Andrew Marvell Part 19

BRITANNIA AND RALEIGH

"_Brit._ Ah! Raleigh, when thou didst thy breath resign To trembling James, would I had quitted mine.

Cubs didst thou call them? Hadst thou seen this brood Of earls, and dukes, and princes of the blood, No more of Scottish race thou would'st complain, Those would be blessings in this spurious reign.

Awake, arise from thy long blessed repose, Once more with me partake of mortal woes!

_Ral._ What mighty power has forced me from my rest?

Oh! mighty queen, why so untimely dressed?

_Brit._ Favoured by night, concealed in this disguise, Whilst the lewd court in drunken slumber lies, I stole away, and never will return, Till England knows who did her city burn; Till cavaliers shall favourites be deemed, And loyal sufferers by the court esteemed; Till Leigh and Galloway shall bribes reject; Thus...o...b..rne's golden cheat I shall detect: Till atheist Lauderdale shall leave this land, And Commons' votes shall cut-nose guards disband: Till Kate a happy mother shall become, Till Charles loves parliaments, and James hates Rome.

_Ral._ What fatal crimes make you for ever fly Your once loved court, and martyr's progeny?

_Brit._ A colony of French possess the Court, Pimps, priests, buffoons, i' the privy-chamber sport.

Such slimy monsters ne'er approached the throne Since Pharaoh's reign, nor so defiled a crown.

I' the sacred ear tyrannic arts they croak, Pervert his mind, his good intentions choke; Tell him of golden Indies, fairy lands, Leviathan, and absolute commands.

Thus, fairy-like, the King they steal away, And in his room a Lewis changeling lay.

How oft have I him to himself restored.

In's left the scale, in 's right hand placed the sword?

Taught him their use, what dangers would ensue To those that tried to separate these two?

The b.l.o.o.d.y Scottish chronicle turned o'er, Showed him how many kings, in purple gore, Were hurled to h.e.l.l, by learning tyrant lore?

The other day famed Spenser I did bring, In lofty notes Tudor's blest reign to sing; How Spain's proud powers her virgin arms controlled, And golden days in peaceful order rolled; How like ripe fruit she dropped from off her throne, Full of grey hairs, good deeds, and great renown.

_Ral._ Once more, great queen, thy darling strive to save, s.n.a.t.c.h him again from scandal and the grave; Present to 's thoughts his long-scorned parliament, The basis of his throne and government.

In his deaf ears sound his dead father's name: Perhaps that spell may 's erring soul reclaim: Who knows what good effects from thence may spring?

'Tis G.o.dlike good to save a falling king.

_Brit._ Raleigh, no more, for long in vain I've tried The Stuart from the tyrant to divide; As easily learned virtuosos may With the dog's blood his gentle kind convey Into the wolf, and make his guardian turn To the bleating flock, by him so lately torn: If this imperial juice once taint his blood, 'Tis by no potent antidote withstood.

Tyrants, like lep'rous kings, for public weal Should be immured, lest the contagion steal Over the whole. The elect of the Jessean line To this firm law their sceptre did resign; And shall this base tyrannic brood invade Eternal laws, by G.o.d for mankind made?

To the serene Venetian state I'll go, From her sage mouth famed principles to know; With her the prudence of the ancients read, To teach my people in their steps to tread; By their great pattern such a state I'll frame, Shall eternize a glorious lasting name.

Till then, my Raleigh, teach our n.o.ble youth To love sobriety, and holy truth; Watch and preside over their tender age, Lest court corruption should their souls engage; Teach them how arts, and arms, in thy young days, Employed our youth--not taverns, stews, and plays; Tell them the generous scorn their race does owe To flattery, pimping, and a gaudy show; Teach them to scorn the Carwells, Portsmouths, Nells, The Clevelands, Osbornes, Berties, Lauderdales: Poppaea, Tigelline, and Arteria's name, All yield to these in lewdness, l.u.s.t, and fame.

Make them admire the Talbots, Sydneys, Veres, Drake, Cavendish, Blake, men void of slavish fears, True sons of glory, pillars of the state, On whose famed deeds all tongues and writers wait.

When with fierce ardour their bright souls do burn, Back to my dearest country I'll return."

