this day taking barge for
Gravesend, there to embark for Archangel, so to Muscow, thence for
Sweden, and last of all Denmarke; all of which I hope, by God's
blessing, to finish within twelve moneths time: I do hereby, with my
last and seriousest thoughts, salute you, rendring you all hearty
thanks for your great kindnesse and friendship to me upon all
occasions, and ardently beseeching God to keep you all in His
gracious protection, to your own honour, and the welfare and
flourishing of your Corporation, to which I am and shall ever
continue a most affectionate and devoted servant. I undertake this
voyage with the order and good liking of his Majesty, and by leave
given me from the House and enterd in the Journal; and having
received moreover your approbation, I go therefore with more ease
and satisfaction of mind, and augurate to myselfe the happier
successe in all my proceedings...."

It was Marvell's good fortune to be in Lord Carlisle's frigate which
made the voyage to Archangel in less than a month, sailing from
Gravesend on the 22nd of July and arriving at the bar of Archangel on
the 19th of August. The companion frigate took seven weeks to compass
the same distance.

Nothing of any importance attaches to this Russian embassy. It cost a
great deal of money, took up a great deal of time, exposed the
ambassador and his suite to much rudeness and discomfort, and failed to
effect its main object, which was to secure a renewal of the privileges
formerly enjoyed in Muscovy by British merchants.

One of the attendants upon the ambassador made a small book out of his
travels, which did not get printed till 1669, when it attracted little
notice. Mr. Grosart was the first of Marvell's many biographers to
discover the existence of this narrative.[106:1] He found it in the
first instance, to use his own language, "in one of good trusty John
Harris' folios of _Travels and Voyages_" (two vols. folio, 1705); but
later on he made the sad discovery that this "good trusty John Harris"
had uplifted what he called his "true and particular account" from the
book of 1669 without any acknowledgment. "For ways that are dark" the
old compiler of travels was not easily excelled, but why should Mr.
Grosart have gone out of his way to call an eighteenth-century
book-maker, about whom he evidently knew nothing, "good and trusty"?
Harris was never either the one or the other, and died a pauper!

A