he had never brewed, but that which he
had studied some compitent time before." At the age of fifteen, Andrew
Marvell was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. But he had not long been
there when he withdrew himself, lured, as some authorities state, by
wiles of the wicked Jesuits; repulsed, as others say, by severities of
the head of his college. Leaving the university, he set out for London,
where his father, who hastened thither in search of him, found him
examining some old volumes on a book-stall. He was prevailed to return
to his college, where, in 1638, he took his degree as bachelor of arts.

On the completion of his studies and death of his father, he travelled
through Holland, France, and Italy. Whilst abroad he began to produce
those satirical verses such as were destined to render him famous.
One of his earliest efforts in this direction was aimed at the Abbe de
Maniban, a learned ecclesiastic, whose chief fault in Marvell's eyes lay
in the fact of his professing to judge characters from handwriting.

Whilst in Italy, Andrew Marvell met John Milton, and they having many
tastes and convictions in common, became fast friends. In 1653, the
former returned to England, and for some time acted as tutor to Mistress
Fairfax; he being an excellent scholar, and a great master of the Latin
tongue. He now led a peaceful and obscure life until 1657. In that
year, Milton, "laying aside," as he wrote, "those jealousies, and that
emulation which mine own condition might suggest to me," introduced him
to Bradshaw; soon after which he was made assistant-secretary to Milton,
who was then in the service of Cromwell.

He had not been long engaged in this capacity, when the usurper died;
and Marvell's occupation being gone, the goodly burgesses of the town
of Hull, who loved him well, elected him as their representative in
parliament, for which service, in accordance with a custom of the time,
he was paid. The salary, it is true, was not large, amounting to two
shillings a day for borough members; yet when kindly feeling and honest
satisfaction mutually existed between elector and representative, as in
Marvell's case, the wage was at times supplemented by such acceptable
additions as home-cured pork and home-brewed ale, "We must first give
you thanks," wrote Marvell on one occasion to his constituents, on the
receipt of a cask of beer, "for the kind present you have pleased to
send us, which will give occasion to us to remember yo