The dialogue between the two horses, which bore upon their respective backs the stone effigies of Charles the First at Charing Cross and Charles the Second at Wool-Church, is, in its own rough way, masterly satire for the popular ear.

"If the Roman Church, good Christians, oblige ye To believe man and beast have spoken in effigy, Why should we not credit the public discourses, In a dialogue between two inanimate horses?

The horses I mean of Wool-Church and Charing, Who told many truths worth any man's hearing, Since Viner and Osborn did buy and provide 'em For the two mighty monarchs who now do bestride 'em.

The stately bra.s.s stallion, and the white marble steed, The night came together, by all 'tis agreed; When both kings were weary of sitting all day, They stole off, incognito, each his own way; And then the two jades, after mutual salutes, Not only discoursed, but fell to disputes."

The dialogue is too long to be quoted. Charles the Second's steed boldly declares:--

"De Witt and Cromwell had each a brave soul, I freely declare it, I am for old Noll; Though his government did a tyrant resemble, He made England great, and his enemies tremble."

Mr. Hollis, when he sent the picture of Cromwell by Cooper to Sidney Suss.e.x College, is said to have written beneath it the lines just quoted.

The satire ends thus:--

"_Charing Cross._ But canst them devise when things will be mended?

_Wool-Church._ When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended.

_Charing Cross._ Then England, rejoice, thy redemption draws nigh; Thy oppression together with kings.h.i.+p shall die.

_Chorus._ A Commonwealth, a Commonwealth we proclaim to the nation, For the G.o.ds have repented the King's restoration."

These probably are the lines which spread the popular, but mistaken, belief that Marvell was a Republican.

Andrew Marvell died in his lodgings in London on the 16th of August 1678. Colonel Grosvenor, writing to George Treby, M.P. (afterwards Chief of the Common Pleas), on the 17th of August, reports "Andrew Marvell died yesterday of apoplexy." Parliament was not sitting at the time.

What was said of the elder Andrew may also be said of the younger: he was happy in the moment of his death. The one just escaped the Civil War, the other the Popish Plot.

Marvell was thought to have been poisoned. Such a suspicion in those bad times was not far-fetched. His satires, rough but moving, had been widely read, and his fears for the Const.i.tution, his dread of

"The grim Monster, Arbitrary Power, The ugliest Giant ever trod the earth,"

infested many b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and bred terror.

"Marvell, the Island's watchful sentinel, Stood in the gap and bravely kept his post."

The post was one of obvious danger, and

"Whether Fate or Art untwin'd his thread Remains in doubt."[220:1]

The doubt has now been dissipated by the research of an accomplished physician, Dr. Gee, who in 1874 communicated to the _Athenaeum_ (March 7, 1874) an extract from Richard Morton's {Greek: Pyretologia} (1692), containing a full account of Marvell's sickness and death. Art "untwin'd his thread," but it was the doctor's art. Dr. Gee's translation of Morton's medical Latin is as follows:--

"In this manner was that most famous man Andrew Marvell carried off from amongst the living before his time, to the great loss of the republic, and especially the republic of letters; through the ignorance of an old conceited doctor, who was in the habit on all occasions of raving excessively against Peruvian bark, as if it were a common plague. Howbeit, without any clear indication, in the interval after a third fit of regular tertian ague, and by way of preparation (so that all things might seem to be done most methodically), blood was copiously drawn from the patient, who was advanced in years." [Here follow more details of treatment, which I pa.s.s over.] "The way having been made ready after this fas.h.i.+on, at the beginning of the next fit, a great febrifuge was given, a draught, that is to say, of Venice treacle, etc. By the doctor's orders, the patient was covered up close with blankets, say rather, was buried under them; and composed himself to sleep and sweat, so that he might escape the cold s.h.i.+vers which are wont to accompany the onset of the ague-fit. He was seized with the deepest sleep and colliquative sweats, and in the short s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours from the time of the ague-fit, he died comatose. He died, who, had a single ounce of Peruvian bark been properly given, might easily have escaped, in twenty-four hours, from the jaws of the grave and the disease: and so burning with anger, I informed the doctor, when he told me this story without any sense of shame."

Marvell was buried on the 18th of August, "under the pews in the south side of St. Giles's Church in the Fields, under the window wherein is painted on gla.s.s a red lion." So writes the invaluable Aubrey, who tells us he had the account from the s.e.xton who made the grave.

