blow them. One burnt
the weed, another calcined the flint, a third melted down that
mixture; but he himself fashioned all with his breath, and polished
with his style, till, out of a mere jelly of sand and ashes, he had
furnished a whole cupboard of things, so brittle and incoherent, that
the least touch would break them again in pieces, and so transparent,
that every man might see through them."

Parker had accused Marvell with having served Cromwell, and being the
friend of Milton, then living, at a moment when such an accusation not
only rendered a man odious, but put his life in danger.[319] Marvell,
who now perceived that Milton, whom he never looked on but with the
eyes of reverential awe, was likely to be drawn into his quarrel,
touches on this subject with infinite delicacy and tenderness, but not
with diminished energy against his malignant adversary, whom he shows
to have been an impertinent intruder in Milton's house, where indeed
he had first known him. He cautiously alludes to our English Homer by
his initials: at that moment the very name of Milton would have
tainted the page!

"J. M. was, and is, a man of great learning and sharpness of wit, as
any man. It was his misfortune, living in a tumultuous time, to be
tossed on the wrong side; and he writ, _flagrante bello_, certain
dangerous treatises. But some of his books, upon which you take him at
advantage, were of no other nature than that one writ by your own
father; only with this difference, that your father's, which I have by
me, was written with the same design, but with much less wit or
judgment, for which there was no remedy, unless you will supply his
judgment with his high Court of Justice. At his Majesty's happy
return, J. M. did partake, even as you yourself did, for all your
huffing, of his royal clemency, and has ever since expiated himself in
a retired silence. Whether it were my foresight, or my good fortune, I
never contracted any friendship or confidence with you; but then it
was you frequented J. M. incessantly, and haunted his house day by
day. What discourses you there used, he is too generous to remember.
But for you to insult over his old age, to traduce him by your
scaramouches, and in your own person, as a schoolmaster, who was born
and hath lived more ingenuously and liberally than yourself!"

Marvell, when he lays by his playful humour and fertile fancy for more
solemn remonstrances, assumes a loftier tone, and a severity of
i