“Sir Henry Capel desires, now that his honour is concerned, that Holmes may explain, whether he saw not Marvell with his hat only give Harcourt the stroke ‘at that time.’  Possibly ‘at another time’ it might be.

   “The Speaker.  Both Holmes and Capel are in the right.  But Marvell
   struck Harcourt so home, that his fist, as well as his hat, hit him.

   “Sir R.  Howard hopes the house will not have Harcourt say he
   received a blow, when he has not.  He thinks what has been said by
   them both sufficient.

   “Mr. Garraway hopes, that by the debate we shall not make the thing
   greater than it is.  Would have them both reprimanded for it.

   “Mr. Sec. Williamson submits the honour of the house to the house. 
   Would have them made friends, and give that necessary assurance to
   the house, and he, for his part, remains satisfied.

“Sir Tho.  Meres.  By our long sitting together, we lose, by our familiarity and acquaintance, the decencies of the house.  He has seen 500 in the house, and people very orderly; not so much as to read a letter, or set up a foot.  One could scarce know anybody in the house, but him that spoke.  He would have the Speaker declare that order ought to be kept; but as to that gentleman (Marvell) to rest satisfied.”

The general impression left upon the mind is that of a friendly-familiar but choleric gentleman, full of likes and dislikes, readier with his tongue in the lobby than with “set” speeches in the Chamber.  A solitary politician with a biting pen.  Satirists must not complain if they have enemies.

Marvell’s vein of satire was never worked out, and the political poems of his last decade are fuller than ever of a savage humour.  How he kept his ears is a repeated wonder.  He is said to have been on terms of intimate friendship with Prince Rupert, and it is a steady tradition that the king was one of his amused readers.  It is hard to believe that even Charles the Second could have seen any humour, good or bad, in such a couplet:—­

    “The poor Priapus King, led by the nose,
    Looks as a thing set up to scare the crows.”

Nor can the following verses have been read with much pleasure, either at Whitehall or in a punt whilst fishing at Windsor.  Their occasion was the setting up in the stocks-market in the City of London of a statue of the king by Sir Robert Viner, a city knight, to whom Charles was very heavily in debt.  Sir Robert, having a frugal mind, had acquired a statue of John Sobieski trampling on the Turk, which, judiciously altered, was made to pass muster so as to represent the Pensioner of Louis the Fourteenth and the Vendor of Dunkirk trampling on Oliver Cromwell.

    “As cities that to the fierce conqueror yield
    Do at their own charges their citadels build;
    So Sir Robert advanced the King’s statue in token
    Of bankers defeated, and Lombard Street broken.