ember 1765 to Captain Edward Thompson, of whom
more later on, told the captain that until 1635 there was no register of
admissions of ordinary 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,