through their ecclesiastical camp, to beat up the pulpit drums against popery. Nay, even so much that there was care taken too for arming the poor readers, that though they came short of preachers in point of efficacy, yet they might be enabled to do something in point of common security. So that, though for so many years, those your superiors had forgot there was any such thing in the nation as a popish recusant, though polemical and controversial divinity had for so long but hung up in the halls, like the rusty obsolete armour of our ancestors for monuments of antiquity, and for derision rather than service; all on a sudden (as if the 15th of March had been the 5th of November) happy was he that could climb up first, to get down one of the old cuirasses, or a habergeon that had been worn in the days of queen Elizabeth. Great variety there was, and an heavy doo. Some clapped it on all rusty as it was; others fell of oiling and furbishing their armour; some pissed in their barrels, others spit in their pans, to scour them. Here you might see one put on his helmet the wrong way; there one buckle on a back in place of a breast. Some by mistake catched up a Socinian or Arminian argument, and some a Papist to fight a Papist. Here a dwarf lost in the accoutrements of a giant: there a Don Quixote, in an equipage of differing pieces, and of several parishes. Never was there such incon

gruity and non-conformity in their furniture. One ran to borrow a sword of Calvin; this man for a musket from Beza; that for a bandeleers even from Kerkerman. But when they came to seek for match, and bullet, and powder, there was none to be had. The fanaticks had bought it all up, and made them pay for it most unconscionably, and through the nose. And no less sport was it to see the leaders. Few could tell how to give the word of command, nor understood to drill a company. They were as unexpert as their soldiers aukward; and the whole was as pleasant a spectacle, as the exercising of the trained bands in -shire.

The second part of this performance is said in the title page to have been occasioned by two letters: the first printed by a nameless author, intitled "A Reproof," &c. The second left for him at a friend's house dated Nov. 3. 1673, subscribed J. G. and conclu ding with these words: "If thou darest to print or publish any lie or libel against Dr.. Parker, by the eternal God I will cut thy throat."

The following passage is valuable chiefly før

the handsome manner in which Marvel speaks of Milton when in disgrace, after the restoration.

You do three times at least in your Reproof, and in your "Transproser Rehearsed," well nigh half the book through, run upon an author, J. M. which does not a little offend me. For why should any other man's reputation suffer in a contest betwixt you and me? But it is because you resolved to suspect that he had an hand in my former book, wherein, whether you deceive yourself or no, you deceive others extremely. For by chance, I had not seen him of two years before; but after I undertook writing, I did more carefully avoid either visiting or sending to him, lest I should any way involve him in my consequences. And you might have understood, or I am sure your friend, the author of the "Common Places," could have told you, (he too had a flash at J. M. upon my account) that had he took you in hand, you would have had cause to repent the occasion, and not escaped so easily as you did under my transprosal. But I take it, moreover, very ill, that you should have so mean an opinion of me, as not to think me competent to write such a simple book as that, without any assistance. It is a sign (however you upbraid me often as your old acquaintance) that you did not know me well, and that

we had not much conversation together. But because in your 115 p. you are so particular, you know a friend of ours, &c. intending that J. M. and his Answer to Salmasius, I think it here seasonable to acquit my promise to you in giving the reader a short trouble concerning my first acquaintance with you. J. M. was, and is a man of great learning and sharpness of wit as any man. It was his misfortune, living in a tumultuous time, to be tossed on the wrong side, and he writ flagrante bello, certain dangerous treatises. His books of divorce, I know not whether you may have use of; but those upon which you take him at advantage, were of no other nature than that which I mentioned to you, writ by your own father; only with this difference, that your father's, which I have by me, was written with the same design, but with much less wit or judgment, for which there was no remedy; unless you will supply his judgment with his High Court of Justice. At his majesty's happy return, J. M. did partake, even as you yourself did, for all your huffing, of his regal clemency, and has ever since expiated himself in a retired silence. It was after that, I well remember it, that being one day at his house, I there first met you, and accidentally. Since that I have been scarce four or five times in your company; but it were my foresight or my good fortune, I never contracted any friendship or confidence with you. But then it was, when you,

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as I told you, wandered up and down Moorfields, astrologizing upon the duration of his majesty's government, that you frequented J. M. incessantly, and haunted his house day by day. What discourses you there used, he is too generous to remember. But he never having in the least provoked you, for you to insult thus over his old age, to traduce him by your scaramuccios, and in your own person as a schoolmaster, who was born and hath lived much more ingenuously and liberally than yourself; to have done all this, and lay at last my simple book to his charge, without ever taking care to inform yourself better, which you had so easy opportunity to do; nay, when you yourself too have said, to my knowledge, that you saw no such great matter in it, but that I might be the author of it; it is inhu manly and inhospitably done, and will I hope be a warning to all others, as it is to me, to avoid (I will not say such a Judas) but a man that creeps into all companies, to jeer, trepan, and betray them.