Mr. Aitken's valuable edition of Marvell's poems and satires can now be
had of all booksellers for two shillings,[47:1] and with these volumes
in his possession the judicious reader will be able to supply his own
reflections whilst life beneath the sun is still his. Poetry is a
personal matter. The very canons of criticism are themselves literature.
If we like the _Ars Poetica_, it is because we enjoy reading Horace.

FOOTNOTES:

[20:1] For an account of Flecknoe, see Southey's _Omniana_, i. 105. Lamb
placed some fine lines of Flecknoe's at the beginning of the Essay _A
Quakers' Meeting_.

[24:1] Grosart, vol. iii. p. 175.

[24:2] _See_ preface to _Religio Laici_, Scott's _Dryden_, vol. x. p.
27.

[24:3] Jeremy Collier in his _Historical Dictionary_ (1705) describes
Marvell, to whom he allows more space (though it is but a few lines)
than he does to Shakespeare, "as to his opinion he was a dissenter." In
Collier's opinion Marvell may have been no better than a dissenter, but
in fact he was a Churchman all his life, and it was Collier who lived to
become a non-juror and a dissenter, and a schismatical bishop to boot.

[31:1] _Life of Lord Fairfax_, by C.R. Markham (1870), p. 365.

[35:1] The fifth edition is dated 1703.

[46:1] Many a reader has made his first acquaintance with Marvell on
reading these lines in the _Essays of Elia_ (_The Old Benchers of the
Inner Temple_).

[47:1] _Poems and Satires of Andrew Marvell_, 2 vols. Routledge, 1905.

CHAPTER III

A CIVIL SERVANT IN THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH

When Andrew Marvell first made John Milton's acquaintance is not known.
They must both have had common friends at or belonging to Cambridge.
Fairfax may have made the two men known to each other, although it is
just as likely that Milton introduced Marvell to Fairfax. All we know is
that when the engagement at Nunappleton House came to an end, Marvell,
being then minded to serve the State in some civil capacity, applied to
the Secretary for Foreign Tongues for what would now be called a
testimonial, which he was fortunate enough to obtain in the form of a
letter to the Lord-President of the Council, John Bradshaw. Milton seems
always to have liked Bradshaw, who was not generally popular even on his
own side, and in the _Defensio Secunda pro populo Anglicano_ extols his
character and attainments in sonorous latinity. Bradshaw had become in
February 1649 the first President of the new Council of