ts. As
the intimate friend and colleague of Milton, Marvell shares some of the
indescribable majesty of that throne. A poet, a scholar, a traveller, a
diplomat, a famous wit, an active member of Parliament from the
Restoration to his death in 1678, the life of Andrew Marvell might _a
priori_ be supposed to be one easy to write, at all events after the
fashion in which men's lives get written. But it is nothing of the kind,
as many can testify. A more elusive, non-recorded character is hardly to
be found. We know all about him, but very little of him. His parentage,
his places of education, many of his friends and acquaintances, are all
known. He wrote nearly four hundred letters to his Hull constituents,
carefully preserved by the Corporation, in which he narrates with much
particularity the course of public business at Westminster.
Notwithstanding these materials, the man Andrew Marvell remains
undiscovered. He rarely comes to the surface. Though both an author and
a member of Parliament, not a trace of personal vanity is noticeable,
and vanity is a quality of great assistance to the biographer. That
Marvell was a strong, shrewd, capable man of affairs, with enormous
powers of self-repression, his Hull correspondence clearly proves, but
what more he was it is hard to say. He rarely spoke during his eighteen
years in the House of Commons. It is impossible to doubt that such a
man in such a place was, in Mr. Disraeli's phrase, a "personage." Yet
when we look for recognition of what we feel sure was the fact, we fail
to find it. Bishop Burnet, in his delightful history, supplies us with
sketches of the leading Parliamentarians of Marvell's day, yet to
Marvell himself he refers but once, and then not by name but as "the
liveliest droll of the age," words which mean much but tell little. In
Clarendon's _Autobiography_, another book which lets the reader into the
very clash and crowd of life, there is no mention of one of the author's
most bitter and cruel enemies. With Prince Rupert, Marvell was credited
by his contemporaries with a great intimacy; he was a friend of
Harrington's; it may be he was a member of the once famous "Rota" Club;
it is impossible to resist the conviction that wherever he went he made
a great impression, that he was a central figure in the lobbies of the
House of Commons and a man of much account; yet no record survives
either to convince posterity of his social charm or even to convey any
exact notio