Lovelace did not live to see the Restoration, but died in a mean lodging near Shoe Lane in April 1658, and was buried in St. Bridget’s Church.  Let us indulge the hope that the friends who occupied so many of the introductory pages of Lovelace’s Lucasta occasionally enlivened the solitude and relieved the distress of the poet whose praises they had once sung with so much vigour.  As Marvell was undoubtedly a friendly man, and one who loved to be alone with his friends, and had never any house of his own to keep up, living for the most part in hired lodgings, it would be unkind to doubt that he at least did not forget Lovelace in his poverty and depression of spirit.

In 1649 thirty-three poets combined to weep over the early grave of the Lord Henry Hastings, the eldest son of the sixth Earl of Huntingdon, who died of the smallpox in the twentieth year of his age.  Not even this plentiful discharge of poets’ tears should rob the young nobleman of his claim to be regarded as a fine example of the great learning, accomplishments, and high spirits of the age.  We can still produce the thirty-three poets, but what young nobleman is there who can boast such erudition as had rewarded the scorned delights and the laborious days of this Lord Hastings?  We have at least the satisfaction of knowing that did such a one exist he probably would not die of the smallpox.  Among the poets who wept on this occasion were Herrick, Sir John Denham, Andrew Marvell, and John Dryden, then a Westminster schoolboy, whose description of the smallpox is as bad as the disease.

Marvell’s verses begin very prettily and soon introduce a characteristic touch:—­

    “Go, stand betwixt the Morning and the Flowers,
    And ere they fall arrest the early showers,
    Hastings is dead; and we disconsolate
    With early tears must mourn his early fate.”

In 1650 Marvell, then in his twenty-ninth year, went to live with Lord Fairfax at Nunappleton House in Yorkshire, as tutor to the only child and daughter of the house, Mary Fairfax, aged twelve years (born 30th July 1638).  This proved to be a great event in Marvell’s life as a poet, and it happened at an epoch in the distinguished career of the famous Parliamentarian general

    “Whose name in arms through Europe rings.”

Lord Fairfax, though he had countenanced, if not approved, the trial and deposition of the king, had resolutely held himself aloof from the proceedings which, beginning on Saturday the 20th of January 1649, terminated so dismally on Tuesday the 30th.  The strange part played by Lady Fairfax on the first day of the so-called trial (though it was no greater a travesty of justice than many a real trial both before and after) is one of the best-known stories in English history.  There are several versions of it.  Having provided herself with a seat in a small gallery in Westminster Hall, just above the heads of the judges, when her