[631] Anthony Wood. There is plenty of satire in the two books by Marvell; the second is more cutting than the first, but it is sometimes coarser, and on the whole wearisome to modern readers.
[632] This tract is printed in Somers' Collection, iii. 329, 388. My own judgment of it agrees with Mr. Hallam's:—"It is not written with extraordinary ability; but it is very candid and well designed, though conceding so much as to scandalize his brethren."—Const. Hist. ii. 93.
Marvell, in his Mr. Smirke on the Divine in Mode, speaks of the work as having been originally printed only for members of Parliament, and not published, but that a printer got hold of it, and "surreptitiously" multiplied copies without the author's knowledge. Yet the published edition, though commencing with the words, "An humble petition to the Right Honourable the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled," contains an address "to the reader" at the beginning, and another to the Nonconformists at the end.
[633] Mr. Smirke, or the Divine in Mode. By Andrew Marvell.
[634] Marvell's Mr. Smirke, which was an answer to Turner's animadversions.—Baxter's Life and Times, iii. 175. Three other books, bearing the title of Naked Truth, headed respectively the second, third, and fourth parts, were published afterwards, but not by Bishop Croft.
[635] Numerous letters in the Record Office show the prevalence in 1667 of rumours respecting the King's design to bring in Popery. For example:—
"Fanatics in the North, being disappointed of assistance from abroad by the peace set up, then rest on their friends' behalf, that the King is a Papist, and intends to set up the Popish religion, and have so far possessed not only fanatics, but several of the ignorant common people with this opinion, that it is publicly discoursed among them, that they will rise in arms for defence of religion, and oppose the King and the Popish party. They persuade their disciples that their friends in the South are ready to appear in arms for defence of religion, and oppose the King and the Popish party."—Sir P. Musgrave to Williamson, Aug. 22, 1667. Cal. 409.
[636] Life of James II., i. 441. Dalrymple's Memoirs, i. 70; iii. 1–68. The treaty is printed in Lingard, xi. 364. Rarely has anything in diplomacy been so unprincipled and shameful as Article II. of this document. Charles' pretexts were religious, his object political.
[637] See letters in Phenix, i. 566. Calamy's Life, i. 119.
[638] G. P. R. James' Life of Louis XIV., ii. 171.