Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/331

 1637, and on 13 April 1638 was admitted a scholar of Trinity College. He graduated B. A. in the same year, and the college records show that he left Cambridge before September 1641 (, Complete Works of Andrew Marvell, 1872, vol. i. pp. xxvii, xxxiii).

The next ten years of Marvell's life are extremely obscure. He spent four years abroad, probably 1642 to 1646, travelled in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain, and met and satirised [q. v.] at Home. Two poems published in 1649, the one prefixed to the poems of [q. v.], the other in the collection on the death of Lord Hastings, afford evidence of his return to England. The lines to Lovelace, together with the stanzas on the execution of the king in the ' Horatian Ode,' and the satire on the death of [q. v.], have been taken to prove that Marvell's early sympathies were with the royalist cause. They really show that he judged the civil war as a spectator rather than a partisan, and felt that literature was above parties.

Marvell first came into contact with the heads of the Commonwealth when Lord Fairfax engaged him as tutor to his daughter Mary, probably in 1650 or 1651. He lived for some time in Fairfax's house at Nun Appleton in Yorkshire, where he addressed to Fairfax his lines, 'Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilborow' and 'Upon Appleton House.' The poems on gardens and in praise of country life, and the translation from Seneca, in which the poet desires to pass his life 'in calm leisure' and 'far off the public stage,' belong to this period. By 1653 the delights of retirement had begun to pall, and Marvell sought for a post in the service of the Commonwealth. He had now become an ardent republican, and in his 'Character of Holland ' describes the new state as 'darling of heaven and of men the care.'

On 21 Feb. 1653 Milton, who was by this time totally blind, recommended Marvell's appointment as his assistant in the secretaryship for foreign tongues. He described him to Bradshaw, the president of the council of state, as 'a man, both by report and by the converse I have had with him, of singular desert for the state to make use of who also offers himself if there be any employment for him. &hellip; He hath spent four years abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain, to very good purpose, as I believe, and the gaining of these four languages; besides, he is a scholar and well read in the Latin and Greek authors, and no doubt of an approved conversation, for he comes now lately out of the house of the Lord Fairfax, where he was entrusted to give some instruction in the languages to the lady his daughter. If, upon the death of Mr. Weckherlin, the Council shall think I need any assistance in the performance of my place &hellip; it would be hard for them to find a man so fit every way for that purpose as this gentleman' (, vol. i. p. xxxvii;, Life of Milton, iv. 478; , Milton Papers, p. 22). In spite, however, of this recommendation, [q. v.] was appointed (October 1653). Meanwhile Marvell in a private capacity became connected with Cromwell, being chosen as tutor to Cromwell's ward, William Hut ton. With Dutton Marvell went to reside at Eton, in the house of John Oxenbridge, one of the fellows of the college. On 28 July 1653 he wrote thence to Cromwell, describing the character of his pupil, and thanking Cromwell for placing them both in so godly a family (, ii. 3;, iv. 618; , Papers and Letters addressed to Oliver Cromwell, 1743, p. 98). Oxenbridge, when his puritanism had lost him his English preferments, had been a minister in the Bermudas, and his experiences doubtless suggested Marvell's poem on those islands. In his epitaph on Mrs. Oxenbridge he celebrates the fidelity with which she had followed her husband 'ad incertam Bermudse insulam' (, ii . 6). At Eton Marvell learnt to know [q. v.] 'I account it no small honour,' he wrote in the 'Rehearsal Transprosed,' 'to have grown up into some part of his acquaintance, and conversed awhile with the living remains of one of the clearest heads and best prepared breasts in Christendom' (ib. iii. 126). He kept up also his acquaintance with Milton, who sent him in 1654 a copy of his 'Defensio Secunda,' which Marvell praised for its ' Roman eloquence,' and compared to Trajan's column as a monument of Milton's many learned victories (ib. ii. 11;, iv. 620). In 1657, probably about September, Marvell was at last appointed Milton's colleague in the Latin secretaryship, at a salary of 200l. a year. In the summer of 1658 he was employed in the reception of the Dutch ambassador and of the agent of the elector of Brandenburg (, vii. 298, 373, 487;, v. 374). He continued to act under the governments of Richard Cromwell and the restored Long parliament, and was voted lodgings in Whitenall by the council of state (ib. v. 624; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1659-60, p. 27).

Though Waller's 'Panegyric' gained more contemporary fame, Marvell is the poet of Cromwell and the Protectorate. In the summer of 1650 he had written the 'Hora-