A CIVIL SERVANT IN THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH
When Andrew Marvell first made John Milton's acquaintance is not known.
They must both have had common friends at or belonging to Cambridge.
Fairfax may have made the two men known to each other, although it is
just as likely that Milton introduced Marvell to Fairfax. All we know is
that when the engagement at Nunappleton House came to an end, Marvell,
being then minded to serve the State in some civil capacity, applied to
the Secretary for Foreign Tongues for what would now be called a
testimonial, which he was fortunate enough to obtain in the form of a
letter to the Lord-President of the Council, John Bradshaw. Milton seems
always to have liked Bradshaw, who was not generally popular even on his
own side, and in the _Defensio Secunda pro populo Anglicano_ extols his
character and attainments in sonorous latinity. Bradshaw had become in
February 1649 the first President of the new Council of State, which,
after the disappearance of the king and the abolition of the House of
Lords, took over the burden of the executive, and claimed the right to
scrape men's consciences by administering to anybody it chose an oath
requiring them to approve of what the House of Commons had done against
the king, and of their abolition of kingly government and of the House
of Peers, and that the legislative and supreme power was wholly in the
House of Commons.
Before the creation of this Council the duties of Latin Secretary to the
Parliament had been discharged by Georg Rudolph Weckherlin, a German
diplomat who had married an Englishwoman. He retired in bad health at
this time, and Milton was appointed to his place in 1649. When, later
on, the sight of the most illustrious of all our civil servants failed
him, Weckherlin returned to the office as Milton's assistant. In
December 1652 ill-health again compelled Weckherlin's retirement.[49:1]
Milton's letter to Bradshaw, who had made his home at Eton, is dated
February 21, 1653, and is as follows:--
"MY LORD,--But that it would be an interruption to the
public wherein your studies are perpetually employed, I should now
and then venture to supply thus my enforced absence with a line or
two, though it were onely my business, and that would be no slight
one, to make my due acknowledgments of your many favours; which I
both do at this time and ever shall; and have this farther, which I
thought my part to let you know of, that there will be with you
to-morrow upon some occasion of business a gentleman whose name is
Mr. Marvile, a man whom both by report and the converse I have had
with him of singular desert for the State to make use of, who also
offers himself, if there be any employment for him. His father was
the Minister of Hull, and he hath spent four years abroad in Holland,
France, Italy, and Spain to very good purpose, as I believe, and the
gaining of these four languages, besides he is a scholer and
well-read in the Latin and Greek authors, and no doubt of an approved
conversation, for he now comes lately out of the house of the Lord
Fairfax, who was Generall, where he was intrusted to give some
instructions in the languages to the Lady, his daughter. If upon the
death of Mr. Weckerlyn the Councell shall think that I shall need any
assistance in the performance of my place (though for my part I find
no encumbrance of that which belongs to me, except it be in point of
attendance at Conferences with Ambassadors, which I must confess in
my condition I am not fit for) it would be hard for them to find a
man so fit every way for that purpose as this gentleman: one who, I
believe, in a short time would be able to do them as much service as
Mr. Ascan. This, my Lord, I write sincerely without any other end
than to perform my duty to the publick in helping them to an humble
servant; laying aside those jealousies and that emulation which mine
own condition might suggest to me by bringing in such a coadjutor;
and remain, my Lord, your most obliged and faithful servant,
JOHN MILTON.
"_Feb. 21, 1652_ (O.S.)."
Addressed: "For the Honourable the Lord Bradshawe."
No handsomer testimonial than this was ever penned. It was unsuccessful.
When Milton wrote to Bradshaw, Weckherlin was in fact dead, and on his
retirement in the previous December, John Thurloe, the very handy
Secretary of the Council, had for the time assumed Weckherlin's duties,
and obtained on that score an addition to his salary. No actual vacancy,
therefore, occurred on Weckherlin's death. None the less, shortly
afterwards, Philip Meadows, also a Cambridge man, was appointed Milton's
assistant, and Marvell had to wait four years longer for his place.
When Marvell's connection with Eton first began is not to be
ascertained. His friend, John Oxenbridge, who had been driven from his
tutorship at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, by Laud in 1634 to
"Where the remote Bermudas ride,"
but had returned home, became in 1652 a Fellow of Eton College. Oliver
St. John, who at this time was Chancellor of the University of
Cambridge, and had married Oxenbridge's sister, was known to Marvell,
and may have introduced him to his brother-in-law. At all events Marvell
frequently visited Eton, where, however, he had the good sense to
frequent not merely the cloisters, but the poor lodgings where the "ever
memorable" John Hales, ejected from his fellowship, spent the last years
of his life.
