that "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"
which are apt to be such large ingredients in the compound we call
"patriotism." They begin thus:--

"Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead,
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion feel
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell,--
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety."

The gallant struggle to secure their country from the sea is made the
subject of curious banter:--

"How did they rivet with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground,
Building their watery Babel far more high,
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky!
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played,
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their _mare liberum_.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest."

This final conceit greatly tickled the fancy of Charles Lamb, who was
perhaps the first of the moderns to rediscover both the rare merits and
the curiosities of our author. Hazlitt thought poorly of the jest.[61:1]

Marvell proceeds with his ridicule to attack the magistrates:--

"For, as with pygmies, who best kills the crane;
Among the hungry, he that treasures grain;
Among the blind, the one-eyed blinkard reigns;
So rules among the drowned, he that drains:
Not who first see the rising sun, commands,
But who could first discern the rising lands;
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their Lord, and Country's Father, speak;
To make a bank, was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate."[62:1]

When the war-fever was raging such humour as this may well have passed
muster with the crowd.

The incident--there is always an "incident"--which served as the actual
excuse for hostilities, is referred to as follows:--

"Let this one courtesy witness all the rest,
When their whole navy they together pressed,
Not Christian captives to redeem from bands,
Or inte