Old Portraits and Modern Sketches Part 5

And, like the three-forked lightning, first Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst, Did thorough his own side His fiery way divide.

For 't is all one to courage high, The emulous, or enemy; And with such to enclose Is more than to oppose.

Then burning through the air he went, And palaces and temples rent; And Caesar's head at last Did through his laurels blast.

'T is madness to resist or blame The face 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 valor climb To ruin the great work of time, And cast the kingdoms old Into another mould!

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?

And Hampton shows what part He had of wiser art;

Where, twining subtle fears with hope, He wove a net of such a scope, That Charles himself might chase To Carisbrook's narrow case;

That hence the royal actor borne, The tragic scaffold might adorn, While round the armed bands Did clap their b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.ds, with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right!

But bowed his comely head, Down, as upon a bed.

This was that memorable hour, Which first a.s.sured the forced power; So when they did design The Capitol's first line,

A bleeding head, where they begun, Did fright the architects to run; And yet in that the state Foresaw its happy fate.

And now the Irish are ashamed To see themselves in one year tamed; So much one man can do, That does best act and know.

They can affirm his praises best, And have, though overcome, confest How good he is, how just, And fit for highest trust.

Nor yet grown stiffer by command, But still in the Republic's hand, How fit he is to sway That can so well obey.

He to the Commons' feet presents A kingdom for his first year's rents, And, what he may, forbears His fame to make it theirs.

And has his sword and spoils ungirt, To lay them at the public's skirt; So when the falcon high Falls heavy from the sky,

She, having killed, no more does search, But on the next green bough to perch, Where, when he first does lure, The falconer has her sure.

What may not, then, our isle presume, While Victory his crest does plume?

What may not others fear,

If thus he crowns each year?

As Caesar, he, erelong, to Gaul; To Italy as Hannibal, And to all states not free Shall climacteric be.

The Pict no shelter now shall find Within his parti-contoured mind; But from his valor sad Shrink underneath the plaid,

Happy if in the tufted brake The English hunter him mistake, Nor lay his hands a near The Caledonian deer.

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.

Marvell was never married. The modern critic, who affirms that bachelors have done the most to exalt women into a divinity, might have quoted his extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt ill.u.s.tration:--

"'T is she that to these gardens gave The wondrous beauty which they have; She straitness on the woods bestows, To her the meadow sweetness owes; Nothing could make the river be So crystal pure but only she,-- She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair, Than gardens, woods, meals, rivers are Therefore, what first she on them spent They gratefully again present: The meadow carpets where to tread, The garden flowers to crown her head, And for a gla.s.s the limpid brook Where she may all her beauties look; But, since she would not have them seen, The wood about her draws a screen; For she, to higher beauty raised, Disdains to be for lesser praised; She counts her beauty to converse In all the languages as hers, Nor yet in those herself employs, But for the wisdom, not the noise, Nor yet that wisdom could affect, But as 't is Heaven's dialect."

It has been the fas.h.i.+on of a cla.s.s of shallow Church and State defenders to ridicule the great men of the Commonwealth, the st.u.r.dy republicans of England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine arts and polite literature. The works of Milton and Marvell, the prose- poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney are a sufficient answer to this accusation. To none has it less application than to the subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warmhearted man, an elegant scholar, a finished gentleman at home, and the life of every circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II., amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican philosophers who a.s.sembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana, and Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own blindness. Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation.

His personal appearance was altogether in his favor. A clear, dark, Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the inflexible statesman: these, added to the prestige of his genius, and the respect which a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from those who would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready pa.s.sport to the fas.h.i.+onable society of the metropolis. He was one of the few who mingled in that society, and escaped its contamination, and who,

"Amidst the wavering days of sin, Kept himself icy chaste and pure."

The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own paraphrase of Horace:--

"Climb at Court for me that will, Tottering Favor's pinnacle; All I seek is to lie still!

Settled in some secret nest, In calm leisure let me rest; And, far off the public stage, Pa.s.s away my silent age.

Thus, when, without noise, unknown, I have lived out all my span, I shall die without a groan, An old, honest countryman.