"I account it no small honour to have grown up into some part of his
acquaintance and conversed awhile with the living remains of one of
the clearest heads and best prepared breasts in Christendom."[51:1]
Hales died in 1656, and his _Golden Remains_ were first published three
years later. Marvell's words of panegyric are singularly well chosen. It
is a curious commentary upon the confused times of the Civil War and
Restoration that perhaps never before, and seldom, if ever, since, has
England contained so many clear heads and well-prepared breasts as it
did then. Small indeed is the influence of men of thought upon their
immediate surroundings.
The Lord Bradshaw, we know, had a home in Eton, and on the occasion of
one of Marvell's evidently frequent visits to the Oxenbridges, Milton
entrusted him with a letter to Bradshaw and a presentation copy of the
_Secunda defensio_. Marvell delivered both letter and book, and seems at
once to have informed the distinguished author that he had done so. But
alas for the vanity of the writing man! The sublime poet, who in his
early manhood had composed _Lycidas_, and was in his old age to write
_Paradise Lost_, demanded further and better particulars as to the
precise manner in which the chief of his office received, not only the
book, but the letter which accompanied it. Nobody is now left to think
much of Bradshaw, but in 1654 he was an excellent representative of the
class Carlyle was fond of describing as the _alors celebre_. Prompted by
this desire, Milton must have written to Marvell hinting, as he well
knew how to do, his surprise at the curtness of his friend's former
communication, and Marvell's reply to this letter has come down to us.
It is Marvell's glory that long before _Paradise Lost_ he recognised the
essential greatness of the blind secretary, and his letter is a fine
example of the mode of humouring a great man. Be it remembered, as we
read, that this letter was not addressed to one of the greatest names in
literature, but to a petulant and often peevish scholar, living of
necessity in great retirement, whose name is never once mentioned by
Clarendon, and about whom the voluminous Thurloe, who must have seen him
hundreds of times, has nothing to say except that he was "a blind man
who wrote Latin letters." Odder still, perhaps, Richard Baxter, whose
history of his own life and times is one of the most informing books in
the world, never so much as mentions the one and only man whose name
can, without any violent sense of unfitness, be given to the age about
which Baxter was writing so laboriously.
"HONOURED SIR,--I did not satisfie my self in the account I
gave you of presentinge your Book to my Lord, although it seemed to
me that I writ to you all which the messenger's speedy returne the
same night from Eaton would permit me; and I perceive that, by reason
of that hast, I did not give you satisfaction neither concerninge the
delivery of your Letter at the same time. Be pleased therefore to
pardon me and know that I tendered them both together. But my Lord
read not the Letter while I was with him, which I attributed to our
despatch, and some other businesse tendinge thereto, which I
therefore wished ill to, so farr as it hindred an affaire much better
and of greater importance, I mean that of reading your Letter. And to
tell you truly mine own imagination, I thought that he would not open
it while I was there, because he might suspect that I, delivering it
just upon my departure, might have brought in it some second
proposition like to that which you had before made to him by your
Letter to my advantage. However, I assure myself that he has since
read it, and you, that he did then witnesse all respecte to your
person, and as much satisfaction concerninge your work as could be
expected from so cursory a review and so sudden an account as he
could then have of it from me. Mr. Oxenbridge, at his returne from
London, will, I know, give you thanks for his book, as I do with all
acknowledgement and humility for that you have sent me. I shall now
studie it even to the getting of it by heart; esteeming it, according
to my poore judgment (which yet I wish it were so right in all things
else), as the most compendious scale for so much to the height of the
Roman Eloquence, when I consider how equally it turnes and rises with
so many figures it seems to me a Trajan's columne, in whose winding
ascent we see imboss'd the severall monuments of your learned
victoryes: And Salmatius and Morus make up as great a triumph as that
of Decebalus, whom too, for ought I know, you shall have forced, as
Trajan the other, to make themselves away out of a just desperation.
I have an affectionate curiousity to know what becomes of Colonell
Overton's businesse. And am exceeding glad that Mr. Skynner is got
near you, the happinesse which I at the same time congratulate to him
and envie, there being none who doth, if I may so say, more jealously
honour you then, Honoured Sir, Your most affectionate humble servant,
ANDREW MARVELL.
"Eaton, _June 2, 1654._"
Addressed: "For my most honoured friend,
John Milton, Esquire, Secretarye
for the Forrain affaires
at his house in Petty France,
Westminster."
To conclude Marvell's Eton experiences; in 1657, and very shortly before
his obtaining his appointment as Milton's assistant in the place of
Philip Meadows, who was sent on a mission to Lisbon, Marvell was chosen
by the Lord-Protector to be tutor at Eton to Cromwell's ward, Mr.
Dutton, and took up his residence with his pupil with the Oxenbridges.
