Styled by Byron ‘that most entertaining and researching writer,’ Disraeli the elder (1766–1848) wrote a number of anecdotal works on literary matters. His essay on Marvell and Parker first appeared in 1814 in Quarrels of Authors and was then reprinted in 1859 under the title The Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. Although he was not, in fact, an altogether exact researcher and quite cavalier in his handling of quotations, frequently telescoping or juxtaposing disparate passages, his work was much pillaged by later writers.
Reprinted from The Works, ed. by his son (1880–1), IV, pp. 391–402, with one selection from the notes. There are minor textual variants from the first edition.
One of the legitimate ends of satire, and one of the proud triumphs of genius, is to unmask the false zealot; to beat back the haughty spirit that is treading down all; and if it cannot teach modesty, and raise a blush, at least to inflict terror and silence. It is then that the satirist does honour to the office of the executioner.
As one whose whip of steel can with a lash
Imprint the characters of shame so deep,
Even in the brazen forehead of proud Sin,
That not eternity shall wear it out.
[Randolph's Muses' Looking-glass, I. iv.]
The quarrel between PARKER and MARVELL is a striking example of the efficient powers of genius, in first humbling, and then annihilating, an unprincipled bravo, who had placed himself at the head of a faction.
Marvell, the under-secretary and the bosom-friend of Milton, whose fancy he has often caught in his verse, was one of the greatest wits of the luxuriant age of Charles II.; he was a master in all the arts of ridicule; and his inexhaustible spirit only required some permanent subject to have rivalled the causticity of Swift, whose style, in neatness and vivacity, seems to have been modelled on his. But Marvell placed the oblation of genius on a temporary altar, and the sacrifice sunk with it; he wrote to the times, and with the times his writings have passed away; yet something there is incorruptible in wit, and wherever its salt has fallen, that part is still preserved.
Such are the vigour and fertility of Marvell's writings, that our old Chronicler of Literary History, Anthony Wood, considers him as the founder of ‘the then newly-refined art (though much in mode and fashion almost ever since) of sportive and jeering buffoonery;’* and the crabbed humorist describes ‘this pen-combat as briskly managed on both sides; a jerking flirting way of writing entertaining the reader, by seeing two such right cocks of the game so keenly engaging with sharp and dangerous weapons.’—Burnett calls Marvell ‘the liveliest droll of the age, who writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and entertaining a conduct, that from the king to the tradesman, his books were read with great pleasure.’ Charles II. was a more polished judge than these uncouth critics; and, to the credit of his impartiality,—for that witty monarch and his dissolute court were never spared by Marvell, who remained inflexible to his seduction—he deemed Marvell the best prose satirist of the age. But Marvell had other qualities than the freest humour and the finest wit in this ‘newly-refined art,’ which seems to have escaped these grave critics—a vehemence of solemn reproof, and an eloquence of invective, that awes one with the spirit of the modern Junius, and may give some notion of that more ancient satirist, whose writings are said to have so completely answered their design, that, after perusal, their victim hanged himself on the first tree; and in the present case, though the delinquent did not lay violent hands on himself, he did what, for an author, may be considered as desperate a course, ‘withdraw from the town, and cease writing for some years.’
The celebrated work here to be noticed is Marvell's ‘Rehearsal Transprosed;’ a title facetiously adopted from Bayes in ‘The Rehearsal Transposed’ of the Duke of Buckingham. It was written against the works and the person of Dr. Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, whom he designates under the character of Bayes, to denote the incoherence and ridiculousness of his character. Marvell had a peculiar knack of calling names,—it consisted in appropriating a ludicrous character in some popular comedy, and dubbing his adversaries with it. In the same spirit he ridiculed Dr. Turner, of Cambridge, a brother-genius to Parker, by nicknaming him ‘Mr. Smirk, the Divine in Mode,’ the name of the Chaplain in Etherege's ‘Man of Mode,’ and thus, by a stroke of the pen, conveyed an idea of ‘a neat, starched, formal, and forward divine’ [from A.Wood]. This application of a fictitious character to a real one, this christening a man with ridicule, though of no difficult invention, is not a little hazardous to inferior writers; for it requires not less wit than Marvell's to bring out of the real character the ludicrous features which mark the factitious prototype.
