Andrew Marvell’s father, the Reverend Andrew Marvell, died from drowning after a boating accident, thereby possibly curtailing Marvell’s academic career and leading to his taking religious orders. Marvell probably studied at the Hull Grammar School; at the age of twelve, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned his B.A. (“Andrew Marvell”). He secured a position as tutor to the daughter of Lord Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671), a Parliamentarian general. Marvell’s Parliamentarian sympathies may have won him his subsequent positions, as tutor to William Dutton, the ward of Oliver Cromwell; as Latin Secretary, assisting John Milton in translations and diplomatic correspondence; and as Minister of Parliament, a position Marvell held until his death but that began before the Restoration. As a politician, Marvell seems to have promoted the interests of religious and political dissenters, though he did not actively oppose the Restoration. He may have saved Milton’s life after the Restoration, a time of reprisal when many “rebels” were executed. His poem “On Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost,” praises Milton’s genius at a time when Milton was exiled for his political activities. Scholars have sometimes divided Marvell’s work into pre- and post-Restoration, with most of his poetry being placed pre- and most of his prose, particularly his political writing, being placed post-Restoration. All of his writing is characterized by its intellect, wit, and often abstruse logic. John Dryden noted Marvell’s tendency towards the abstract, especially when dealing with emotional subjects. In the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) linked Marvell with the metaphysical poets in their uniting of reason and emotion. Like that of other metaphysical poets, such as John Donne’s, Marvell’s poetry uses puns, paradoxes, and incongruous images. What seems unique to Marvell is his willingness to maintain ambiguity, to give all sides of a subject their due, to complicate rather than simplify. In “To His Coy Mistress,” he can adore his mistress’s eyes, forehead, and “the rest” (16) yet still roll all her sweetness and strength into “one ball” (42).