ax the most famous
of the stanzas.

But to return to the history of the Ode. In 1776 Captain Edward
Thompson, a connection of the Marvell family and a versatile sailor with
a passion for print, which had taken some odd forms of expression,
produced by subscription in three quarto volumes the first collected
edition of Andrew Marvell's works, both verse and prose. Such an edition
had been long premeditated by Thomas Hollis, one of the best friends
literature had in the eighteenth century. It was Hollis who gave to
Sidney Sussex College the finest portrait in existence of Oliver
Cromwell. Hollis collected material for an edition of Marvell with the
aid of Richard Barron, an early editor of Milton's prose works, and of
Algernon Sidney's _Discourse concerning Government_. Barron, however,
lost zeal as the task proceeded, and complained justly enough "of a want
of anecdotes," and as the printer, the well-known and accomplished
Bowyer, doubted the wisdom of the undertaking, it was allowed to drop.
Barron died in 1766, and Hollis in 1774, but the collections made by the
latter passed into the hands of Captain Thompson, who, with the
assistance of Mr. Robert Nettleton, a grandson of one of Marvell's
sisters, at once began to get his edition ready. On Nettleton's death
his "Marvell" papers came into Thompson's hands, and among them was, to
quote the captain's own words, "a volume of Mr. Marvell's poems, some
written with his own hand and the rest copied by his order."

The _Horatian Ode_ was in this volume, and was printed from it in
Thompson's edition of 1776.

What has become of this manuscript book? It has disappeared--destroyed,
so we are led to believe, in a fit of temper by the angry and uncritical
sea-captain.

This precious volume undoubtedly contained some poems by Marvell, and as
his handwriting was both well known from many examples, and is highly
characteristic, we may also be certain that the captain was not mistaken
in his assertion that some of these poems were in Marvell's own
handwriting. But, as ill-luck would have it, the volume also contained
poems written at a later period and in quite another hand. Among these
latter pieces were Addison's verses, _The Spacious Firmament on High_
and _When all thy Mercies, O my God_; Dr. Watts' paraphrase _When Israel
freed from Pharaoh's Hand_; and Mallet's ballad _William and Margaret_.
The two Addison pieces and the Watts paraphrase appeared for the first
time in the