frequently visited Eton, where, however, he had the good sense to
frequent not merely the cloisters, but the poor lodgings where the "ever
memorable" John Hales, ejected from his fellowship, spent the last years
of his life.

"I account it no small honour 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."[51:1]

Hales died in 1656, and his _Golden Remains_ were first published three
years later. Marvell's words of panegyric are singularly well chosen. It
is a curious commentary upon the confused times of the Civil War and
Restoration that perhaps never before, and seldom, if ever, since, has
England contained so many clear heads and well-prepared breasts as it
did then. Small indeed is the influence of men of thought upon their
immediate surroundings.

The Lord Bradshaw, we know, had a home in Eton, and on the occasion of
one of Marvell's evidently frequent visits to the Oxenbridges, Milton
entrusted him with a letter to Bradshaw and a presentation copy of the
_Secunda defensio_. Marvell delivered both letter and book, and seems at
once to have informed the distinguished author that he had done so. But
alas for the vanity of the writing man! The sublime poet, who in his
early manhood had composed _Lycidas_, and was in his old age to write
_Paradise Lost_, demanded further and better particulars as to the
precise manner in which the chief of his office received, not only the
book, but the letter which accompanied it. Nobody is now left to think
much of Bradshaw, but in 1654 he was an excellent representative of the
class Carlyle was fond of describing as the _alors célèbre_. Prompted by
this desire, Milton must have written to Marvell hinting, as he well