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, as the University exercises survive to prove, whilst modern languages, Spanish and Italian for example, were greedily acquired by such an eager spirit as Richard Crashaw, the poet, who came into residence at Pembroke in 1631.  There were problems to be “kept” in the college chapel, lectures to be attended, both public and private, declamations to be delivered, and even in the vacations the scholars were not exempt from “exercises” either in hall or in their tutors’ rooms.  Earnest students read their Greek Testaments, and even their Hebrew Bibles, and filled their note-books, working more hours a day than was good for their health, whilst the idle ones wasted their time as best they could in an unhealthy, over-crowded town, in an age which knew nothing of boating, billiards, or cricket.  A tennis-court there was in Marvell’s time, for in Dr. Worthington’s Diary, under date 3rd of April 1637, it stands recorded that on that day and in that place that learned man received “a dangerous blow on the Eye."[12:2]

The only incident we know of Marvell’s undergraduate days is remarkable enough, for, boy though he was, he seems, like the Gibbon of a later day, to have suddenly become a Roman Catholic.  This occurrence may serve to remind us how, during Marvell’s time at Trinity, the University of Cambridge (ever the precursor in thought-movements) had a Catholic revival of her own, akin to that one which two hundred years afterwards happened at Oxford, and has left so much agreeable literature behind it.  Fuller in his history of the University of Cambridge tells us a little about this highly interesting and important movement:—­

“Now began the University (1633-4) to be much beautified in buildings, every college either casting its skin with the snake, or renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts or at least their fronts and Gatehouses repaired and adorned.  But the greatest alteration was in their Chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of organs.  And seeing musick is one