The following letter, addressed by Marvell to Oliver, will be read with
interest:--
"May it please your Excellence,--It might, perhaps, seem fit for me
to seek out words to give your Excellence thanks for myself. But,
indeed, the only civility which it is proper for me to practice with
so eminent a person is to obey you, and to perform honestly the work
that you have set me about. Therefore I shall use the time that your
Lordship is pleased to allow me for writing, onely for that purpose
for which you have given me it; that is, to render you an account of
Mr. Dutton. I have taken care to examine him several times in the
presence of Mr. Oxenbridge, as those who weigh and tell over money
before some witnesse ere they take charge of it; for I thought that
there might be possibly some lightness in the coyn, or errour in the
telling, which hereafter I should be bound to make good. Therefore,
Mr. Oxenbridge is the best to make your Excellency an impartial
relation thereof: I shall only say, that I shall strive according to
my best understanding (that is, according to those rules your
Lordship hath given me) to increase whatsoever talent he may have
already. Truly, he is of gentle and waxen disposition; and God be
praised, I cannot say he hath brought with him any evil impression;
and I shall hope to set nothing into his spirit but what may be of a
good sculpture. He hath in him two things that make youth most easy
to be managed,--modesty, which is the bridle to vice; and emulation,
which is the spur to virtue. And the care which your Excellence is
pleased to take of him is no small encouragement and shall be so
represented to him; but, above all, I shall labour to make him
sensible of his duty to God; for then we begin to serve faithfully,
when we consider He is our master. And in this, both he and I owe
infinitely to your Lordship, for having placed us in so godly a
family as that of Mr. Oxenbridge, whose doctrine and example are like
a book and a map, not only instructing the ear, but demonstrating to
the eye, which way we ought to travell; and Mrs. Oxenbridge has
looked so well to him, that he hath already much mended his
complexion; and now she is ordering his chamber, that he may delight
to be in it as often as his studys require. For the rest, most of
this time hath been spent in acquainting ourselves with him; and
truly he is chearfull, and I hope thinks us to be good company. I
shall, upon occasion, henceforward inform your Excellence of any
particularities in our little affairs, for so I esteem it to be my
duty. I have no more at present, but to give thanks to God for your
Lordship, and to beg grace of Him, that I may approve myself, Your
Excellency's most humble and faithful servant,
ANDREW MARVELL.
"Windsor, _July 28, 1653_.
"Mr. Dutton[55:1] presents his most humble service to your
Excellence."
Something must now be said of Marvell's literary productions during this
period, 1652-1657. It was in 1653 that he began his stormy career as an
anonymous political poet and satirist. The Dutch were his first victims,
good Protestants though they were. Marvell never liked the Dutch, and
had he lived to see the Revolution must have undergone some qualms.
In 1652 the Commonwealth was at war with the United Provinces. Trade
jealousy made the war what politicians call "inevitable." This jealousy
of the Dutch dates back to Elizabeth, and to the first stirring in the
womb of time of the British navy. This may be readily perceived if we
read Dr. John Dee's "Petty Navy Royal," 1577, and "A Politic Plat (plan)
for the Honour of the Prince," 1580, and, somewhat later in date,
"England's Way to Win Wealth," 1614.[56:1]
These short tracts make two things quite plain--first, the desire to get
our share of the foreign fishing trade, then wholly in the hands of the
Dutch; and second, the recognition that England was a sea-empire,
dependent for its existence upon a great navy manned by the seafaring
inhabitants of our coasts.
The enormous fishing trade done in our own waters by the Dutch, the
splendid fleet of fishing craft with twenty thousand handy sailors on
board, ready by every 1st of June to sail out of the Maas, the Texel,
and the Vlie, to catch herring in the North Sea, excited admiration,
envy, and almost despair.
"O, slothful England and careless countrymen! look but on these
fellows that we call the plump Hollanders! Behold their diligence in
fishing and our most careless negligence! Six hundred of these
fisherships and more be great Busses, some six score tons, most of
them be a hundred tons, and the rest three score tons and fifty tons;
the biggest of them having four and twenty men, some twenty men, and
some eighteen or sixteen men apiece. So there cannot be in this fleet
of People no less than twenty thousand sailors.... No king upon the
earth did ever see such a fleet of his own subjects at any time, and
yet this fleet is there and then yearly to be seen. A most worthy
sight it were, if they were my own countrymen, yet have I taken
pleasure in being amongst them, to behold the neatness of their ships
and fishermen, how every man knoweth his own place, and all labouring
merrily together.[57:1]
"Now, in our sum of fishermen, let us see what vent have we for our
fish in other countries, and what commodities and corn is brought
into this Kingdom? And what ships are set in work by them whereby
mariners are best employed. Not one. It is pitiful! ... This last
year at Yarmouth there were three hundred idle men that could get
nothing to do, living very poor for lack of employment, which most
gladly would have gone to sea in Pinks if there had been any for them
to go in.... And this last year the Hollanders did lade 12 sail of
Holland ships with red herrings at Yarmouth for Civita Vecchia,
Leghorn and Genoa and Marseilles and Toulon. Most of these being
laden by the English merchants. So that if this be suffered the
English owners of ships shall have but small employment for
them."[57:2]
Nor was the other aspect of the case lost sight of. How can a great navy
necessary for our sea-empire be manned otherwise than by a race of brave
sea-faring men, accustomed from their infancy to handle boats?
