nature, he performed the office
of a satirist for the faction, not so much from the quickness of his
wit, as from the sourness of his temper. A vagabond, ragged, hungry
poetaster, beaten at every tavern, where he daily received the rewards
of his impudence in kicks and blows.[320] By the interest of Milton,
to whom he was somewhat agreeable for his malignant wit, he became the
under-secretary to Cromwell's secretary."

And elsewhere he calls him "a drunken buffoon," and asserts that "he
made his conscience more cheap than he had formerly made his
reputation;" but the familiar anecdote of Marvell's political honesty,
when, wanting a dinner, he declined the gold sent to him by the king,
sufficiently replies to the calumniator. Parker, then in his retreat,
seems not to have been taught anything like modesty by his silence, as
Burnet conjectured; who says, "That a face of brass must grow red when
it is burnt as his was." It was even then that the recreant, in
silence, was composing the libel, which his cowardice dared not
publish, but which his invincible malice has sent down to posterity.

FOOTNOTES:

[307] Randolph's _Muses' Looking-glass_. Act 1, Scene 4.

[308] Swift certainly admired, if he did not imitate Marvell: for in
his "Tale of a Tub" he says, "We still read Marvell's answer
to Parker with pleasure, though the book it answers be sunk
long ago."

[309] This is a curious remark of Wood's: How came raillery and satire
to be considered as "a newly-refined art?" Has it not, at all
periods, been prevalent among every literary people? The
remark is, however, more founded on truth than it appears, and
arose from Wood's own feelings. Wit and Raillery had been so
strange to us during the gloomy period of the fanatic
Commonwealth, that honest Anthony, whose prejudices did not
run in favour of Marvell, not only considers him as the
"restorer of this newly-refined art," but as one "hugely
versed in it," and acknowledges all its efficacy in the
complete discomfiture of his haughty rival. Besides this, _a
small book_ of controversy, such as Marvell's usually are, was
another novelty--the "aureoli libelli," as one fondly calls
his precious books, were in the wretched taste of the times,
rhapsodies in folio. The reader has doubtless heard of
Caryll's endless "Commentary on