age of fifteen Mr. Cator, a bookseller in Holborn, London, being on a visit to Westbury Leigh, his native place, met young Marshman, and offered to take him into his shop. The prospect of an unlimited supply of books was too tempting to be resisted. The boy went to London, but after five months' experience of the life of a bookseller's porter, he returned to his parents and his loom. The next ten years of his life were spent quietly in his native village, and in maintaining a character for worth and exemplary conduct. The small dissenting church of the place, to which his father acted as deacon, was of the strictest sect of the Baptists. They hesitated about admitting the young man as a member, regarding human learning, in which every year made him a greater proficient, with extreme suspicion. Eventually after a probation of seven years he quitted Westbury, unbaptized. In 1791 he was married to Hannah Shepherd, and three years later he was offered and accepted the mastership of a school at Broadmead, Bristol. Here he was introduced to Dr. Ryland, president of Bristol academy, at whose recommendation he became a member of the Baptist church at Broadmead. During his five years' residence in Bristol he applied himself to the study of the classics, to which he added Hebrew and Syriac. Private pupils were already augmenting his sources of income and opening a prospect of independence to him, when the perusal of the reports of the Baptist Missionary Society filled him with a desire to labour in that cause in the East. His offer of service was at once accepted by the society, and within three weeks from the time he had resolved on becoming a missionary, he was sailing down the Channel, 1799. His destination was Serampore, where Dr. Carey had a few years before, in the face of many difficulties, founded a mission under the protection of the Danish flag. The East India Company vigilantly opposed attempts to introduce missionaries among the Hindoos, and Marshman with his three companion missionaries and their wives were in fear of being stopped on their way to the Danish settlement. Marshman's history during the remaining thirty-eight years of his life is involved in the history of the Serampore mission, of which an able and elaborate account, written by Mr. John Clark Marshman, was published in London in 1859 in two octavo volumes. A lamentable dispute arose between the brethren of Serampore and the Baptist Society at home. Carey and his friends, in the exercise of the worldly calling of indigo planters, acquired wealth, which they freely used in behalf of the mission. Calumnious reports, however, were spread in England with regard to the luxurious mode of living adopted by the Serampore brethren, and attempts were made on the part of the Home Society to obtain absolute control over the prosperous mission. In 1826 Dr. Marshman visited England with a view to reconcile differences, and settle the question. His energetic and uncompromising character was not to the taste of the leaders of the "Baptist Republic." A complete separation between the mission and the society ensued, which lasted for ten years, to the great injury of the mission and to the great distress of Dr. Marshman, upon whom undeserved obloquy was cast. He returned to India, much cast down by the nature and result of the contest. He continued his labours as a missionary and a writer. In 1833 he, in common with his brethren, suffered great pecuniary losses from the commercial failures in Calcutta. In 1836 his daughter, the wife of the illustrious Havelock, met with an alarming accident, which, together with the knowledge of the approaching dissolution of the Serampore mission, greatly aggravated the nervous complaint from which Dr. Marshman had long suffered. At length, on the 5th of December, 1837, he died in the seventieth year of his age, and was buried at Serampore. For a list of his valuable writings on Chinese and Hindoo literature, and his controversy with Rammohun Roy, see Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual, and J. C. Marshman's Life and Times of Carey: Marshman and Ward, 2 vols. 8vo, 1859.—R. H.
MARSIGLI, Luigi Ferdinando, Count of, a writer of noticeable research, born in Bologna of a patrician family, 10th July, 1658; died there in consequence of an apoplectic attack, 1st November, 1730. At an early age Marsigli was a traveller and a scientific inquirer; distinguished himself in 1683 in a campaign of Austria against the Turks; suffered captivity, and was released; and was in the high road of honour when the surrender of Brisach to the French in 1703, at which fortress he was second in command, brought upon him the crushing sentence of dismissal from all posts and honours, with the breaking of his sword—a sentence generally acknowledged then and since to have been unmerited, and probably designed to screen the commander-in-chief. After this, Marsigli appears almost wholly as a natural philosopher and writer. His chief work, in six volumes, is the "Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus," 1726; giving a topographical, historical, natural-historical, &c., account of that great river: his "Essai Physique de l'Histoire de la Mer," 1711, and "Etat Militaire de l'Empire Ottoman," 1732, also enjoyed high repute in their time. Marsigli was founder of the Institute of Science and Art in Bologna; and gave various proofs of a generous and grateful disposition, as well as of incessant eagerness to learn, and aptitude to observe.—W. M. R.