"Fourthly, how many thousands of soldiers of all degrees would be by
these means not only hardened well to brook all rage and disturbance
of sea, but also would be well practised and trained to great
perfection of understanding all manner of fight and service of sea,
so that in time of great need that expert and hardy crew of some
thousands of sea-soldiers would be to this realm a treasure
incomparable.[58:1]
"We see the Hollanders being well fed in fishing affairs and stronger
and lustier than the sailors who use the long Southern voyages, but
these courageous, young, lusty, strong-fed younkers that shall be
bred in the Busses, when His Majesty shall have occasion for their
service in war against the enemy, will be fellows for the nonce! and
will put more strength to an iron crow at a piece of great ordnance
in training of a cannon, or culvining with the direction of the
experimented master Gunner, then two or three of the forenamed
surfeited sailors. And in distress of wind-grown sea and foul
winter's weather, for flying forward to their labour, for pulling in
a top-sail or a sprit-sail, or shaking off a bonnet in a dark night!
for wet or cold cannot make them shrink nor stain, that the North
Seas and the Busses and Pinks have dyed in the grain for such
purposes."[58:2]
The years, as they went by, only served to increase English jealousy of
the Dutch, who not only fished our water but did the carrying trade of
the world. It was no rare sight to see Yarmouth full of Dutch bottoms,
and Dutch sailors loading them with English goods.
In the early days of the Commonwealth the painfulness of the situation
was accentuated by the fact that some of our colonies or plantations, as
they were then called--Virginia and the Barbadoes, for example--stuck to
the king and gave a commercial preference to the Dutch, shipping their
produce to all parts of the world exclusively in Dutch bottoms. This was
found intolerable, and in October 1651 the Long Parliament, nearing its
violent end, passed the first Navigation Act, of which Ranke says: "Of
all the acts ever passed in Parliament, it is perhaps the one which
brought about the most important results for England and the
world."[59:1]
The Navigation Act provided "that all goods from countries beyond Europe
should be imported into England in English ships only; and all European
goods either in English ships or in ships belonging to the countries
from which these articles originally came."
This was a challenge indeed.
Another perpetual source of irritation was the Right of Search, that is,
the right of stopping neutral ships and searching their cargoes for
contraband. England asserted this right as against the Dutch, who, as
the world's carriers, were most subject to the right, and not
unnaturally denied its existence.
War was declared in 1652, and made the fame of two great admirals, Blake
and Van Tromp. Oliver's spirit was felt on the seas, and before many
months were over England had captured more than a thousand Dutch trading
vessels, and brought business to a standstill in Amsterdam--then the
great centre of commercial interests. When six short years afterwards
the news of Cromwell's death reached that city, its inhabitants greatly
rejoiced, crowding the streets and crying "the Devil is dead."
Andrew Marvell was impregnated with the new ideas about sea-power. A
great reader and converser with the best intellects of his time, and a
Hull man, he had probably early grasped the significance of Bacon's
illuminating saying in the famous essay on the _True Greatness of
Kingdoms and Estates_ (first printed in 1612), "that he that commands
the sea is at great liberty and may take as much and as little of the
war as he will." Cromwell, though not the creator of our navy, was its
strongest inspiration until Nelson, and no feature of his great
administration so excited Marvell's patriotic admiration as the
Lord-Protector's sleepless energy in securing and maintaining the
command of the sea.
In Marvell's poem, first published as a broadsheet in 1655, entitled
_The First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the
Lord-Protector_, he describes foreign princes soundly rating their
ambassadors for having misinformed them as to the energies of the new
Commonwealth:--
"'Is this,' saith one, 'the nation that we read
Spent with both wars, under a Captain dead!
Yet rig a navy while we dress us late
And ere we dine rase and rebuild a state?
What oaken forests, and what golden mines,
What mints of men--what union of designs!
...
Needs must we all their tributaries be
Whose navies hold the sluices of the sea!
_The ocean is the fountain of command_,
But that once took, we captives are on land;
And those that have the waters for their share
Can quickly leave us neither earth nor air.'"
Marvell's aversion to the Dutch was first displayed in the rough lines
called _The Character of Holland_, published in 1653 during the first
Dutch War. As poetry the lines have no great merit; they do not even
jingle agreeably--but they are full of the spirit of the time, and
breathe forth that "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"
which are apt to be such large ingredients in the compound we call
"patriotism." They begin thus:--
"Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead,
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion feel
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell,--
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety."
