Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/278

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MAELOWE


MAESTON


reliable dealers in art treasures. He was intimate with Eossetti and Whistler, who purchased through him, and was advisor to most of the great collectors. The obituary notice in the Times (May 8, 1918) stresses his "probity" as well as his high artistic skill. He gave very generously to the museums and public collections, and was greatly esteemed. He followed the creed of Spinoza, of whom he was a close student. D. May 6, 1918.

MARLOWE, Christopher, poet and dramatist. B. Feb. 8, 1564. Ed. King s School, Canterbury, and Cambridge (Corpus Christi College). He settled in London and began to write for the stage. In 1590 he produced his Tamburlane, which was far in advance of all the dramatic literature of the age ; and it was worthily seconded by his Tragedy of Dr. Faustus (1594). Marlowe is admittedly the greatest of English dramatists before Shakespeare, and he published also verse and translations. Writers of the time speak of him as an Atheist, and, although the name was then loosely applied to Freethinkers, it seems probable that Marlowe was an Atheist or Agnostic. With Sir Walter Ealeigh and others, he formed the first Eationalist group in English history, and their discussions were so violently anti-Christian that a few weeks before his death the Privy Council decided to proceed against him. He escaped the terrible penalties of heresy by being killed in a quarrel on June 1, 1593.

MARMONTEL, Jean Frangois, French Encyclopaedist. B. July 11, 1723. Ed. Toulouse. He entered the clergy, and was appointed professor at the Bernardine Seminary, Toulouse. Adopting Deism, he quitted the Church and, at the invitation of Voltaire, settled at Paris and wrote for the stage. He was especially successful in comedy, and was admitted to the Academy in 1763, and appointed historiographer of France in 1771. His novel, Belisaire (1766), was condemned for its heterodoxy by the Sorbonne, and his Elements de lit- 483


terature (6 vols., 1787) contains the very numerous articles he contributed to the Dictionnaire Encyclopedique. To modern readers he is best known by his Conies moraux (2 vols., 1761). His collected works appeared in 19 vols. (1818-19). D. Dec. 31, 1799.

MARRYATT, Thomas, M.D., physician. B. 1730. He was educated for the Presbyterian ministry, and made such progress that he could read any Greek or Latin author before he was nine years old. Abandoning the creed for Deism, he studied medicine at Edinburgh and in various Continental schools, and for some years practised in America. From 1766 he practised in various towns of Ireland and England. Besides a few medical works he wrote a Eationalistic Philosophy of Masons. A sketch of his life is prefixed to the 1805 edition of his Therapeutics, and it is said that, while he was commonly regarded aa an Atheist, he was a Deist (p. xx). D. May 29, 1792.

MARSHALL, Henry Rutgers, M.A., D.Sc., American architect and writer. B. July 22, 1852. Ed. Columbia University. He has been in practice as an architect at New York since 1878. In 1894-95 he lectured on aesthetics at Columbia, and in 1906-07 and 1915-17 at Yale University. He was President of the American Psycho logical Association in 1907, and is a, member of the American Philosophical Society. His chief works, which are- profound and scholarly, are Pain, Pleasure,, and ^Esthetics (1894), Instinct and Reason (1898), and Consciousness (1909). In the latter work Dr. Marshall professes a Theistic or Pantheistic creed, rejecting the belief in personal immortality as " a crude and inadequate expression of the whole truth." " As much of myself as is of the Eternal will join with it in death," he says, (p. 657).

MARSTON, Philip Bourke, poet. B.. Aug. 13, 1850. An injury to the eyes,.

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