More mathematical merriment…
As we revisit our premises, we might recall that it was on this date in 1678 that the Gazette of London offered a reward to anyone who could identify the author of an electrifying pamphlet called “An Account of the Growth of Popery.” It was subsequently revealed to be the work of Andrew Marvell.
While we tend to remember Marvell as the creator of poems like “To His Coy Mistress,” he was known in his own time as a political figure. As a young man, Marvell served as tutor to Cromwell’s son and assistant to Milton. But Marvell became a supporter of the Restoration, a position that he pursued from a seat in Parliament that he occupied from 1659, the year of Cromwell’s death, until his own. By the 1670s, Marvell had become a prolific, albeit largely anonymous, pamphleteer.
Indeed, we know Marvell as poet only because his housekeeper, pretending to be his widow, published “Miscellaneous Poems,” the only collection of his poems, in 1681– three years after his death.
