he lived, and which has been so often paralleled with the turnips of Curius, and the like common places, that some sceptical persons have held that there is as little truth in the one as in the other. However, we believe it to have been founded in fact, and that the mistake has been in the dulness of those who took a piece of dry English humour for a stoical exhibition of virtue. At all events, a life of Andrew Marvell would be as imperfect without it, as a history of King Alfred without the neat-herd's cottage and the burnt cakes. It is related with various circumstances, but we shall follow the narrative of a pamphlet printed in Ireland, A. D., 1754:-"The borough of Hull, in the reign of Charles II., chose Andrew Marvell, a young gentleman of little or no fortune, and maintained him in London for the service of the public. His understanding, integrity, and spirit, were dreadful to the then infamous administration. Persuaded that he would be theirs for properly asking, they sent his old school-fellow, the Lord Treasurer Danby, to renew acquaintance with him in his garret. At parting, the Lord Treasurer, out of pure affection, slipped into his hand an order upon the treasury for £1000, and then went to his chariot. Marvell, looking at the paper, calls after the Treasurer, "My Lord, I request another moment." They went up again to the garret, and Jack, the servant boy, was called. "Jack, child, what had I for dinner yesterday?" "Dont you remember, sir? you had the little shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring from a woman in the market.” "Very right, child." "What have I for dinner to-day?" "Dont you know, sir, that you bid me lay by the blade-bone to broil.” 'Tis so, very right, child, go away." "My Lord, do you hear that? Andrew Marvell's dinner is provided; there's your piece of paper. I want it not. I knew the sort of kindness you intended. I live here to serve my constituents: the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am

not one."

One mark of authenticity the story certainly wants:-it has no date. As, however, it mentions Lord Danby as treasurer, it must have occurred within the last four years of Marvell's life: for Sir Thomas Osborne, afterwards first Duke of Leeds, was not appointed treasurer till the 19th of June, 1673; nor was he created Earl Danby till the 27th of June, 1674. The fact of his having been Marvell's schoolfellow rests, as far as we have discovered, upon the Irishman's credit alone, though it is not impossible, as his family estates lay in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

In addition to the circumstances mentioned above, it has been customary to enhance the merit of Marvell by relating how, after refusing the King's thousand pounds, he was obliged to borrow a guinea of his

bookseller. But the story is better without this heightening touch. The very familiarity with which the word guinea is employed, points to a period when a guinea was the lowest sum which a gentleman could think of accepting. Now guineas were first coined in 1673, and it is by no means likely that the term became immediately familiar. Marvell was more likely to have borrowed a broad piece. Borrowing of a bookseller is an expedient very likely to occur to an author of later days; but Andrew Marvell never was a bookseller's author, nor were booksellers likely to be liberal lenders, when the copyright of Paradise Lost was transferred for £15.

Marvell was far from affluent, but there is no ground for supposing that he ever was, in the proper sense of the word, poor. His paternal estate, though small, was unimpaired; his mode of living simple and frugal, but not sordid. His company was sought by the great, as well as the witty; notwithstanding his politics, he was admitted into the company of the merry Monarch, (but so to be sure was Colonel Blood,) and he was on so intimate a footing with Prince Rupert, than whenever the Prince dissented from the court measures, it was usual to say "he has been with his tutor." It is said, that when Marvell had become so obnoxious to the Court, or rather to the Duke's party, that it was dangerous for him to stir abroad, Rupert visited him at his humble apartment, in a Westminster attic.

That Marvell was exposed to assaults from the drunken insolent followers of the Court, such as those that revenged the cause of Nell Gwyn on Sir John Coventry's nose, is almost certain. Homicide, in a midnight scuffle, was then esteemed as venial as adultery. The habit of bloodshed, contracted in civil warfare, had choked up the natural remorse of hearts which had either no religion, or worse than none. But that any settled design of assassinating him was meditated by any party, cannot be proved, and therefore ought not to be believed.

So long indeed, as he condescended to write in masquerade, and to veil his serious purpose with a ridiculous vizard, it seems to have been the wish of the government to let him escape. But when at last he dared to be once for all in earnest, and set forth the dangers of the constitution plainly and without a parable, the ruling powers were afraid to laugh any longer, and began to think of prosecuting. In the early part of 1678, appeared "An Account of the growth of Popery and arbitrary Government in England," ostensibly printed at Amsterdam, which though without his name, was well known to be the work of Marvell, for none else could and would have written it. Shortly after, the following proclamation appeared in the Gazette.

"Whereas there have been lately printed and published, several sedi

tious and scandalous libels, against the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, and other his Majesty's Courts of Justice, to the dishonour of his Majesty's government, and the hazard of the public peace: These are to give notice, that what person soever shall discover unto one of the Secretaries of State, the printer, publisher, author, or hander to the press, of any of the said libels, so that full evidence may be made thereof to a jury, without mentioning the informer; especially one libel, entitled "An Account of the growth of Popery," &c., and another called "A seasonable Argument to all Grand Juries," &c.; the discoverer shall be rewarded as follows:-he shall have £50 for the discovery of the printer, or publisher, and for the hander of it to the press, £100," &c.

