CHAPTER IV

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Cromwell’s death was an epoch in Marvell’s history.  Up to that date he had, since he left the University, led the life of a scholar, with a turn for business, and was known to many as an agreeable companion and a lively wit.  He was keenly interested in public affairs, and personally acquainted with some men in great place, and for a year before Cromwell’s death he had been in a branch of the Civil Service; but of the wear and tear, the strife and contention, of what are called “practical politics” he knew nothing from personal experience.

Within a year of the Protector’s death all this was changed and, for the rest of his days, with but the shortest of occasional intervals, Andrew Marvell led the life of an active, eager member of Parliament, knowing all that was going on in the Chamber and hearing of everything that was alleged to be going on in the Court; busily occupied with the affairs of his constituents in Hull, and daily watching, with an increasingly heavy heart and a bitter humour, the corruption of the times, the declension of our sea-power, the growing shame of England, and what he believed to be a dangerous conspiracy afoot for the undoing of the Reformation and the destruction of the Constitution in both Church and State.

“Garden-poetry” could not be reared on such a soil as this.  The age of Cromwell and Blake was over.  The remainder of Marvell’s life (save so far as personal friendship sweetened it) was spent in politics, public business, in concocting roughly rhymed and bitter satirical poems, and in the composition of prose pamphlets.

Through it all Marvell remained very much the man of letters, though one with a great natural aptitude for business.  His was always the critical attitude.  He was the friend of Milton and Harrington, of the political philosophers who invented paper constitutions in the “Rota” Club, and of the new race of men whose thoughts turned to Natural Science, and who founded the Royal Society.  Office he never thought of.  He could have had it had he chosen, for he was a man of mark, even of distinction, from the first.  Clarendon has told us how members of the House of Commons “got on” in the Long Parliament of Charles the Second.  It was full of the king’s friends, who ran out of the House to tell their shrewd master the gossip of the lobbies, “commended this man and discommended another who deserved better, and would many times, when His Majesty spoke well of any man, ask His Majesty if he would give them leave to let that person know how gracious His Majesty was to him, or bring him to kiss his hand.  To which he commonly consenting, every one of his servants delivered some message from him to a Parliament man, and invited him to Court, as if the King would be willing to see him.  And by this means the rooms at Court were always full of the members of the House of Commons.  This man brought to kiss his hand, and the King induced to confer with that man and to thank him for his affection, which could never conclude without some general expression of grace or promise, which the poor gentleman always interpreted to his own advantage, and expected some fruit from it that it could never yield.”