Andrew Marvell | Page 5

students,
or pensioners, as they are called, but only a register of Fellows and
Foundation Scholars, and in this last-named register Marvell's name
appears as a Scholar sworn and admitted on the 13th of April 1638. As,
however, Marvell took his B.A. degree in 1639, he must have been in
residence long before April 1638. Probably Marvell went to Trinity
about 1635, just before the register of pensioners was begun, as a
pensioner, becoming a Scholar in 1638, and taking his degree in 1639.
Cambridge undergraduates do not usually keep diaries, nor after they
have become Masters of Art are they much in the habit of giving details
as to their academic career. Marvell is no exception to this provoking
rule. He nowhere tells us what his University taught him or how. The
logic of the schools he had no choice but to learn. Molineus, Peter
Ramus, Seton, Keckerman were text-books of reputation, from one or
another of which every Cambridge man had to master his simpliciters,
his quids, his secundum quids, his quales, and his quantums. Aristotle's
Physics, Ethics, and Politics were "tutor's books," and those young men
who loved to hear themselves talk were left free to discuss, much to
Hobbes's disgust, "the freedom of the will, incorporeal substance,
everlasting nows, ubiquities, hypostases, which the people understand
not nor will ever care for."
In the life of Matthew Robinson,[11:1] who went up to Cambridge a
little later than Marvell (June 1645), and was probably a harder reader,
we are told that "the strength of his studies lay in the metaphysics and
in those subtle authors for many years which rendered him an
irrefragable disputant de quolibet ente, and whilst he was but senior
freshman he was found in the bachelor schools, disputing ably with the
best of the senior sophisters." Robinson despised the old-fashioned
Ethics and Physics, but with the new Cartesian or Experimental
Philosophy he was inter primos. History, particularly the Roman, was
in great favour at both Universities at this time, and young men were

taught, so old Hobbes again grumbles, to despise monarchy "from
Cicero, Seneca, Cato and other politicians of Rome, and Aristotle of
Athens, who seldom spake of kings but as of wolves and other
ravenous beasts."[12:1] The Muses were never neglected at Cambridge,
as the University exercises survive to prove, whilst modern languages,
Spanish and Italian for example, were greedily acquired by such an
eager spirit as Richard Crashaw, the poet, who came into residence at
Pembroke in 1631. There were problems to be "kept" in the college
chapel, lectures to be attended, both public and private, declamations to
be delivered, and even in the vacations the scholars were not exempt
from "exercises" either in hall or in their tutors' rooms. Earnest students
read their Greek Testaments, and even their Hebrew Bibles, and filled
their note-books, working more hours a day than was good for their
health, whilst the idle ones wasted their time as best they could in an
unhealthy, over-crowded town, in an age which knew nothing of
boating, billiards, or cricket. A tennis-court there was in Marvell's time,
for in Dr. Worthington's Diary, under date 3rd of April 1637, it stands
recorded that on that day and in that place that learned man received "a
dangerous blow on the Eye."[12:2]
The only incident we know of Marvell's undergraduate days is
remarkable enough, for, boy though he was, he seems, like the Gibbon
of a later day, to have suddenly become a Roman Catholic. This
occurrence may serve to remind us how, during Marvell's time at
Trinity, the University of Cambridge (ever the precursor in
thought-movements) had a Catholic revival of her own, akin to that one
which two hundred years afterwards happened at Oxford, and has left
so much agreeable literature behind it. Fuller in his history of the
University of Cambridge tells us a little about this highly interesting
and important movement:--
"Now began the University (1633-4) to be much beautified in buildings,
every college either casting its skin with the snake, or renewing its bill
with the eagle, having their courts or at least their fronts and
Gatehouses repaired and adorned. But the greatest alteration was in
their Chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of organs.
And seeing musick is one of the liberal arts, how could it be quarrelled

at in an University if they sang with understanding both of the matter
and manner thereof. Yet some took great distaste thereat as attendancie
to superstition."[13:1]
The chapel at Peterhouse, we read elsewhere, which was built in 1632,
and consecrated by Bishop White of Ely, had a beautiful ceiling and a
noble east window. "A grave divine," Fuller tells us, "preaching before
the University at St. Mary's, had this smart passage in his Sermon--that
as at