Who, exposed to other's eyes, Into his own heart ne'er pries, Death's to him a strange surprise."

He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a popular meeting of his old const.i.tuents at Hull. His health had previously been remarkably good; and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some of his political or clerical enemies. His monument, erected by his grateful const.i.tuency, bears the following inscription:--

"Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength of judgment; and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired by all, though imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any. But a Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings, nevertheless. He having served twenty years successfully in Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence he was deputed to that a.s.sembly, lamenting in his death the public loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Grat.i.tude, 1688."

Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell. His memory is the inheritance of Americans as well as Englishmen. His example commends itself in an especial manner to the legislators of our Republic. Integrity and fidelity to principle are as greatly needed at this time in our halls of Congress as in the Parliaments of the Restoration; men are required who can feel, with Milton, that "it is high honor done them from G.o.d, and a special mark of His favor, to have been selected to stand upright and steadfast in His cause, dignified with the defence of Truth and public liberty."

JOHN ROBERTS.

Thomas Carlyle, in his history of the stout and sagacious Monk of St.

Edmunds, has given us a fine picture of the actual life of Englishmen in the middle centuries. The dim cell-lamp of the somewhat apocryphal Jocelin of Brakelond becomes in his hands a huge Drummond-light, s.h.i.+ning over the Dark Ages like the naphtha-fed cressets over Pandemonium, proving, as he says in his own quaint way, that "England in the year 1200 was no dreamland, but a green, solid place, which grew corn and several other things; the sun shone on it; the vicissitudes of seasons and human fortunes were there; cloth was woven, ditches dug, fallow fields ploughed, and houses built." And if, as the writer just quoted insists, it is a matter of no small importance to make it credible to the present generation that the Past is not a confused dream of thrones and battle- fields, creeds and const.i.tutions, but a reality, substantial as hearth and home, harvest-field and smith-shop, merry-making and death, could make it, we shall not wholly waste our time and that of our readers in inviting them to look with us at the rural life of England two centuries ago, through the eyes of John Roberts and his worthy son, Daniel, yeomen, of Siddington, near Cirencester.

_The Memoirs of John Roberts, alias Haywood, by his son, Daniel Roberts_, (the second edition, printed verbatim from the original one, with its picturesque array of italics and capital letters,) is to be found only in a few of our old Quaker libraries. It opens with some account of the family. The father of the elder Roberts "lived reputably, on a little estate of his own," and it is mentioned as noteworthy that he married a sister of a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace. Coming of age about the beginning of the civil wars, John and one of his young neighbors enlisted in the service of Parliament. Hearing that Cirencester had been taken by the King's forces, they obtained leave of absence to visit their friends, for whose safety they naturally felt solicitous. The following account of the reception they met with from the drunken and ferocious troopers of Charles I., the "bravos of Alsatia and the pages of Whitehall," throws a ghastly light upon the horrors of civil war:--

"As they were pa.s.sing by Cirencester, they were discovered, and pursued by two soldiers of the King's party, then in possession of the town.

Seeing themselves pursued, they quitted their horses, and took to their heels; but, by reason of their accoutrements, could make little speed.

They came up with my father first; and, though he begged for quarter, none they would give him, but laid on him with their swords, cutting and slas.h.i.+ng his hands and arms, which he held up to save his head; as the marks upon them did long after testify. At length it pleased the Almighty to put it into his mind to fall down on his face; which he did.

Hereupon the soldiers, being on horseback, cried to each other, _Alight, and cut his throat_! but neither of them did; yet continued to strike and p.r.i.c.k him about the jaws, till they thought him dead. Then they left him, and pursued his neighbor, whom they presently overtook and killed.

Soon after they had left my father, it was said in his heart, _Rise, and flee for thy life_! which call he obeyed; and, starting upon his feet, his enemies espied him in motion, and pursued him again. He ran down a steep hill, and through a river which ran at the bottom of it; though with exceeding difficulty, his boots filling with water, and his wounds bleeding very much. They followed him to the top of the hill; but, seeing he had got over, pursued him no farther."