The gallant struggle to secure their country from the sea is made the
subject of curious banter:--
"How did they rivet with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground,
Building their watery Babel far more high,
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky!
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played,
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their _mare liberum_.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest."
This final conceit greatly tickled the fancy of Charles Lamb, who was
perhaps the first of the moderns to rediscover both the rare merits and
the curiosities of our author. Hazlitt thought poorly of the jest.[61:1]
Marvell proceeds with his ridicule to attack the magistrates:--
"For, as with pygmies, who best kills the crane;
Among the hungry, he that treasures grain;
Among the blind, the one-eyed blinkard reigns;
So rules among the drowned, he that drains:
Not who first see the rising sun, commands,
But who could first discern the rising lands;
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their Lord, and Country's Father, speak;
To make a bank, was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate."[62:1]
When the war-fever was raging such humour as this may well have passed
muster with the crowd.
The incident--there is always an "incident"--which served as the actual
excuse for hostilities, is referred to as follows:--
"Let this one courtesy witness all the rest,
When their whole navy they together pressed,
Not Christian captives to redeem from bands,
Or intercept the western golden sands,
No, but all ancient rights and leagues must fail,
_Rather than to the English strike their sail_;
To whom their weather-beaten province owes
Itself."
Two spirited lines describe the discomfiture of Van Tromp:--
"And the torn navy staggered with him home
While the sea laughed itself into a foam."
This first Dutch War came to an end in 1654, when Holland was compelled
to acknowledge the supremacy of the English flag in the home waters, and
to acquiesce in the Navigation Act. It is a curious commentary upon the
black darkness that conceals the future, that Cromwell, dreading as he
did the House of Orange and the youthful grandson of Charles the First,
who at the appointed hour was destined to deal the House of Stuart a far
deadlier stroke than Cromwell had been able to do, either on the field
of battle or in front of Whitehall, refused to ratify the Treaty of
Peace with the Dutch until John De Witt had obtained an Act excluding
the Prince of Orange from ever filling the office of Stadtholder of the
Province of Holland.
The contrast between the glory of Oliver's Dutch War and the shame of
Charles the Second's sank deep into Marvell's heart, and lent bitterness
to many of his later satirical lines.
Marvell's famous _Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland_ in
1650 has a curious bibliographical interest. So far as we can tell, it
was first published in 1776. When it was composed we do not know. At
Nunappleton House Oliver was not a _persona grata_ in 1650, for he had
no sooner come back from Ireland than he had stepped into the shoes of
the Lord-General Fairfax; and there were those, Lady Fairfax, I doubt
not, among the number, who believed that the new Lord-General thought it
was high time he should be where Fairfax's "scruple" at last put him. We
may be sure Cromwell's character was dissected even more than it was
extolled at Nunappleton. The famous Ode is by no means a panegyric, and
its true hero is the "Royal actor," whom Cromwell, so the poem suggests,
lured to his doom. It is not likely that the Ode was composed after
Marvell had left Nunappleton, though it may have been so before he went
there. There is an old untraceable tradition that Marvell was among the
crowd that saw the king die. What deaths have been witnessed, and with
what strange apparent apathy, by the London crowd! But for this
tradition one's imagination would trace to Lady Fairfax the most famous
of the stanzas.
But to return to the history of the Ode. In 1776 Captain Edward
Thompson, a connection of the Marvell family and a versatile sailor with
a passion for print, which had taken some odd forms of expression,
produced by subscription in three quarto volumes the first collected
edition of Andrew Marvell's works, both verse and prose. Such an edition
had been long premeditated by Thomas Hollis, one of the best friends
literature had in the eighteenth century. It was Hollis who gave to
Sidney Sussex College the finest portrait in existence of Oliver
Cromwell. Hollis collected material for an edition of Marvell with the
aid of Richard Barron, an early editor of Milton's prose works, and of
Algernon Sidney's _Discourse concerning Government_. Barron, however,
lost zeal as the task proceeded, and complained justly enough "of a want
of anecdotes," and as the printer, the well-known and accomplished
Bowyer, doubted the wisdom of the undertaking, it was allowed to drop.
Barron died in 1766, and Hollis in 1774, but the collections made by the
latter passed into the hands of Captain Thompson, who, with the
assistance of Mr. Robert Nettleton, a grandson of one of Marvell's
sisters, at once began to get his edition ready. On Nettleton's death
his "Marvell" papers came into Thompson's hands, and among them was, to
quote the captain's own words, "a volume of Mr. Marvell's poems, some
written with his own hand and the rest copied by his order."
The _Horatian Ode_ was in this volume, and was printed from it in
Thompson's edition of 1776.
What has become of this manuscript book? It has disappeared--destroyed,
so we are led to believe, in a fit of temper by the angry and uncritical
sea-captain.
