“The grim Monster, Arbitrary Power,
    The ugliest Giant ever trod the earth,”

infested many breasts, and bred terror.

    “Marvell, the Island’s watchful sentinel,
    Stood in the gap and bravely kept his post.”

The post was one of obvious danger, and

    “Whether Fate or Art untwin’d his thread
    Remains in doubt."[220:1]

The doubt has now been dissipated by the research of an accomplished physician, Dr. Gee, who in 1874 communicated to the Athenaeum (March 7, 1874) an extract from Richard Morton’s {Greek:  Pyretologia} (1692), containing a full account of Marvell’s sickness and death.  Art “untwin’d his thread,” but it was the doctor’s art.  Dr. Gee’s translation of Morton’s medical Latin is as follows:—­

“In this manner was that most famous man Andrew Marvell carried off from amongst the living before his time, to the great loss of the republic, and especially the republic of letters; through the ignorance of an old conceited doctor, who was in the habit on all occasions of raving excessively against Peruvian bark, as if it were a common plague.  Howbeit, without any clear indication, in the interval after a third fit of regular tertian ague, and by way of preparation (so that all things might seem to be done most methodically), blood was copiously drawn from the patient, who was advanced in years.” [Here follow more details of treatment, which I pass over.] “The way having been made ready after this fashion, at the beginning of the next fit, a great febrifuge was given, a draught, that is to say, of Venice treacle, etc.  By the doctor’s orders, the patient was covered up close with blankets, say rather, was buried under them; and composed himself to sleep and sweat, so that he might escape the cold shivers which are wont to accompany the onset of the ague-fit.  He was seized with the deepest sleep and colliquative sweats, and in the short space of twenty-four hours from the time of the ague-fit, he died comatose.  He died, who, had a single ounce of Peruvian bark been properly given, might easily have escaped, in twenty-four hours, from the jaws of the grave and the disease:  and so burning with anger, I informed the doctor, when he told me this story without any sense of shame.”

Marvell was buried on the 18th of August, “under the pews in the south side of St. Giles’s Church in the Fields, under the window wherein is painted on glass a red lion.”  So writes the invaluable Aubrey, who tells us he had the account from the sexton who made the grave.

In 1678 St. Giles’s Church was a brick structure built by Laud.  The present imposing church was built on the site of the old one in 1730-34.

In 1774 Captain Thompson, so he tells us, “visited the grand mausoleum under the church of St. Giles, to search for the coffin in which Mr. Marvell was placed:  in this vault were deposited upwards of a thousand bodies, but I could find no plate of an earlier date than 1722; I do therefore suppose the new church is built upon the former burial place.”