It is a melancholy picture.

Here, perhaps, may be best inserted the story about the proffered bribe.  The story is entitled to small credit, but as helping to swell and maintain a tradition concerning an historical character about whom little is positively known, it can hardly escape mention in any biography of Marvell.  A pamphlet printed in Ireland (1754) supplies an easy flowing version of the tale.

“The borough of Hull, in the reign of Charles II., chose Andrew Marvell, a young gentleman of little or no fortune, and maintained him in London for the service of the public.  His understanding, integrity, and spirit, were dreadful to the then infamous administration.  Persuaded that he would be theirs for properly asking, they sent his old school-fellow, the Lord Treasurer Danby, to renew acquaintance with him in his garret.  At parting, the Lord Treasurer, out of pure affection, slipped into his hand an order upon the treasury for L1000, and then went to his chariot.  Marvell, looking at the paper, calls after the Treasurer, ’My Lord, I request another moment.’  They went up again to the garret, and Jack, the servant boy, was called.  ’Jack, child, what had I for dinner yesterday?’ ’Don’t you remember, sir? you had the little shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring from a woman in the market.’  ‘Very right, child.’  ‘What have I for dinner to-day?’ ’Don’t you know, sir, that you bid me lay by the blade-bone to broil.’ ’’Tis so, very right, child, go away.’  ’My Lord, do you hear that?  Andrew Marvell’s dinner is provided; there’s your piece of paper.  I want it not.  I knew the sort of kindness you intended.  I live here to serve my constituents:  the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not one.’"[210:1]

One more letter remains to be quoted:—­

To William Ramsden, Esq.
“June 10, 1678.

“DEAR WILL,—­I have time to tell you thus much of publick matters.  The patience of the Scots, under their oppressions, is not to be paralleled in any history.  They still continue their extraordinary and numerous, but peaceable, field conventicles.  One Mr. Welch is their arch-minister, and the last letter I saw tells, people were going forty miles to hear him.  There came out, about Christmas last, here, a large book concerning the growth of popery and arbitrary government.  There have been great rewards offered in private, and considerable in the Gazette, to any one who could inform of the author or printer, but not yet discovered.  Three or four printed books since have described, as near as it was proper to go, the man being a Member of Parliament, Mr. Marvell, to have been the author; but if he had, surely he should not have escaped being questioned in Parliament or some other place.  My good wishes attend you.”

The last letter Andrew Marvell wrote to his constituents is dated July 6, 1678.  The member for Hull died in August 1678.  The Parliament in which he had sat continuously for eighteen years was at last dissolved on the 30th of December in the year of his death.