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Andrew Marvell by Augustine Birrell
page 6 of 307 (01%)

Lines of Marvell's poetry have secured the final honours, and incurred
the peril, of becoming "familiar quotations" ready for use on a great
variety of occasion. We may, perhaps, have been bidden once or twice too
often to remember how the Royal actor

"Nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,"

or have been assured to our surprise by some self-satisfied worldling
how he always hears at his back,

"Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near."

A true poet can, however, never be defiled by the rough usage of the
populace.

As a politician Marvell lives in the old-fashioned vivacious
history-books (which if they die out, as they show some signs of doing,
will carry with them half the historic sense of the nation) as the hero
of an anecdote of an unsuccessful attempt made upon his political virtue
by a minister of the Crown, as a rare type of an inflexible patriot, and
as the last member of the House of Commons who was content to take wages
from, instead of contributing to the support of, his constituents. As
the intimate friend and colleague of Milton, Marvell shares some of the
indescribable majesty of that throne. A poet, a scholar, a traveller, a
diplomat, a famous wit, an active member of Parliament from the
Restoration to his death in 1678, the life of Andrew Marvell might _a
priori_ be supposed to be one easy to write, at all events after the
fashion in which men's lives get written. But it is nothing of the kind,
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