Until Pope took his muse to market, poetry, apart from the drama, had no
direct commercial value, or one too small to be ranked as a motive for
publication. None the less, the age loved distinction and appreciated
wit, and to be known as a poet whose verses "numbered good intellects"
was to gain the _entrée_ to the society of men both of intellect and
fashion, and also, not infrequently, snug berths in the public service,
and secretaryships to foreign missions and embassies. Thus there was
always, in addition to natural vanity, a strong motive for a
seventeenth-century poet to publish his poems. To-day one would hesitate
to recommend a young man who wanted to get on in the world to publish a
volume of verse; but the age of "wit" and "parts" is over.

It was not till 1681--three years after Marvell's death--that the small
folio appeared with a fine portrait, still dear to the collector, which
contains for the first time what may be called the "garden-poetry" of
our author, together with some specimens of his political and satirical
versification.

Marvell's most famous poem--_The Ode upon Cromwell's Return from
Ireland_--is not included in the 1681 volume, and remained in manuscript
until 1776, as also did the poem upon Cromwell's death.

The remainder of the political poems, which had made their first
appearance as broadsheets, were reprinted after the Revolution in the
well-known _Collection of Poems on Affairs of State_.[35:1] These verses
were never owned by Marvell, and it is probable that some of them,
though attributed to him, are not his at all. We have only tradition to
go by. In the case of political satires, squibs, epigrams, rough popular
occasional rhymes flung off both in haste and heat to be sold with old
ballads in the market-place, we need not seek for better evidence than