Two Verbal Echoes of John Hall in Marvell's Verse

This article notes two hitherto undiscovered verbal echoes of John Hall in Andrew Marvell's verse. One of Marvell's perhaps most memorable similes is the defining "parallel" of "The Definition of Love." While it was indeed poetically striking to define the concept of passionate life by a cold law of geometry, the simile per se must not have been so far-fetched to Marvell. In other parts of the poem in question, Marvell's definition of love and Hall's definition of "Platonic Love" have geographic comparisons in common, and, while in "An Ode," Hall asks God to regulate his violent temper "Lest from mhy selfe my owne selfe ruine bee," Marvell expresses the impossibility of the lovers' consummation: "Their union would her (i.e. Fate's) ruin be."