Of the pleasantry and sarcasm, these may be considered as specimens. Parker was both author and licenser of his own work on “Ecclesiastical Polity;”[318] and it appears he got the licence for printing Marvell’s first Rehearsal recalled. The Church appeared in danger when the doctor discovered he was so furiously attacked. Marvell sarcastically rallies him on his dual capacity:—
“He is such an At-all, of so many capacities, that he would excommunicate any man who should have presumed to intermeddle with any one of his provinces. Has he been an author? he is too the licenser. Has he been a father? he will stand too for godfather. Had he acted Pyramus, he 398 would have been Moonshine too, and the Hole in the Wall. That first author of ‘Ecclesiastical Polity,’ (such as his) Nero, was of the same temper. He could not be contented with the Roman empire, unless he were too his own precentor; and lamented only the detriment that mankind must sustain at his death, in losing so considerable a fiddler.”
The satirist describes Parker’s arrogance for those whom Parker calls the vulgar, and whom he defies as “a rout of wolves and tigers, apes and buffoons;” yet his personal fears are oddly contrasted with his self-importance: “If he chance but to sneeze, he prays that the foundations of the earth be not shaken.—Ever since he crept up to be but the weathercock of a steeple, he trembles and cracks at every puff of wind that blows about him, as if the Church of England were falling.” Parker boasted, in certain philosophical “Tentamina,” or essays of his, that he had confuted the atheists: Marvell declares, “If he had reduced any atheist by his book, he can only pretend to have converted them (as in the old Florentine wars) by mere tiring them out, and perfect weariness.” A pleasant allusion to those mock fights of the Italian mercenaries, who, after parading all day, rarely unhorsed a single cavalier.
Marvell blends with a ludicrous description of his answerers great fancy:—
“The whole Posse Archidiaconatus was raised to repress me; and great rising there was, and sending post every way to pick out the ablest ecclesiastical droles to prepare an answer. Never was such a hubbub made about a sorry book. One flattered himself with being at least a surrogate; another was so modest as to set up with being but a paritor; while the most generous hoped only to be graciously smiled upon at a good dinner; but the more hungry starvelings generally looked upon it as an immediate call to a benefice; and he that could but write an answer, whatsoever it were, took it for the most dexterous, cheap, and legal way of simony. As is usual on these occasions, there arose no small competition and mutiny among the pretenders.”
It seems all the body had not impudence enough, and had too nice consciences, and could not afford an extraordinary expense in wit for the occasion. It was then
“The author of the ‘Ecclesiastical Polity’ altered his lodgings to a calumny-office, and kept open chamber for all comers, that he might be supplied himself, or supply others, 399 as there was occasion. But the information came in so slenderly, that he was glad to make use of anything rather than sit out; and there was at last nothing so slight, but it grew material; nothing so false, but he resolved it should go for truth; and what wanted in matter, he would make out with invention and artifice. So that he and his remaining comrades seemed to have set up a glass-house, the model of which he had observed from the height of his window in the neighbourhood, and the art he had been initiated into ever since from the manufacture (he will criticise because not orifacture) of soap-bubbles, he improved by degrees to the mystery of making glass-drops, and thence, in running leaps, mounted by these virtues to be Fellow of the Royal Society, Doctor of Divinity, Parson, Prebend, and Archdeacon. The furnace was so hot of itself, that there needed no coals, much less any one to blow them. One burnt the weed, another calcined the flint, a third melted down that mixture; but he himself fashioned all with his breath, and polished with his style, till, out of a mere jelly of sand and ashes, he had furnished a whole cupboard of things, so brittle and incoherent, that the least touch would break them again in pieces, and so transparent, that every man might see through them.”
Parker had accused Marvell with having served Cromwell, and being the friend of Milton, then living, at a moment when such an accusation not only rendered a man odious, but put his life in danger.[319] Marvell, who now perceived that Milton, whom he never looked on but with the eyes of reverential awe, was likely to be drawn into his quarrel, touches on this subject with infinite delicacy and tenderness, but not with diminished energy against his malignant adversary, whom he shows to have been an impertinent intruder in Milton’s house, where indeed he had first known him. He cautiously alludes to our English Homer by his initials: at that moment the very name of Milton would have tainted the page!
“J. M. was, and is, a man of great learning and sharpness of wit, as any man. It was his misfortune, living in a 400 tumultuous time, to be tossed on the wrong side; and he writ, flagrante bello, certain dangerous treatises. But some of his books, upon which you take him at advantage, were of no other nature than that one writ by your own father; only with this difference, that your father’s, which I have by me, was written with the same design, but with much less wit or judgment, for which there was no remedy, unless you will supply his judgment with his high Court of Justice. At his Majesty’s happy return, J. M. did partake, even as you yourself did, for all your huffing, of his royal clemency, and has ever since expiated himself in a retired silence. Whether it were my foresight, or my good fortune, I never contracted any friendship or confidence with you; but then it was you frequented J. M. incessantly, and haunted his house day by day. What discourses you there used, he is too generous to remember. But for you to insult over his old age, to traduce him by your scaramouches, and in your own person, as a schoolmaster, who was born and hath lived more ingenuously and liberally than yourself!”
Marvell, when he lays by his playful humour and fertile fancy for more solemn remonstrances, assumes a loftier tone, and a severity of invective, from which, indeed, Parker never recovered.