Andrew Marvell: Poems

After the Restoration

A statue of Andrew Marvell, located in the Marketplace, Kingston upon Hull, England

The monarchy was restored in England in 1660 by returning of Charles II to his own empire. Marvell avoided punishment for his own co-operation with Cromwell and republicanism more broadly. Furthermore, he helped to convince the King not to execute John Milton for his anti-monarchical writings and revolutionary activities.[14] The closeness of the relationship between the two former colleagues is indicated by the fact that Marvell contributed an eloquent prefatory poem, entitled "On Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost", to the second edition of Milton's epic Paradise Lost. According to a biographer: "Skilled in the arts of self-preservation, he was not a toady."[15]

In 1661 Marvell was re-elected MP for Hull in the Cavalier Parliament.[12] He eventually came to write several long and bitterly satirical verses against the corruption of the court. This work was mostly circulated in less public manuscript form, however some was anonymously published in print. The verses were too politically sensitive and too dangerous to be published under his name until well after the writer's death. Marvell took up opposition to the 'court party', and satirised them as his main target. In his longest verse of satire, Last Instructions to a Painter, written in 1667, Marvell responded to the political corruption that had contributed to English failures during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The poem was only published in print after the Revolution of 1688–9. The poem instructs an imaginary painter on how to portray the state without a proper navy to defend them. The state is led by men without intelligence or courage, a corrupt and dissolute court, and dishonest officials. Of another such satire, Samuel Pepys, himself a government official, commented in his diary, "Here I met with a fourth Advice to a Painter upon the coming in of the Dutch and the End of the War, that made my heart ake to read, it being too sharp and so true."[16]

From 1659 until his death in 1678, Marvell served as London agent for the Hull Trinity House shipmasters' guild. He went on two missions to the continent; one to the Dutch Republic, and the other encompassing Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. He spent some time living in a cottage on Highgate Hill in north London. His stay there is now recorded by a bronze plaque that bears the following inscription:

Four feet below this spot is the stone step, formerly the entrance to the cottage in which lived Andrew Marvell, poet, wit, and satirist; colleague with John Milton in the foreign or Latin secretaryship during the Commonwealth; and for about twenty years M.P. for Hull. Born at Winestead, Yorkshire, 31st March, 1621, died in London, 18th August, 1678, and buried in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. This memorial is placed here by the London County Council, December, 1898.[17]

A floral sundial in the nearby Lauderdale House bears an inscription quoting lines from his poem "The Garden".[18] Andrew Marvell died suddenly in 1678, while attending a popular meeting of his old constituents at Hull. His health had been remarkably good; and some people theorised of his poisoning by his political or clerical enemies. This is unproven. Marvell was buried in the church of St Giles in the Fields in central London. His monument, erected by a very grateful constituency, bears the following inscription:

Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength of judgment; and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired by all, though imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any. But a Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings, nevertheless. He having served twenty years successfully in Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the public loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Gratitude, 1688.


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