side. Some incidental notices we may gleam from a letter of Milton to the President Bradshaw, that chief of the regicide Judges, who shared with Cromwell, Blake, and Ireton, the honour of being hanged after his death. It is inscribed to the Honourable the Lord Bradshaw. No apology can be required for inserting it entire. "MY LORD, "But that it would be an interruption to the public, wherein your studies are perpetually employed, I should now or then venture to supply this my enforced absence with a line or two, though it were onely my business, and that would be noe slight one, to make my due acknow. ledgments of your many favoures; which I both doe at this time, and ever shall; and have this farder, which I thought my parte to let you know of, that there will be with you to-morrow, upon some occasion of business, a gentleman whose name is Mr. Marvile; a man whom, both by report, and the converse I have had with him, of singular desert for the state to make use of; who alsoe offers himselfe, if there be any imployment for him. His father was the Minister of Hull; and he hath spent four years abroad, in Holland, France, Italy, and Spaine, to very good purpose, as I believe, and the gaineing of those four languages; besides, he is a scholler, and well read in the Latin and Greek authors; and no doubt of an approved conversation, for he comes now lately out of the house of the Lord Fairfax, who was Generall, where he was intrusted to give some instructions in the languages to the Lady his daughter. If, upon the death of Mr. Weckkerlyn, the Councell shall think that I shall need any assistance in the performance of my place (though for my part I find no encumbrances of that which belongs to me, except it be in point of attendance at Conferences with Ambassadors, which I must confess, in my condition, I am not fit for,) it would be hard for them to find a man soe fit every way for that purpose as this Gentleman, one who I believe, in a short time, would be able to doe them as much service as Mr. Ascan. This, my Lord, I write sincerely, without any other end than to perform my dutey to the publick, in helping them to an humble servant; laying aside those jealousies, and that emulation, which mine own condition might suggest to me, by bringing in such a coadjutor; and remaine, Feb. 21, 1652. My Lord, Your most obliged, and The silence of this letter as to any diplomatic experience of Marvell B sufficiently refutes the statement of certain biographers, that he was employed by the Commonwealth as Envoy to Constantinople. A diligent examination of the epistolary correspondence and private diaries of that eventful period would probably throw some further light on our subject's proceedings. Milton's recommendation to Bradshaw did not gain an appointment for his friend. As the times turned, it is probable that the patronage of the Lord President would rather have been injurious than beneficial to his prospects, for Bradshaw was opposed to Cromwell, by whom he was deprived of the Chief-justiceship of Chester. In 1654, when Milton's famous second defence of the people of England in reply to Salmasius appeared, Marvell was commissioned to present the book to the Protector. How he was received may be conjectured from his letter to Milton on that occasion, which we give entire : "HONOURED SIR, I did not satisfy myself in the account I gave you of presenting your book to my Lord; although it seemed to me that I wrote to you all which the messenger's speedy return the same night would permit me: and I perceive that, by reason of that haste, I did not give you satisfaction, neither concerning the delivery of your letter at the same time. Be pleased, therefore, to pardon me, and know that I tendered them both together. But my Lord read not the letter while I was with him; which I attributed to our dispatch, and some other business tending thereto, which I therefore wished ill to, so far as it hindered an affair much better, and of greater importance,-I mean that of reading your letter. And to tell you truly mine own imagination, I thought that he would not open it while I was there, because he might suspect that I, delivering it just upon my departure, might have brought in it some second proposition, like to that which you had before made to him, by your letter, to my advantage. However, I assure myself that he has since read it with much satisfaction. Mr. Oxenbridge, on his return from London, will, I know, give you thanks for his book, as I do, with all acknowledgment and humility, for that you have sent me. I shall now study it, even to getting it by heart. When I consider how equally it turns and rises, with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories; and Salmasius and Morus make up as great a triumph as that of Decebalus; whom, too, for ought I know, you shall have forced, as Trajan the other, to make themselves away, out of a just desperation. I have an affectionate curiosity to know what becomes of Colonel Overton's* business, and am exceeding glad to think that Mr. Skinner has got near you: the happiness which I at the same time congratulate to him, and envy, there being none who doth, if I may so say, more jealously honour you than, ETON, June 2, 1654. Honoured Sir, Your most affectionate humble Servant, For my most honoured friend, John Milton, Esq., At his house in Petty France, Westminster." Grace and ease in letter writing is one of the last accomplishments at which literature arrives. Marvell's letters, from which we shall make copious extracts, are not cited as examples of composition, in which respect they are hardly worthy of his talents, but for the historical intelligence they convey, and the testimony which they bear to the writer's integrity. Seldom, however, was he guilty of such bad taste, as in the allusion to Trajan's Column, and never again uttered so uncharitable a surmise as that with regard to Morus and Salmasius. It is some consolation that neither of those grammarians followed the example of the Dacian Monarch, though Milton himself is said to have ascribed the death of Salmasius to chagrin at his defeat. Even good men seldom enter a controversy without making wreck of their peace of mind. In 1657 Marvell became tutor to Cromwell's nephew. There is extant a letter of his to the Protector, rather more respectful than would please either a royalist or a determined republican. What part he took in the confused passages that ensued on Cromwell's death, we are not informed. He was elected member for his native town in 1660in that parliament which was destined to see the restoration of royalty. Though it is probable that he corresponded regularly with his constituents from his first election, whatever he may have written previous to the triumphal 29th of May, or in