This precious volume undoubtedly contained some poems by Marvell, and as
his handwriting was both well known from many examples, and is highly
characteristic, we may also be certain that the captain was not mistaken
in his assertion that some of these poems were in Marvell's own
handwriting. But, as ill-luck would have it, the volume also contained
poems written at a later period and in quite another hand. Among these
latter pieces were Addison's verses, _The Spacious Firmament on High_
and _When all thy Mercies, O my God_; Dr. Watts' paraphrase _When Israel
freed from Pharaoh's Hand_; and Mallet's ballad _William and Margaret_.
The two Addison pieces and the Watts paraphrase appeared for the first
time in the _Spectator_, Nos. 453, 465, and 461, in 1712, and Mallet's
ballad was first printed in 1724.
Still there these pieces were, in manuscript, in this volume, and as
there were circumstances of mystification attendant upon their prior
publication, what does the captain do but claim them all, _Songs of
Zion_ and sentimental ballad alike, as Marvell's. This of course brought
the critics, ever anxious to air their erudition, down upon his head,
raised his anger, and occasioned the destruction of the book.
Mr. Grosart says that Captain Thompson states that the _Horatian Ode_
was in Marvell's handwriting. I cannot discover where this statement is
made, though it is made of other poems in the volume, also published for
the first time by the captain.
All, therefore, we know is that the Ode was first published in 1776 by
an editor who says he found it copied in a book, subsequently destroyed,
which contained (among other things) some poems written in Marvell's
handwriting, and that this book was given to the editor by a
grand-nephew of the poet.
Yet I imagine, poor as this evidence may seem to be, no student of
Marvell's life and character (so far as his life reveals his character),
and of his verse (so much of it as is positively known), wants more
evidence to satisfy him that the _Horatian Ode_ is as surely Marvell's
as the lines upon _Appleton House_, the _Bermudas_, _To his Coy
Mistress_, and _The Garden_.
The great popularity of this Ode undoubtedly rests on the three
stanzas:--
"That thence the royal actor borne,
The tragic scaffold might adorn,
While round the armed bands;
Did clap their bloody hands:
He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try;
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed."
It is strange that the death of the king should be so nobly sung in an
Ode bearing Cromwell's name and dedicate to his genius:--
"So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urged his active star;
...
Then burning through the air he went,
And palaces and temples rent;
And Caesar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.
'Tis madness to resist or blame
The force of angry Heaven's flame;
And if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,
Who, from his private gardens, where
He lived reserved and austere,
(As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot),
Could by industrious valour climb
To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould."
The last stanzas of all have much pith and meaning in them:--
"But thou, the war's and fortune's son,
March indefatigably on!
And for the last effect,
Still keep the sword erect.
Besides the force it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night,
The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain."[67:1]
It is not surprising that this Ode was not published in 1650--if indeed
it was the work of that, and not of a later year. There is nothing
either of the courtier or of the partisan about its stately
versification and sober, solemn thought. Entire self-possession,
dignity, criticism of a great man and a strange career by one well
entitled to criticise, are among the chief characteristics of this noble
poem. It is infinitely refreshing, when reading and thinking about
Cromwell, to get as far away as possible from the fanatic's scream and
the fury of the bigot, whether of the school of Laud or Hobbes. Andrew
Marvell knew Oliver Cromwell alive, and gazed on his features as he lay
dead--he knew his ambition, his greatness, his power, and where that
power lay. How much might we unwittingly have lost, if Captain Thompson
had not printed a poem which for more than a century of years had
remained unknown, and exposed to all the risks of a single manuscript
copy!
When Cromwell sent his picture to Queen Christina of Sweden to
commemorate the peace he concluded with her in 1654, Marvell, though not
then attached to the public service, was employed to write the Latin
couplet that accompanied the picture. He discharged his task as
follows:--
_In effigiem Oliveri Cromwell_.
"Haec est quae toties inimicos umbra fugavit
At sub qua cives otia lenta terunt."
The authorship of these lines is often attributed to Milton, but there
is little doubt they are of Marvell's composition. They might easily
have been better.
Marvell became Milton's assistant in September 1657, and the friendship
between the two men was thus consolidated by the strong ties of a
common duty. Milton's blindness making him unfit to attend the reception
of foreign embassies, Marvell took his place and joined in respectfully
greeting the Dutch ambassadors. After all he was but a junior clerk,
still he doubtless rejoiced that his lines on Holland had been published
anonymously. Literature was strongly represented in this department of
State just then, for Cromwell's Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering, who
represented Northamptonshire in Parliament, had taken occasion to
introduce his nephew, John Dryden, to the public service, and he was
attached to the same office as Andrew Marvell. Poets, like pigeons, have
often taken shelter under our public roofs, but Milton, Marvell, and
Dryden, all at the same time, form a remarkable constellation. Old Noll,
we may be sure, had nothing to do with it. Marvell must have known
Cromwell personally; but there is nothing to show that Milton and
Cromwell ever met. The popular engraving which represents a theatrical
Lord-Protector dictating despatches to a meek Milton is highly
ludicrous. Cromwell could have as easily dictated a book of _Paradise
Lost_, on the composition of which Milton began to be engaged during the
last year of the Protectorate, as one of Milton's despatches.
