State just then, for Cromwell's Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering, who
represented Northamptonshire in Parliament, had taken occasion to
introduce his nephew, John Dryden, to the public service, and he was
attached to the same office as Andrew Marvell. Poets, like pigeons, have
often taken shelter under our public roofs, but Milton, Marvell, and
Dryden, all at the same time, form a remarkable constellation. Old Noll,
we may be sure, had nothing to do with it. Marvell must have known
Cromwell personally; but there is nothing to show that Milton and
Cromwell ever met. The popular engraving which represents a theatrical
Lord-Protector dictating despatches to a meek Milton is highly
ludicrous. Cromwell could have as easily dictated a book of _Paradise
Lost_, on the composition of which Milton began to be engaged during the
last year of the Protectorate, as one of Milton's despatches.

In April 1657 Admiral Blake, the first great name in the annals of our
navy, performed his last feat of arms by destroying the Spanish West
Indian fleet at Santa Cruz without the loss of an English vessel. The
gallant sailor died of fever on his way home, and was buried according
to his deserts in the Abbey. His body, with that of his master, was by a
vote of Parliament, December 4, 1660, taken from the grave and drawn to
the gallows-tree, and there hanged and buried under it. Pepys, who was
to know something of naval administration under the second Charles, has
his reflections on this unpleasing incident.

Marvell's lines on Blake's victory over the Spaniards are not worthy of
so glorious an occasion, but our great doings by land and sea have
seldom been suitably recorded in verse. Drayton's _Song of Agincourt_ is
imperishable, but was composed nearly two centuries after the battle.
The wail of Flodden Field still floats over the Border; but Miss
Elliot's famous ballad was published in 1765. Even the Spanish Armada