly humbled Parker, but whether this effect extended, as Burnet asserts, to the whole party, is doubtful. Parker had intimated that Milton had a share in the first part of Marvell’s reply. This Marvell emphatically denied (Grosart, iii. 498). He points out that Parker had, like Milton, profited by the royal clemency, and that he had first met him at Milton’s house. He takes the opportunity to praise Milton’s “great learning and sharpness of wit,” and to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) he contributed some verses of just and eloquent praise.
His Mr Smirke, or the Divine in Mode . . . (1676) was a defence of Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, against the criticisms of Dr Francis Turner, master of St John’s College, Cambridge. A far more important work was An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, more particularly from the Long Prorogation of Parliament . . . (1677). This pamphlet was written in the same outspoken tone as the verse satires, and brought against the court the indictment of nursing designs to establish absolute monarchy and the Roman Catholic religion at the same time. A reward was offered for the author, whose identity was evidently suspected, and it is said that Marvell was in danger of assassination. He died on the 16th of August 1678 in consequence of an overdose of an opiate taken during an attack of ague. He was buried in the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields, London. Joint administration of his estate was granted to one of his creditors, and to his widow, Mary Marvell, of whom we have no previous mention.
As a humorist, and as a great “parliament man,” no name is of more interest to a student of the reign of Charles II. than that of Marvell. He had friends among the republican thinkers of the times. Aubrey says that he was intimate with James Harrington, the author of Oceana, and he was probably a member of the “Rota” club. In the heyday of political infamy, he, a needy man, obliged to accept wages from his constituents, kept his political virtue unspotted, and he stood throughout his career as the champion of moderate and tolerant measures. There is a story that his old schoolfellow, Danby, was sent by the king to offer the incorruptible poet a place at court and a gift of £1000, which Marvell refused with the words: “I live here to serve my constituents: the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not one.” When self-indulgence was the ordinary habit of town life, Marvell was a temperate man. His personal appearance is described by John Aubrey: “He was of a middling stature, pretty strong set, roundish faced, cherry cheeked, hazel eyed, brown haired. In his conversation he was modest and of very few words.” (“Lives of Eminent Persons,” printed in Letters . . . in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 1813).
Among Marvell’s works is also a Defence of John Howe on God’s Prescience . . . (1678), and among the spurious works fathered on him are: A Seasonable Argument . . . for a new Parliament (1677), A Seasonable Question and a Useful Answer . . . (1676), A Letter from a Parliament Man . . . (1675), and a translation of Suetonius (1672). Marvell’s satires were no doubt first printed as broadsides, but very few are still extant in that form. Such of his poems as were printed during his lifetime appeared in collections of other men’s works. The earliest edition of his non-political verse is Miscellaneous Poems (1681), edited by his wife, Mary Marvell. The political satires were printed as A Collection of Poems on Affairs of State, by A—— M——l, Esq. and other Eminent Wits (1689), with second and third parts in the same year. The works of Andrew Marvell contained in these two publications were also edited by Thomas Cooke (2 vols., 1726), who added some letters. Cooke’s edition was reprinted by Thomas Davies in 1772. Marvell’s next editor was Captain Thompson of Hull, who was connected with the poet’s family, and made further additions from a commonplace book since lost. Other editions followed, but were superseded by Dr A. B. Grosart’s laborious work, which, in spite of many defects of style, remains indispensable to the student. The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P. (4 vols., 1872–1875) forms part of his “Fuller Worthies Library.” See also the admirable edition of the Poems and Satires of Andrew Marvell . . . (2 vols., 1892) in the “Muses’ Library,” where a full bibliography of his works and of the commentaries on them is provided; also The Poems and some Satires of Andrew Marvell (ed. Edward Wright, 1904), and Andrew Marvell (1905), by Augustine Birrell in the “English Men of Letters” series.
MARX, HEINRICH KARL (1818–1883), German socialist, and head of the International Working Men’s Association, was born on the 5th of May 1818 in Trèves (Rhenish Prussia). His father, a Jewish lawyer, in 1824 went over to Christianity, and he and his whole family were baptized as Christian Protestants. The son went to the high grammar school at Trèves, and from 1835 to the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He studied first law, then history and philosophy, and in 1841 took the degree of doctor of philosophy. In Berlin he had close intimacy with the most prominent representatives of the young Hegelians—the brothers Bruno and Edgar Bauer and their circle, the so-called “Freien.” He at first intended to settle as a lecturer at Bonn University, but his Radical views made a university career out of the question, and he accepted work on a Radical paper, the Rheinische Zeitung, which expounded the ideas of the most advanced section of the Rhenish Radical bourgeoisie. In October 1842 he became one of the editors of this paper, which, however, after an incessant struggle with press censors, was suppressed in the beginning of 1843. In the summer of this year Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of a high government official. Through her mother Jenny von Westphalen was a lineal descendant of the earl of Argyle, who was beheaded under James II. She was a most faithful companion to Marx during all the vicissitudes of his career, and died on the 2nd of December 1881; he outliving her only fifteen months.
Already in the Rheinische Zeitung some socialist voices had been audible, couched in a somewhat philosophical strain. Marx, though not accepting these views, refused to criticize them until he had studied the question thoroughly. For this purpose he went in the autumn of 1843 to Paris, where the socialist movement was then at its intellectual zenith, and where he, together with Arnold Ruge, the well-known literary leader of Radical Hegelianism, was to edit a review, the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher, of which, however, only one number appeared. It contained two articles by Marx—a criticism of Bruno Bauer’s treatment of the Jewish question, and an introduction to a criticism of Hegel’s philosophy of the law. The first concluded that the social emancipation of the Jews could only be achieved together with the emancipation of society from Judaism, i.e. commercialism. The second declared that in Germany no partial political emancipation was possible; there was now only one class from which a real and reckless fight against authority was to be expected—namely, the proletariate. But the proletariate could not emancipate itself except by breaking all the chains, by dissolving the whole constituted society, by recreating man as a member of the human society in the place of established states and classes. “Then the day of German resurrection will be announced by the crowing of the Gallican cock.” Both
