The Life of Andrew Marvel (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1835. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... ANDREW MARVELL. It is the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of illustrious persons. Andrew Marvell has therefore become a celebrated name, and is now known as one of the most incorruptible Patriots that England, or any other country, ever produced. A character so exalted and pure, astonished a corrupt age, and overawed even majesty itself. His morals and his manners were Roman: --he lived on the turnip of Curtius, and would have bled at Philippi. As a Poet, too, Marvell possessed no vulgar genius; and as a Satirist, he was one of the keenest in the luxuriant age of Charles II. It is to be regretted that our notices of him are less ample and continuous than his personal merit deserves, or his exalted walk of public action would induce us to expect. His name, indeed, is generally known--a few anecdotes of his honesty are daily repeated--and a single copy of verses, no adequate sample of his poetic powers, keeping its station in the vestibule of Paradise Lost, records him as the friend and admirer of Milton. But the detail of his daily life--the simple background of the stirring picture--the inestimable transactions which should make up the unity and totality of his history--might indeed be easily supplied by imagination, but cannot be derived from document, or tradition. The mind of Marvell, like the street and the wall of Jerusalem, was built in troublous times. From his youth upwards, he was inured to peril and privation; and, though he does not appear to have been personally engaged in civil conflict, he could not escape the tyrannous trials of those 'evil days'--reproach and wicked solicitation, and sundering of dearest ties, by violent death, and exile, and crueller alienation. Yet if his heart was often wounded, it was never hardened. He ever ...