MARSTON, John, a dramatist of the Elizabethan period, was born about the year 1575. Few authentic particulars can be collected as to his personal history. Anthony à Wood says that he was a student of Corpus Christi college, Oxford. The expressions used in the dedication to his "Malecontent" prove that he was at one time on terms of intimacy with Ben Jonson, to whom it is addressed. They seem to have quarreled soon afterwards; for in the epistle prefixed to his "Sophonisba," produced two years later, Marston glances satirically at the pedantic use which Jonson made of his classical learning—"To transcribe authors," he says, "to quote authorities, and to translate Latin prose orations into English blank verse, hath in this subject been the least aim of my studies." On the other hand Ben Jonson, according to Drummond of Hawthornden, spoke contemptuously of Marston, and said that he had fought him several times; he also satirized him in the Poetaster, under the character of Demetrius. Marston is believed to have been still living in 1633. The titles of his plays, eight in number, are as follows—four tragedies, namely, "Antonio and Mellida," "Antonio's Revenge," "Sophonisba," and "The Insatiate Countess;" one tragi-comedy, "The Malecontent;" and three comedies, "The Dutch Courtesan," "Parasitaster," and "What You Will." Hazlitt says of him, that his forte did not lie in sympathy either with the stronger or softer emotions, but in an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, venting itself either in comic irony or lofty invective. The "Malecontent" is printed in Dodsley's collection of old plays. Besides the above plays, Marston was joint author with Jonson and Chapman of the comedy of Eastward Hoe, for the libels contained in which all three were thrown into prison. We have also from his pen two volumes of miscellaneous writings, mostly satires, which were edited by Bowle in 1764. His satires are roughly versified, and extremely indecent; they consist of three books, under the collective title of "The Scourge of Villany."—T. A.
MARTEL. See Charles Martel.
MARTIALIS, Marcus Valerius, the epigrammatist, was born at Bilbilis in Spain, March 1, a.d. 43. He came to Rome in 66, and seems to have resided there until 100, in which year he returned to Bilbilis, his native place. Here he remained until 104, which is the latest notice we find of him. Probably he died soon afterwards. From the Emperor Domitian he obtained the jus trium liberorum, with the rank of eques and of tribune. He seems at one time to have been in pretty easy circumstances, as we find him speaking of his town house and his country villa at Nomentum. He acquired some property too with his wife, Marcella; yet he frequently complains of poverty, and we may infer that his love of luxury and pleasure kept him in continual embarrassments. Pliny the Younger mentions Martial's death in one of his letters as having just occurred; and speaks of him with much regret as a very clever and ingenious writer, and one for whom he had a high regard. Martial seems to have lived on terms of friendship with some of the most distinguished writers of his age, as Juvenal, Pliny, Quintilian, Fronto, Silius, and Valerius Flaccus. He inveighs against the cruelties of Nero, but flatters the reigning tyrant Domitian with the most servile adulation. After the death of Domitian we find him vilifying his memory, and burning incense to Nerva and Trajan. It does not appear, however, that his venal praises obtained any recognition from those emperors. The works of Martial consist of fourteen books, comprising above fifteen hundred epigrams. There is also a "Liber de spectaculis," containing thirty-three epigrams on the games of the amphitheatre, commonly ascribed to Martial. The first nine books seem to have been mostly composed and published in the reign of Domitian; the greater part of the remainder under Nerva and Trajan. He was perhaps