the busy æra of intoxication which followed, has never been discovered. We cannot tell how far he approved the recall of Majesty, which he must have seen it vain to oppose, or whether he laboured to obtain those securities against the encroachments of preroga tive which the treacherous counsels of Monk induced the Convention to forego, what he felt on the violent revulsion of public feeling whereby Charles the Second was enabled to establish a sway which nothing but his own indolence hindered from being despotic,-or how he judged of the vindictive proceedings of the reinstated royalists, which had well ⚫ Overton was Governor of Hull, and became a fifth-monarchy-man. nigh bereft the world of Milton, and of Paradise Lost. He might not choose to trust his sentiments on such subjects to paper, or he might sedulously reclaim and destroy writings which endangered others as well as himself. It may be necessary to remind the reader, that it was only by the communications of Members, that provincial constituents could then be made acquainted with what passed in Parliament. The publication of debates was at that time, and long after, really and strictly forbidden. Even in Dr. Johnson's day, the standing order was evaded by reports under feigned names or initials. The Doctor himself published (if he did not compose) Debates in the Senate of Lilliput.' Has the publication of debates ever yet been legalised by express enactment? We fear not. Middleton composed his life of Cicero, Jortin, his life of Erasmus, almost entirely from the epistles of their respective subjects. We shall make as free a use, though we cannot construct so regular a narrative, of the parliamentary epistles of Andrew Marvell. The earliest of these is dated November, 1660, in which he laments the absence of his partner, Mr. John Ramsden, and tells them he "writes but with half a pen, which makes his account of public affairs so imperfect; and yet he had rather expose his own defects to their good interpretation, than excuse thereby a total neglect of his duty." Two of the most difficult questions that occupied the government immediately after the restoration, were, how to dispose of the standing army, which, during the suspension of the monarchy, had become a deliberative and most influential member of the body politic; and whether to continue or abrogate the excise, a financial offspring of the Long Parliament, which the restored monarch was not unwilling to adopt. Confiding in the unorganised valour of the English nation, and in the capacity of discipline which exists in every people, he once and for ever opposed a standing army, a species of force, which, had Charles the First possessed, he might have been as despotic as he would; which Cromwell possessing, kept the realm at nurse for a Prince who, with equal means, could have done more than the worst of his legitimate or illegitimate predecessors. The purpose of the Puritans was, to turn the whole blessed island into a Presbyterian Paradise, in which there was to be nothing but churches, and church-yards;—one to be filled with the living bodies of the saints, and the other with the hanged carcases of their adversaries. The apostate royalists of the Restoration would have made England a bear garden, in which all vices were free, and from which nothing but piety was exiled. Marvell had seen a standing army, composed of more respectable materials than could easily be replaced, the instrument of one tyranny; and most wisely he opposed its continuance, when the same mass, compacted of baser atoms, might perpetuate a tyranny far worse than that which it succeeded. He conceived an army to be a giant body without a directing soul,a house to let, in which the long-houseless dæmon of despotism might live at a nominal rent.-But hear what Marvell said, nigh 200 years ago:-"I doubt not, ere we rise, to see the whole army disbanded; and according to the act, hope to see your town once more ungarisoned, in which I should be glad and happy to be instrumental to the uttermost; for I cannot but remember, though then a child, those blessed days, when the youth of our own town were trained for your militia, and did, methought, become their arms much better than any soldiers that I have seen since." Of the excise, he observed prophetically, "He wished it might not be continued too long."* We cannot but lament that Marvell's correspondence with his constituents, as far as can now be discovered, only commences in November, 1660. He appears to have been first chosen in the Short Parliament of 1658-9, summoned after the death of Oliver, during the brief Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, and soon after dissolved to make way for the restoration of the Rump. But it is not certain whether Marvell ever sat in this assembly. The Convention, or Healing Purliament met on the 25th of April, 1660, and Marvell paid an early The Excise was originally an invention of the Long Farliament, and began in 1673. The Royalist Parliament at Oxford made a similar grant in the King's behalf. Dr. Johnson, in his abhorrence of the Republicans, forgot that Excise, notwithstanding its puritanic origin, had become an adopted and favourite child of Church and King, for he defined it in his Dictionary, "An odious tax, levied, not by the officers of Government, but by wretches, &c.;" for which anachronism there were serious thoughts of prosecuting the ultra-royalist lexicographer. A Fiscal History of England, or rather of modern Europe, not overloaded with matter purely antiquarian, nor perplexed with speculations of political economy, is a great desideratum, the supplying of which might well engage the attention of the “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." The same letter, the first in the remaining series of Andrew's Public Correspondences, conveys a compliment to the ladies of Hull well worth transcribing, because it shews, first, how much the bonds of domestic duty are relaxed by civil anarchy; and secondly, how necessary the most incorruptible representatives have found it to secure the good graces of their female constituents, who, though not even the advocates of universal suffrage have offered them votes, do for the most part virtually decide the elections. "There is yet brought in an act, in which, of all others, your Corporation is the least concerned; that is, where wives shall refuse to cohabit with their husbands, that in such case the husband shall not be obliged to pay any debts she shall run into, for cloathing, diet, lodgings, or other expenses." It is highly probable that separations of the nature alluded to frequently arose from religious and political dissentions between husband and wife. The revolt of Milton's first consort is a well-known but not a solitary instance. |