The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature

Abstract

In his polemical prose treatise The Rehearsall Transpros'd: The Second Part, Andrew Marvell upbraids Samuel Parker, then Archdeacon of Canterbury, for his criticism of Marvell's former pamphlets.  Disagreeing principally about the tolerance of religious dissenters, Marvell, in a vitriolic display of poetic wit, accuses Parker of various physiological and intellectual shortcomings that cause him to misinterpret Marvell's writing. Calling Parker "a meer Word-pecker," Marvell address his political advisory's arrogance and corrupt humoral disposition: You have contrary to all Architecture and good Oeconomy made a Snowhouse in your upper Room: which indeed was Philosophically done of you, seeing you bear your head so high as if it were in or above the middle Region, and so you thought it secure from melting. But you did not at the same time consider that your Brain is so hot, that the Wit is dissolv'd by it, and is always dripping away at the Icicles of your Nose. But it freezes again I confess as soon as it falls down, and hence it proceeds that there is no passage in my Book, deep or shallow, but with a chill and key-cold conceit you can ice it in a moment, and slide shere over it without scratches.  