SOURCE: "Cromwell as Machiavellian Prince in Marvell's An Horatian Ode," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XXI, No. 1, January-March, 1960, pp. 1-17.

In the essay below, Mazzeo compares "An Horatian Ode" to Machiavelli's The Prince, arguing that the authors of both works are insightful on the subject of political leadership.

First I ought to say that this essay will not be a study of the history of Marvell's political opinions, nor will I attempt to find more consistency in them than they will bear. His elegy on Lord Francis Villiers, the poem to Lovelace, the poems on the death of Hastings and on the death of Tom May, all furnish evidence of Royalist sentiment. The three poems on Cromwell furnish equal evidence of Puritan sentiment. Even if all the problems of dating and attribution of Marvell's poetic corpus could be solved, we would still be faced with...