Andrew Marvell and the 'painter satires': a computational approach to their authorship

This article applies the methods of computational stylistics to a notable problem of attribution. Edmund Waller's eulogistic 'Instructions to a Painter' (1665) became the model for a succession of 'painter satires'. Some of them have been attributed to Andrew Marvell but the external evidence is uncertain. The computational evidence now offered suggests that the Second and Third Advices and the Last Instructions are Marvell's work but that the Fourth and Fifth Advices are not. Along with the literary and historical evidence presented by George deF. Lord (1963) and Annabel Patterson (2000), these new findings also reinforce the belief that Bodleian MS Eng. poet. d. 49 is a reliable locus of Marvell's verse.