Parker himself must have his portrait, and if the likeness be justly hit off, some may be reminded of a resemblance. Mason [see No. 36] applies the epithet of ‘Mitred Dullness’ to him: but although he was at length reduced to railing and to menaces, and finally mortified into silence, this epithet does not suit so hardy and so active an adventurer.
The secret history of Parker may be collected in Marvell [II, p. 181], and his more public one in our honest chronicler, Anthony Wood. Parker was originally educated in strict sectarian principles; a starch Puritan, ‘fasting and praying with the Presbyterian students weekly, and who, for their refection feeding only on thin broth made of oatmeal and water, were commonly called Gruellers.’ Among these, says Marvell, ‘it was observed that he was wont to put more graves [cracklings] than all the rest into his porridge, and was deemed one of the preciousest young men in the University.’ It seems that these mortified saints, both the brotherhood and the sisterhood, held their chief meetings at the house of ‘Bess Hampton, an old and crooked maid that drove the trade of laundry, who, being from her youth very much given to the godly party, as they call themselves, had frequent meetings, especially for those that were her customers.’ Such is the dry humour of honest Anthony, who paints like the Ostade of literary history.1
But the age of sectarism and thin gruel was losing all its coldness in the sunshine of the Restoration; and this ‘preciousest young man,’ from praying and caballing against episcopacy, suddenly acquainted the world, in one of his dedications, that Dr. Ralph Bathurst had ‘rescued him from the chains and fetters of an unhappy education’ [II, p. 184], and, without any intermediate apology, from a sullen sectarian turned a flaming highflyer for the ‘supreme dominion’ of the Church.
It is the after-conduct of Parker that throws light on this rapid change. On speculative points any man may be suddenly converted; for these may depend on facts or arguments which might never have occurred to him before. But when we watch the weathercock chopping with the wind, so pliant to move, and so stiff when fixed—when we observe this ‘preciousest grueller’ clothed in purple, and equally hardy in the most opposite measures—become a favourite with James II., and a furious advocate for arbitrary power; when we see him railing at and menacing those, among whom he had committed as many extravagances as any of them; can we hesitate to decide that this bold, haughty, and ambitious man was one of those who, having neither religion nor morality for a casting weight, can easily fly off to opposite extremes? and whether a puritan or a bishop, we must place his zeal to the same side of his religious ledger—that of the profits of barter!
The quarrel between Parker and Marvell originated in a preface, written by Parker, in which he had poured down his contempt and abuse on his old companions, the Non-conformists. It was then Marvell clipped his wings with his ‘Rehearsal Transprosed;’ his wit and humour were finely contrasted with Parker's extravagances, set off in his declamatory style; of which Marvell wittily describes ‘the volume and circumference of the periods, which, though he takes always to be his chiefest strength, yet, indeed, like too great a line, weakens the defence, and requires too many men to make it good’ [II, p. 183]. The tilt was now opened, and certain masqued knights appeared in the course; they attempted to grasp the sharp and polished weapon of Marvell, to turn it on himself.1 But Marvell, with malicious ingenuity, sees Parker in them all—they so much resembled their master! ‘There were no less,’ says the wit, ‘than six scaramouches together on the stage, all of them of the same gravity and behaviour, the same tone, the same habit, that it was impossible to discern which was the true author of the “Ecclesiastical Polity.” I believe he imitated the wisdom of some other princes, who have sometimes been persuaded by their servants to disguise several others in the regal garb, that the enemy might not know in the battle whom to single’ [II, p. 174]. Parker, in fact, replied to Marvell anonymously, by ‘A Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed,’ with a mild exhortation to the magistrate to crush with the secular arm the pestilent wit, the servant of Cromwell, and the friend of Milton. But this was not all; something else, anonymous too, was despatched to Marvell: it was an extraordinary letter, short enough to have been an epigram, could Parker have written one; but short as it was, it was more in character, for it was only a threat of assassination! It concluded with these words: ‘If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the Eternal God I will cut thy throat.’ Marvell replied to ‘the Reproof,’ which he calls a printed letter, by the second part of ‘the Rehearsal Transprosed;’ and to the unprinted letter, by publishing it on his own title-page.
