Andrew Marvell Part 5

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 Lords.h.i.+p 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 Lords.h.i.+p hath given me) to increase whatsoever talent he may have already. Truly, he is of gentle and waxen disposition; and G.o.d 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 G.o.d; 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 Lords.h.i.+p, for having placed us in so G.o.dly 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 G.o.d for your Lords.h.i.+p, 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng trade done in our own waters by the Dutch, the splendid fleet of fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng and our most careless negligence! Six hundred of these fishers.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps with red herrings at Yarmouth for Civita Vecchia, Leghorn and Genoa and Ma.r.s.eilles and Toulon. Most of these being laden by the English merchants. So that if this be suffered the English owners of s.h.i.+ps 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 fis.h.i.+ng affairs and stronger and l.u.s.tier than the sailors who use the long Southern voyages, but these courageous, young, l.u.s.ty, 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, s.h.i.+pping 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, pa.s.sed the first Navigation Act, of which Ranke says: "Of all the acts ever pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ps only; and all European goods either in English s.h.i.+ps or in s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps and searching their cargoes for contraband. England a.s.serted 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, ent.i.tled _The First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the Lord-Protector_, he describes foreign princes soundly rating their amba.s.sadors 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 s.h.i.+pwrecked c.o.c.kle and the muscle-sh.e.l.l,-- 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 Suss.e.x 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 pa.s.sed into the hands of Captain Thompson, who, with the a.s.sistance 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 ma.n.u.script 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 a.s.sertion 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 s.p.a.cious Firmament on High_ and _When all thy Mercies, O my G.o.d_; 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 ma.n.u.script, in this volume, and as there were circ.u.mstances 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.