“By Lucan Driv'n About”: A Jonsonian Marvell's Lucanic Milton

Abstract

Specialists may recall Andrew Marvell's defense of John Milton in The Second Part of The Rehearsall Transpros'd against the attacks of Samuel Parker, once an associate of sorts but by 1673 a champion of religious intolerance. Parker had written in his Reproof that The Rehearsall Transpros'd afforded “as good Precedents for Rebellion and King-killing, as any we meet with in the writings of J.M.”; and toward the end of The Second Part Marvell makes a point of rebutting this claim as yet another instance of Parker's malicious immoderation. He allows that it was Milton's “misfortune, living in a tumultuous time, to be toss'd on the wrong side, and [that] he writ Flagrante bello certain dangerous Treatises.”