’It is such a thing, as cannot but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility, which is otherwise decent to be used in speaking of the differences of human opinions about divine matters; were it either open Juadism, or plain Turkery, or, there is yet a certain Bona Fides in the most extravagant belief, and the sincerity of an erroneous profession may render it more pardonable:  But this is a compound of all the three, an extract of whatever is most ridiculous or impious in them, incorporated with more peculiar absurdities of its own, in which those were deficient; and all this deliberately contrived, and knowingly carried on, by the solid imposture of priests, under the name of Christianity.’

This great man died, not without strong suspicions of being poisoned, August 16, 1678, in the 58th year of his age, and was interred in the church of St. Giles’s in the Fields; and in the year 1688 the town of Kingston upon Hull contributed a sum of money to erect a monument over him, in St. Giles’s church, for which an epitaph was composed by an able hand; but the minister of that church, piously forbad both the inscription and monument to be placed there.

Mr. Wood tells us, that in his conversation, he was very modest, and of few words; and Mr. Cooke observes, ’that he was very reserved among people he did not very well know; but a most delightful, and improving companion amongst his friends.’

In the year 1680, his miscellaneous poems were published, to which is prefixed this advertisement.  ’These are to certify every ingenious reader, that all these poems, as also the other things in this book contained, are printed according to the exact copies of my late dear husband, under his own hand writing, both found since his death, among his other papers.

Witness my hand,

Mary Marvel.

But Mr. Cooke informs us, ’that these were published with a mercenary view; and indeed not at all to the honour of the deceased, by a woman with whom he lodged, who hoped by this stratagem to share in what he left behind him.’

He was never married, and the same gentleman observes in another place, that in the editions of 1681, there are such gross errors, especially in the Latin Poems, as make several lines unintelligible; and that in the volume of Poems on Affairs of State, the same mistakes are as frequent; and in those, some pieces are attributed to our author, which he never wrote.  Most of his Poems printed in Dryden’s Miscellanies are so imperfect, that whole stanzas are omitted in many places.

These Mr. Cooke has restored in his edition of the works of Andrew Marvel, Esq; printed at London 1725, in two volumes, and corrected such faults as in either of the two former editions obscure the sense:  in this edition are also added, some poems from original manuscripts.  Great care has likewise been taken by Mr. Cooke, to retrench such pieces as he was sure were not genuine.