Andrew Marvell Part 7

_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 d.i.c.k" 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 pa.s.sages 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 ma.n.u.script book was one which was written therein in Marvell's own hand ent.i.tled "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 Ill.u.s.trated_, Constable and Co., 1903.

[57:1] "England's Way to Win Wealth." See _Social England Ill.u.s.trated_, p. 253.

[57:2] _Ibid._ p. 265.

[58:1] Dr. Dee's "Petty Navy Royal." _Social England Ill.u.s.trated_, p.

46.

[58:2] "England's Way to Win Wealth." _Social England Ill.u.s.trated_, 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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 b.u.t.t; 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 a.s.sistance 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_.

CHAPTER IV

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Cromwell's death was an epoch in Marvell's history. Up to that date he had, since he left the University, led the life of a scholar, with a turn for business, and was known to many as an agreeable companion and a lively wit. He was keenly interested in public affairs, and personally acquainted with some men in great place, and for a year before Cromwell's death he had been in a branch of the Civil Service; but of the wear and tear, the strife and contention, of what are called "practical politics" he knew nothing from personal experience.

Within a year of the Protector's death all this was changed and, for the rest of his days, with but the shortest of occasional intervals, Andrew Marvell led the life of an active, eager member of Parliament, knowing all that was going on in the Chamber and hearing of everything that was alleged to be going on in the Court; busily occupied with the affairs of his const.i.tuents in Hull, and daily watching, with an increasingly heavy heart and a bitter humour, the corruption of the times, the declension of our sea-power, the growing shame of England, and what he believed to be a dangerous conspiracy afoot for the undoing of the Reformation and the destruction of the Const.i.tution in both Church and State.

"Garden-poetry" could not be reared on such a soil as this. The age of Cromwell and Blake was over. The remainder of Marvell's life (save so far as personal friends.h.i.+p sweetened it) was spent in politics, public business, in concocting roughly rhymed and bitter satirical poems, and in the composition of prose pamphlets.

Through it all Marvell remained very much the man of letters, though one with a great natural apt.i.tude for business. His was always the critical att.i.tude. He was the friend of Milton and Harrington, of the political philosophers who invented paper const.i.tutions in the "Rota" Club, and of the new race of men whose thoughts turned to Natural Science, and who founded the Royal Society. Office he never thought of. He could have had it had he chosen, for he was a man of mark, even of distinction, from the first. Clarendon has told us how members of the House of Commons "got on" in the Long Parliament of Charles the Second. It was full of the king's friends, who ran out of the House to tell their shrewd master the gossip of the lobbies, "commended this man and discommended another who deserved better, and would many times, when His Majesty spoke well of any man, ask His Majesty if he would give them leave to let that person know how gracious His Majesty was to him, or bring him to kiss his hand. To which he commonly consenting, every one of his servants delivered some message from him to a Parliament man, and invited him to Court, as if the King would be willing to see him. And by this means the rooms at Court were always full of the members of the House of Commons.

This man brought to kiss his hand, and the King induced to confer with that man and to thank him for his affection, which could never conclude without some general expression of grace or promise, which the poor gentleman always interpreted to his own advantage, and expected some fruit from it that it could never yield."

The suspicious Clarendon, already shaking to his fall, goes on to add, "all which, being contrary to all former order, did the King no good, and rendered those unable to do him service who were inclined to it."[77:1]

It is a lifelike picture Clarendon draws of the crowded rooms, and of the witty king moving about fooling vanity, ambition, and corruption to the top of their bent. That the king chose his own ministers is plain enough.

Marvell was at the beginning well disposed towards Charles. They had some points in common; and among them a quick sense of humour and a turn for business. But the member for Hull must soon have recognised that there was no place for an honest quick-witted man in any Stuart administration.

Marvell and his great chief remained in their offices until the close of the year 1659, when the impending Restoration enforced their retirement.

Milton used his leisure to pour forth excited tracts to prove how easy it would still be to establish a Free Commonwealth. Once again, and for the last time, he prompted the age to quit its clogs

"by the known rules of ancient liberty."

These pamphlets of Milton's prove how little that solitary thinker ever knew of the real mind and temper of the English people.

The Lord Richard Cromwell was exactly the sort of eldest son a great soldier like Oliver, who had put his foot on fortune's neck, was likely to have. Richard (1626-1712) was not, indeed, born in the purple, but his early manhood was nurtured in it. Religion, as represented by long sermons, tiresome treatises, and prayerful exercises, bored him to death. Of enthusiasm he had not a trace, nor was he bred to arms. He delighted in hunting, in the open air, and the company of sportsmen.

Whatever came his way easily, and as a matter of right, he was well content to take. He bore himself well on State occasions, and could make a better speech than ever his father was able to do. But he was not a "restless" Cromwell, and had no faith in his destiny. I do not know whether he had ever read _Don Quixote_, in Shelton's translation, a very popular book of the time; probably not, for, though Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Richard was not a reading man, but if he had, he must have sympathised with Sancho Panza's att.i.tude of mind towards the famous island.