to preserve them from the autograph hunter and the autograph thief.
Captain Thompson printed a great part of this correspondence in 1776,
and Mr. Grosart gave the world the whole of it in the second volume of
his edition of Marvell's complete works.

An admission may as well be made at once. This correspondence is not so
interesting as it might have been expected to prove. Marvell did not
write letters for his biographer, nor to instruct posterity, nor to
serve any party purpose, nor even to exhibit honest emotion, but simply
to tell his employers, whose wages he took, what was happening at
Westminster. He kept his reflections either to himself or for his
political broadsheets, and indeed they were seldom of the kind it would
have been safe to entrust to the post.

Good Mr. Grosart fusses and frets terribly over Marvell's astonishing
capacity for chronicling in sombre silence every kind of legislative
abomination. It is at times a little hard to understand it, for Hull was
what may be called a Puritan place. No doubt caution dictated some of
the reticence--but the reserve of Marvell's character is one of the few
traits of his personality that has survived. He was a satirist, not an
enthusiast.

I will give the first letter _in extenso_ to serve as a specimen, and a
very favourable one, of the whole correspondence:--

"_Nov. 17, 1660._

"GENTLEMEN, MY WORTHY FRIENDS,--Although during the necessary absence
of my partner, Mr. Ramsden, I write with but halfe a penn, and can
scarce perswade myselfe to send you so imperfect an account of your