In April 1657 Admiral Blake, the first great name in the annals of our
navy, performed his last feat of arms by destroying the Spanish West
Indian fleet at Santa Cruz without the loss of an English vessel. The
gallant sailor died of fever on his way home, and was buried according
to his deserts in the Abbey. His body, with that of his master, was by a
vote of Parliament, December 4, 1660, taken from the grave and drawn to
the gallows-tree, and there hanged and buried under it. Pepys, who was
to know something of naval administration under the second Charles, has
his reflections on this unpleasing incident.
Marvell's lines on Blake's victory over the Spaniards are not worthy of
so glorious an occasion, but our great doings by land and sea have
seldom been suitably recorded in verse. Drayton's _Song of Agincourt_ is
imperishable, but was composed nearly two centuries after the battle.
The wail of Flodden Field still floats over the Border; but Miss
Elliot's famous ballad was published in 1765. Even the Spanish Armada
had to wait for Macaulay's spirited fragment. Mr. Addison's _Blenheim_
stirred no man's blood; no poet sang Chatham's victories.[70:1] Campbell
at a later day did better. We must be content with what we get.
Marvell's poem contains some vigorous lines, which show he was a good
hater:--
"Now does Spain's fleet her spacious wings unfold,
Leaves the new world, and hastens for the old;
But though the wind was fair, they slowly swum,
Freighted with acted guilt, and guilt to come;
For this rich load, of which so proud they are,
Was raised by tyranny, and raised for war.
...
...
For now upon the main themselves they saw
That boundless empire, where you give the law."
The Canary Islands are rapturously described--their delightful climate
and their excellent wine. Obviously they should be annexed:--
"The best of lands should have the best of Kings."
The fight begins. "Bold Stayner leads" and "War turned the temperate to
the torrid zone":--
"Fate these two fleets, between both worlds, had brought
Who fight, as if for both those worlds they fought.
...
...
The all-seeing sun ne'er gazed on such a sight,
Two dreadful navies there at anchor fight,
And neither have, or power, or will, to fly;
There one must conquer, or there both must die."
Blake sinks the Spanish ships:--
"Their galleons sunk, their wealth the sea does fill,
The only place where it can cause no ill";
and the poet concludes:--
"Ah! would those treasures which both Indias have
Were buried in as large, and deep a grave!
War's chief support with them would buried be,
And the land owe her peace unto the sea.
Ages to come your conquering arms will bless.
There they destroyed what had destroyed their peace;
And in one war the present age may boast,
The certain seeds of many wars are lost."
Good politics, if but second-rate poetry. This was the last time the
Spanish war-cry _Santiago, y cierra Espana_ rang in hostility in English
ears.
Turning for a moment from war to love, on the 19th of November 1657
Cromwell's third daughter, the Lady Mary Cromwell, was married to
Viscount, afterwards Earl, Fauconberg. The Fauconbergs took revolutions
calmly and, despite the disinterment of their great relative, accepted
the Restoration gladly and lived to chuckle over the Revolution. The
forgetfulness, no less than the vindictiveness, of men is often
surprising. Marvell, who played the part of Laureate during the
Protectorate, produced two songs for the conventionally joyful
occasion. The second of the two is decidedly pretty for a November
wedding:--
"_Hobbinol._ PHILLIS, TOMALIN, away!
Never such a merry day,
For the northern shepherd's son
Has MENALCAS' daughter won.
_Phillis._ Stay till I some flowers have tied
In a garland for the bride.
_Tomalin._ If thou would'st a garland bring,
PHILLIS, you may wait the spring:
They have chosen such an hour
When she is the only flower.
_Phillis._ Let's not then, at least, be seen
Without each a sprig of green.
_Hobbinol._ Fear not; at MENALCAS' hall
There are bays enough for all.
He, when young as we, did graze,
But when old he planted bays.
_Tomalin._ Here she comes; but with a look
Far more catching than my hook;
'Twas those eyes, I now dare swear,
Led our lambs we knew not where.
_Hobbinol._ Not our lambs' own fleeces are
Curled so lovely as her hair,
Nor our sheep new-washed can be
Half so white or sweet as she.
_Phillis._ He so looks as fit to keep
Somewhat else than silly sheep.
_Hobbinol._ Come, let's in some carol new
Pay to love and them their due.
_All._ Joy to that happy pair
Whose hopes united banish our despair.
What shepherd could for love pretend,
Whilst all the nymphs on Damon's choice attend?
What shepherdess could hope to wed
Before Marina's turn were sped?
