Drake, Cavendish, Blake, men void of slavish fears,
True sons of glory, pillars of the state,
On whose famed deeds all tongues and writers wait. 
When with fierce ardour their bright souls do burn,
Back to my dearest country I’ll return.”

The dialogue between the two horses, which bore upon their respective backs the stone effigies of Charles the First at Charing Cross and Charles the Second at Wool-Church, is, in its own rough way, masterly satire for the popular ear.

“If the Roman Church, good Christians, oblige ye
To believe man and beast have spoken in effigy,
Why should we not credit the public discourses,
In a dialogue between two inanimate horses? 
The horses I mean of Wool-Church and Charing,
Who told many truths worth any man’s hearing,
Since Viner and Osborn did buy and provide ’em
For the two mighty monarchs who now do bestride ’em. 
The stately brass stallion, and the white marble steed,
The night came together, by all ’tis agreed;
When both kings were weary of sitting all day,
They stole off, incognito, each his own way;
And then the two jades, after mutual salutes,
Not only discoursed, but fell to disputes.”

The dialogue is too long to be quoted.  Charles the Second’s steed boldly declares:—­

“De Witt and Cromwell had each a brave soul,
I freely declare it, I am for old Noll;
Though his government did a tyrant resemble,
He made England great, and his enemies tremble.”

Mr. Hollis, when he sent the picture of Cromwell by Cooper to Sidney Sussex College, is said to have written beneath it the lines just quoted.

The satire ends thus:—­

“Charing Cross. But canst them devise when things will be mended?

Wool-Church. When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended.

Charing Cross. Then England, rejoice, thy redemption draws nigh;
Thy oppression together with kingship shall die.

Chorus. A Commonwealth, a Commonwealth we proclaim to the nation,
For the gods have repented the King’s restoration.”

These probably are the lines which spread the popular, but mistaken, belief that Marvell was a Republican.

Andrew Marvell died in his lodgings in London on the 16th of August 1678.  Colonel Grosvenor, writing to George Treby, M.P. (afterwards Chief of the Common Pleas), on the 17th of August, reports “Andrew Marvell died yesterday of apoplexy.”  Parliament was not sitting at the time.  What was said of the elder Andrew may also be said of the younger:  he was happy in the moment of his death.  The one just escaped the Civil War, the other the Popish Plot.

Marvell was thought to have been poisoned.  Such a suspicion in those bad times was not far-fetched.  His satires, rough but moving, had been widely read, and his fears for the Constitution, his dread of