So little was Marvell alarmed at this movement, that he writes to his friend Popple in a strain of jocular defiance about it. The letter is dated 10th of June, 1678, and is perhaps the latest of his extant writings:-"There came out, about Christmas last, a large book, concerning The growth of Popery and arbitrary Government.' There have been great rewards offered in private, and considerable in the Gazette, to any who would inform of the author. Three or four books, printed since, have described, as near as it was proper to go, the man, Mr. Marvell, being a member of Parliament, to have been the author; but if he had, surely he would not have escaped being questioned in Parliament, or some other place." No prosecution, however, ensued, but dark and desperate menacings hovered round him; he was obliged to be cautious of going abroad, and was sometimes obliged to secrete himself for several days. Perhaps he found it prudent to absent himself from Town, and seek security among his constituents; for in an extract from the books of the Corporation of Hull, we find this notice: "This day, 29th July. 1678, the court being met, Andrew Marvell, Esq. one of the burgesses of Parliament for this Borough, came into court, and several discourses were held, about the Town affairs." We know not, whether like his father, he was possessed with a presentiment of approaching mortality, and felt that this was to be his last visit to the scenes of his childhood; but certain it is, he was destined to see them He returned to London, and with scarce any previous illness, or visible decay of constitution, on the 16th of August, he expired.

no more.

No wonder if so sudden a decease, in an age when all were disposed to believe, and too many to execute, the worst that evil thoughts suggest, were ascribed to the effects of poison; but since all men are liable to be called away every hour, it is better not to add horrid surmises to the woeful sum of horrid certainties.

It is somewhat singular, that the Parliament, in which Marvell had

sat so long, itself the longest which ever sat under the monarchy, survived him but one session, as if its dissolution were deferred as long as it numbered one righteous man. The pension Parliament was dissolved on the 30th of December, 1678.

It has been said that Marvell was the last member that received

wages from his constituents. Others, however, his contemporaries, maintained the right, and suffered their arrears to accumulate as a cheap resource at the next election. More than once in the course of Marvell's correspondence, he speaks of members threatening to sue their boroughs for their pay.

Aubrey, who knew Marvell, and may be trusted when he describes what he saw, says that he was "of a middling stature, pretty strong set, roundish cheeked, hazel eyed, brown haired. In his conversation he was modest, and of very few words. He was wont to say he would not drink high, or freely, with any one with whom he would not trust his life." Heaven be praised, we live in times when such a resolution would seldom interfere with the circulation of the bottle. If a gentleman take care that the liquor does not injure him, he need apprehend no bodily hurt from his compotators.

As a Senator, his character appears unimpeachable. He was a true representative of his constituents; not slavishly submitting his wisdom to their will, nor setting his privilege above their interests. How he would have acted, had he been a member of the Long Parliament, which presumed to command the King in the name of the nation, and levied forces against the Monarch, under his own Great Seal, we can only conjecture. The sphere of his duty was far different; for the Commons, on the Restoration, necessarily resumed their pristine character, which was not that of a ruling Committee, but a simple representation of the third estate. There was then no need of a monarchical, or of an aristocratical party in the lower House, for the monarchy and aristocracy still retained ample powers of their own. A member of Parliament had therefore only one duty to attend to, as a counsellor is only obliged to serve the interests of his clients, leaving to the Judge and Jury the justice of the general question. We are convinced, that a restitution of the tribunitial power, originally vested in the Commons, should be accompanied with the restoration of the just prerogatives of the Peerage, and of the Crown. "Give the King his own again," and the people will get their own too.

Of his poetic merits, we would gladly speak at large, but our limits allow not of immoderate quotation, and his works are too little known, and in general too inaccessible, to be referred to with confidence. It is disgraceful to English booksellers, (we say not to the English nation,)

that they find not a place in our popular collections. The writer of this notice can truly say that he met with them only by accident, and was astonished that they were not familiar as household words. But probably the same causes which retarded the poetic fame of Milton, went nigh to extinguish that of Andrew Marvell. The classical Republicans were few and inefficient. The Puritans would not read poetry. The High-Church Bigots would read nothing but what emanated from their own party. The common-place roystering Royalists were seldom sober enough to read, and the mob-fanatics did not know their letters.

Moreover, the mere celebrity of a man, in one respect, sometimes throws a temporary shade over his accomplishments in a different line. Milton had produced Poems in his youth, that alone would place him high among Poets, yet no one remembered that the author of the "Defensio populi Anglicani” had ever written Comus; and Roscoe was perhaps the first to remind the people of England, that Lorenzo di Medici ranks high among the bards of Italy. It is not without effort that we remember that Cæsar's Commentaries were written by the same man who conquered at Pharsalia. And what reader of Childe Harold thinks of Lord Byron's speech about the Nottingham Framebreakers? Lord John Russell's Tragedies are obscured by the lustre of his Reform Bill, and should Paganini produce another Iliad, it would only be read as the preposterous adventure of a fiddler. Hence we may fairly conclude that Marvell's fame would have been greater, had it been less; that had he been as insignificant a being as Pomfret, or Yalden, Dr. Johnson might have condescended to rank him among the Poets of Great Britain.

We took occasion to allude to Marvell's sentiments on the death of Charles the First, expressed in his Horatian Ode to Oliver Cromwell. The lines are noble :

AN HORATIAN ODE

UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN FROM IRELAND.

Though justice against fate complain,

And plead the ancient rights in vain :

But those do hold or break,

As men are strong or weak.

Nature, that hateth emptiness,

Allows of penetration less;

And therefore must make room

Where greater spirits come.

What field of all the civil war,

Where his were not the deepest scar?