the stair's head." No sooner was the rhymer unearthed than
straightway he began to recite his poetry in dismal tones, much to his
visitor's dismay:--

"But I who now imagin'd myself brought
To my last trial, in a serious thought
Calm'd the disorders of my youthful breast
And to my martyrdom prepared rest.
Only this frail ambition did remain,
The last distemper of the sober brain,
That there had been some present to assure
The future ages how I did endure."

To stop the cataract of "hideous verse," Marvell invited the scarecrow
to dinner, and waits while he dresses. As they turn to leave, for the
room is so small that the man who comes in last must be the first to go
out, they meet a friend of the poet on the stairs, who makes a third at
dinner. After dinner Flecknoe produces ten quires of paper, from which
the friend proceeds to read, but so infamously as to excite their
author's rage:--

"But all his praises could not now appease
The provok't Author, whom it did displease
To hear his verses by so just a curse
That were ill made, condemned to be read worse:
And how (impossible!) he made yet more
Absurdities in them than were before:
For his untun'd voice did fall or raise
As a deaf man upon the Viol plays,
Making the half-points and the periods run
Confus'der than the atoms in the sun:
Thereat the poet swell'd with anger full,"

and after violent exclamations retires in dudgeon back to his room. The
faithful friend is in despair. What is he to do to make peace? "Who
would commend his mistress now?" Marvell

"counselled him to go in time
Ere the fierce poet's anger turned to rhyme."

The advice was taken, and Marvell, finding himself at last free from
boredom, went off to St. Peter's to return thanks.

This poem is but an unsatisfactory _souvenir de voyage_, but it is all
there is.

What Marvell was doing during the stirring years 1646-1650 is not
known. Even in the most troubled times men go about their business, and
our poet was always a man of affairs. As for his opinions during these
years, we can only guess at them from those to which he afterwards gave
expression. Marvell was neither a Republican nor a Puritan. Like his
father before him, he was a Protestant and a member of the Reformed
Church of England. He stood for both King and Parliament. Archbishop
Laud he distrusted, and it may well be detested, b