In 1678 St. Giles's Church was a brick structure built by Laud. The present imposing church was built on the site of the old one in 1730-34.

In 1774 Captain Thompson, so he tells us, "visited the grand mausoleum under the church of St. Giles, to search for the coffin in which Mr.

Marvell was placed: in this vault were deposited upwards of a thousand bodies, but I could find no plate of an earlier date than 1722; I do therefore suppose the new church is built upon the former burial place."

The poet's grand-nephew, Mr. Robert Nettleton, in 1764 placed on the north side of the present church, upon a black marble slab, a long epitaph, still to be seen, recording the fact that "near to this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esquire." At no great distance from this slab is the tombstone, recently brought in from the graveyard outside, of _Georgius Chapman, Poeta_, a fine Roman monument, prepared by the care and at the cost of the poet's friend, Inigo Jones. Still left exposed, in what is now a doleful garden (not at all Marvellian), is the tombstone of Richard Penderel of Boscobel, one of the five yeomen brothers who helped Charles to escape after Worcester. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in 1648, and s.h.i.+rley the dramatist, in 1666, had been carried to the same place of sepulture.

Aubrey describes Marvell "as of middling stature, pretty strong-set, roundish faced, cherry-cheeked, hazell eye, brown hair. He was, in his conversation, very modest, and of very few words. Though he loved wine, he would never drink hard in company, and was wont to say that he would not play the good fellow in any man's company in whose hands he would not trust his life. He kept bottles of wine at his lodgings, and many times he would drink liberally by himself and to refresh his spirit and exalt his muse. James Harrington (author of _Oceana_) was his intimate friend; J. Pell, D.D., was one of his acquaintances. He had not a general acquaintance."

Dr. Pell, one may remark, was a great friend of Hobbes.

In March 1679 joint administration was granted by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, _Mariae Marvell relictae et Johni Greni Creditori_. This is the first time we hear of there being any wife in the case. A creditor of a deceased person could not obtain administration without citing the next of kin, but a widow was ent.i.tled, under a statute of Henry VIII., as of right, to administration, and it may be that Mr.

Green thought the quickest way of being paid his debt was to invent a widow. The practice of the court required an affidavit from the widow deposing that she was the lawful relict of the deceased, but this a.s.sertion on oath seems in ordinary cases to have been sufficient, if the customary fees were forthcoming. Captain Thompson roundly a.s.serts that the alleged Mary Marvell was a cheat, and no more than the lodging-house keeper where he had last lived--and Marvell was a migratory man.[223:1] Mary Marvell's name appears once again, in the forefront of the first edition of Marvell's _Poems_ (1681), where she certifies all the contents to be her husband's works. This may have been a publisher's, as the affidavit may have been a creditor's, artifice. As against this, Mr. Grosart, who believed in Mary Marvell, reminds us that Mr. Robert Boulter, the publisher of the poems, was a most respectable man, and a friend both of Milton's and Marvell's, and not at all likely either to cheat the public with a falsely signed certificate, or to be cheated by a London lodging-house keeper. Whatever "Mary Marvell" may have been, "widow, wife, or maid," she is heard of no more.

Hull was not wholly unmindful of her late and (William Wilberforce notwithstanding) her most famous member. "On Thursday the 26th of September 1678, in consideration of the kindness the Town and Borough had for Andrew Marvell, Esq., one of the Burgesses of Parliament for the same Borough (lately deceased), and for his great merits from the Corporation. It is this day ordered by the Court that Fifty pounds be paid out of the Town's Chest towards the discharge of his funerals (_sic_), and to perpetuate his memory by a gravestone" (_Bench Books of Hull_).

The inc.u.mbent of Trinity Church is said to have objected to the erection of any monument. At all events there is none. Marvell had many enemies in the Church. Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of York, was a Yorks.h.i.+re man, and had been domestic chaplain to Sir Heneage Finch, a lawyer-member, much lashed by Marvell's bitter pen. Sharp had also taken part in the quarrel with the Dissenters, and is reported to have been very much opposed to any Hull monument to Marvell. Captain Thompson says "the Epitaph which the Town of Hull caused to be erected to Marvell's memory was torn down by the Zealots of the King's party." There is no record of this occurrence.