the fury of the bigot, whether of the school of Laud or Hobbes. Andrew
Marvell knew Oliver Cromwell alive, and gazed on his features as he lay
dead--he knew his ambition, his greatness, his power, and where that
power lay. How much might we unwittingly have lost, if Captain Thompson
had not printed a poem which for more than a century of years had
remained unknown, and exposed to all the risks of a single manuscript
copy!

When Cromwell sent his picture to Queen Christina of Sweden to
commemorate the peace he concluded with her in 1654, Marvell, though not
then attached to the public service, was employed to write the Latin
couplet that accompanied the picture. He discharged his task as
follows:--

_In effigiem Oliveri Cromwell_.

"Hæc est quæ toties inimicos umbra fugavit
At sub quâ cives otia lenta terunt."

The authorship of these lines is often attributed to Milton, but there
is little doubt they are of Marvell's composition. They might easily
have been better.

Marvell became Milton's assistant in September 1657, and the friendship
between the two men was thus consolidated by the strong ties of a
common duty. Milton's blindness making him unfit to attend the reception
of foreign embassies, Marvell took his place and joined in respectfully
greeting the Dutch ambassadors. After all he was but a junior clerk,
still he doubtless rejoiced that his lines on Holland had been published
anonymously. Literature was strongly represented in this department of