Of two volumes of wit and broad humour, and of the most galling invective, one part flows so much into another, that the volatile spirit would be injured by an analytical process. But Marvell is now only read by the curious lovers of our literature, who find the strong, luxuriant, though not the delicate, wit of the wittiest age, never obsolete: the reader shall not, however, part from Marvell without some slight transplantations from a soil whose rich vegetation breaks out in every part.
Of the pleasantry and sarcasm, these may be considered as specimens. Parker was both author and licenser of his own work on ‘Ecclesiastical Polity;’ and it appears he got the licence for printing Marvell's first Rehearsal recalled.2 The Church appeared in danger when the doctor discovered he was so furiously attacked. Marvell sarcastically rallies him on his dual capacity:
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 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’ [ibid.]. 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’ [II, p. 183]. 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:
[Quotes II, pp. 171–3.]
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. 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!
[Quotes II, pp. 312–13.]
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.
Accused by Parker of aiming to degrade the clerical character, Marvell declares his veneration for that holy vocation, and that he reflected even on the failings of the men, from whom so much is expected, with indulgent reverence:
[Quotes II, pp. 163, 165.]
And he frames an ingenious apology for the freedom of his humour, in this attack on the morals and person of his adversary:
[Quotes II, pp. 185–6.]
It was not only in these ‘pen-combats’ that this Literary Quarrel proceeded; it seems also to have broken out in the streets; for a tale has been preserved of a rencontre, which shows at once the brutal manners of Parker, and the exquisite wit of Marvell. Parker meeting Marvell in the streets, the bully attempted to shove him from the wall: but, even there, Marvell's agility contrived to lay him sprawling in the kennel; and looking on him pleasantly, told him to ‘lie there for a son of a whore!’ Parker complained to the Bishop of Rochester, who immediately sent for Marvell, to reprimand him; but he maintained that the doctor had so called himself, in one of his recent publications; and pointing to the preface, where Parker declares ‘he is “a true son of his mother, the Church of England:” and if you read further on, my lord, you find he says: “The Church of England has spawned two bastards, the Presbyterians and the Congregationists;” ergo, my lord, he expressly declares that he is the son of a whore!’
Although Parker retreated from any further attack, after the second part of ‘The Rehearsal Transprosed,’ he in truth only suppressed passions to which he was giving vent in secrecy and silence. That, indeed, was not discovered till a posthumous work of his appeared, in which one of the most striking parts is a most disgusting caricature of his old antagonist [see No. 22]. Marvell was, indeed, a republican, the pupil of Milton, and adored his master: but his morals and his manners were Roman—he lived on the turnip of Curtius,1 and he would have bled at Philippi. We do not sympathise with the fierce republican spirit of those unhappy times that scalped the head feebly protected by a mitre or a crown. But the private virtues and the rich genius of such a man are pure from the taint of party. We are now to see how far private hatred can distort, in its hideous vengeance, the resemblance it affects to give after nature. Who could imagine that Parker is describing Marvell in these words?
[Quotes from No. 22.]
And elsewhere he calls him ‘a drunken buffoon,’ and asserts that ‘he made his conscience more cheap than he had formerly made his reputation;’ but the familiar anecdote of Marvell's political honesty, when, wanting a dinner, he declined the gold sent to him by the king, sufficiently replies to the calumniator. Parker, then in his retreat, seems not to have been taught anything like modesty by his silence, as Burnet conjectured; who says, ‘That a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his was’ [see No. 9]. It was even then that the recreant, in silence, was composing the libel, which his cowardice dared not publish, but which his invincible malice has sent down to posterity.
* This is a curious remark of Wood's: How came raillery and satire to be considered as ‘a newly-refined art?’ Has it not, at all periods, been prevalent among every literary people? The remark is, however, more founded on truth than it appears, and arose from Wood's own feelings.
1 Adrian Ostade (1610–85), a Dutch painter noted for realistic depiction of homely scenes and peasant folk.
1 After listing the titles of the answers to RT I, he adds, ‘This was the very Bartlemy-fair of wit!’
2 See Smith, pp. xx–xxv.
1 The substitution of Curtius for Curius Dentatus is in the first edition, and the error is continued by Dove (No. 50) and Coleridge (No. 52). Thompson (No. 38) seems to have been the first to make the allusion but without specifying the general's name.