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قراءة كتاب Andrew Marvell
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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Andrew Marvell, by Augustine Birrell
Title: Andrew Marvell
Author: Augustine Birrell
Release Date: December 25, 2005 [eBook #17388]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANDREW MARVELL***
E-text prepared by Irma Spehar, Louise Pryor,
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| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/andrewmarvell00birruoft |
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY
ANDREW MARVELL
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS
ANDREW MARVELL
BY
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1905
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1905, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1905.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
I desire to express my indebtedness to the following editions of Marvell’s Works:—
(1) The Works of Andrew Marvell, Esq., Poetical, Controversial, and Political: containing many Original Letters, Poems, and Tracts never before printed, with a New Life. By Captain Edward Thompson. In three volumes. London, 1776.
(2) The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P. Edited with Memorial-Introduction and Notes by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart. In four volumes. 1872.
(In the Fuller Worthies Library.)
(3) Poems and Satires of Andrew Marvell, sometime Member of Parliament for Hull. Edited by G. A. Aitken. Two volumes. Lawrence and Bullen, 1892.
Reprinted Routledge, 1905.
Mr. C. H. Firth’s Life of Marvell in the thirty-sixth volume of The Dictionary of National Biography has, I am sure, preserved me from some, and possibly from many, blunders.
A. B.
3 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn,
June 3, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Early Days at School and College 1
“The Happy Garden-State” 19
A Civil Servant in the Time of the Commonwealth 48
In the House of Commons 75
“The Rehearsal Transprosed” 151
Last Years in the House of Commons 179
Final Satires and Death 211
Work as a Man of Letters 225
Index 233
ANDREW MARVELL
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
The name of Andrew Marvell ever sounds sweet, and always has, to use words of Charles Lamb’s, a fine relish to the ear. As the author of poetry of exquisite quality, where for the last time may be heard the priceless note of the Elizabethan lyricist, whilst at the same moment utterance is being given to thoughts and feelings which reach far forward to Wordsworth and Shelley, Marvell can never be forgotten in his native England.
Lines of Marvell’s poetry have secured the final honours, and incurred the peril, of becoming “familiar quotations” ready for use on a great variety of occasion. We may, perhaps, have been bidden once or twice too often to remember how the Royal actor
Upon that memorable scene,”
or have been assured to our surprise by some self-satisfied worldling how he always hears at his back,
A true poet can, however, never be defiled by the rough usage of the populace.
As a politician Marvell lives in the old-fashioned vivacious history-books (which if they die out, as they show some signs of doing, will carry with them half the historic sense of the nation) as the hero of an anecdote of an unsuccessful attempt made upon his political virtue by a minister of the Crown, as a rare type of an inflexible patriot, and as the last member of the House of Commons who was content to take wages from, instead of contributing to the support of, his constituents. As the intimate friend and colleague of Milton, Marvell shares some of the indescribable