Andrew Marvell by Marvell Andrew; Wilcher Robert; Wilcher Robert

Author:Marvell, Andrew; Wilcher, Robert; Wilcher, Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 168666
Publisher: Routledge

A few beautiful verses, an acquaintanceship with the immortal Milton, and a traditional reputation for great political honesty in a most corrupt age, have given Marvell a permanent and honourable place among the worthies of his country. His public life was never illustrated by any great or very conspicuous deed, and of his private life very little, with any certainty, is known. Yet is his name familiar to every Englishman that loves his country and his country's literature, and that reveres the associations of genius….

In the summer of the following year, 1653, Marvell, who had taught languages to my Lord General Fairfax's daughter, was appointed by Cromwell to take charge of the education of his nephew, a young Mr. Dutton. It has been said of a letter which honest Andrew wrote to the ‘magnanimous usurper,’ shortly after getting this appointment, that it is ‘rather more respectful than would please either a Royalist or a determined Republican’ [Coleridge]; but Marvell was never either a decided Royalist or a determined Republican; he, apparently, never indulged in abstract political speculation; his mind, on that side, being wholly of a practical, ready-working kind; he would have loved a free constitutional monarchy if any such could have been established, and if Church had been separated from State; but, as matters stood, after the terrible intestine war, he, in common with some of the honestest hearts and brightest intellects that ever did honour to this land, rallied round the almost kingly Protector as the only barrier to mad, intolerant fanaticism, anarchy, and dead-levelling, on the one side; and to the unconditional restoration of a vicious and faithless prince, and of a tyrannical church supremacy, on the other. Marvell's sober nature could not be intoxicated by the effusions of an orator and enthusiastic Republican like Sir Harry Vane; still less could his eyes be dazzled by the visions of ordinary Fifth-monarchy men, who would have no king or ruler but King Jesus, and who would divide the whole world and the fulness thereof, in mathematically-equal portions, among the saints—i.e. among themselves. He knew that the English people were not—and were not likely soon to become—fit for Republican institutions; of war and its horrors he had seen enough; he dreaded a renewal of the war, he dreaded anarchy, he dreaded an unconditional restoration; and therefore he clung to the Protector, whose entire ecclesiastical polity, however unseemly and odious to others, conciliated his respect and admiration; and this son of the Low-Church lecturer of Hull seems always to have dreaded the ‘Prelates' rage’ more than the tyranny of kings or of any other lay-rulers. But a greater man than Andrew Marvell, and one quite as honest, might, without any moral abasement or sacrifice of principle, have written the respectful letter he wrote to the great Cromwell. If the pupil was such as the tutor describes him,—and we have no good reason to doubt that he was not, as, generally, the kith and kin of Oliver were eminent for their virtues if not for their acquirements—there is not a word of flattery in it.

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