Now lesser beauties may take place
And meaner virtues come in play;
While they
Looking from high
Shall grace
Our flocks and us with a propitious eye."
All this merriment came to an end on the 3rd of September 1658, when
Oliver Cromwell died on the anniversary of Dunbar fight and of the field
of Worcester. And yet the end, though it was to be sudden, did not at
once seem likely to be so. There was time for the poets to tune their
lyres. Waller, Dryden, Sprat, and Marvell had no doubt that "Tumbledown
Dick" was to sit on the throne of his father and "still keep the sword
erect," and were ready with their verses.
Westminster Abbey has never witnessed a statelier, costlier funeral than
that of "the late man who made himself to be called Protector," to quote
words from one of the most impressive passages in English prose, the
opening sentences of Cowley's _Discourse by way of Vision concerning the
Government of Oliver Cromwell_. The representatives of kings,
potentates, and powers crowded the aisles, and all was done that pomp
and ceremony could do. Marvell, arrayed in the six yards of mourning the
Council had voted him on the 7th of September, was, we may be sure, in
the Abbey, and it may well be that his blind colleague, to whom the same
liberal allowance had been made, leant on his arm during the service.
Milton's muse remained silent. The vote of the House of Commons ordering
the undoing of this great ceremony was little more than two years ahead.
_O caeca mens hominum!_
Among the poems first printed by Captain Thompson from the old
manuscript book was one which was written therein in Marvell's own hand
entitled "A poem upon the Death of his late Highness the Protector." Its
composition was evidently not long delayed:--
"We find already what those omens mean,
Earth ne'er more glad nor Heaven more serene.
Cease now our griefs, calm peace succeeds a war,
Rainbows to storms, Richard to Oliver."
The lines best worth remembering in the poem are the following:--
"I saw him dead: a leaden slumber lies,
And mortal sleep over those wakeful eyes;
Those gentle rays under the lids were fled,
Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed;
That port, which so majestic was and strong,
Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along;
All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan,
How much another thing, no more that man!
O, human glory vain! O, Death! O, wings!
O, worthless world! O, transitory things!
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed,
That still though dead, greater than Death he laid,
And in his altered face you something feign
That threatens Death, he yet will live again."
FOOTNOTES:
[49:1] In 1659 Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde, and in Brussels, writing
to Sir Richard Fanshaw, says, "You are the secretary of the Latin tongue
and I will mend the warrant you sent, and have it despatched as soon as
I hear again from you, but I must tell you the place in itself, if it be
not dignified by the person who hath some other qualification, is not to
be valued. There is no signet belongs to it, which can be only kept by a
Secretary of State, from whom the Latin Secretary always receives orders
and prepares no despatches without his direction, and hath only a fee of
a hundred pound a year. And therefore, except it hath been in the hands
of a person who hath had some other employment, it hath fallen to the
fortune of inconsiderable men as Weckerlin was the last" (_Hist. MSS.
Com._, _Heathcote Papers_, 1899, p. 9).
[51:1] _The Rehearsal Transprosed_.--Grosart, iii. 126.
[55:1] Even Mr. Firth can tell me nothing about this Ward of Cromwell's.
[56:1] For reprints of these tracts, see _Social England Illustrated_,
Constable and Co., 1903.
[57:1] "England's Way to Win Wealth." See _Social England Illustrated_,
p. 253.
[57:2] _Ibid._ p. 265.
[58:1] Dr. Dee's "Petty Navy Royal." _Social England Illustrated_, p.
46.
[58:2] "England's Way to Win Wealth." _Social England Illustrated_, p.
268.
[59:1] Ranke's _History of England during the Seventeenth Century_, vol.
iii. p. 68.
[61:1] See Leigh Hunt's _Wit and Humour_ (1846), pp. 38, 237.
[62:1] Butler's lines, _A Description of Holland_, are very like
Marvell's:--
"A Country that draws fifty foot of water
In which men live as in a hold of nature.
...
...
They dwell in ships, like swarms of rats, and prey
Upon the goods all nations' fleets convey;
...
...
That feed like cannibals on other fishes,
And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes:
A land that rides at anchor and is moor'd,
In which they do not live but go aboard."
Marvell and Butler were rival wits, but Holland was a common butt; so
powerful a motive is trade jealousy.
[67:1] "To one unacquainted with Horace, this Ode, not perhaps so
perfect as his are in form, and with occasional obscurities of
expression, which Horace would not have left, will give a truer notion
of the kind of greatness which he achieved than could, so far as I know,
be obtained from any other poem in our language."--_Dean Trench_.
[70:1] "In the last war, when France was disgraced and overpowered in
every quarter of the globe, when Spain coming to her assistance only
shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced
through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general acclamation; the
fame of our counsellors and heroes was entrusted to the gazetteer."--Dr.
Johnson's _Life of Prior_.