'Don't you remember, Sir? you had the little shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring from a woman in the market.' ( Very right, child. What have I for dinner to-day?' 'Don't you know, Sir, that you bid me lay by the blade-bone to broil.' 'Tis so; very right, child, go away.' 'My lord, do you hear that? Andrew Marvell's dinner is provided; there is your piece of paper. I want it not. I know the sort of kindness you intended. I live here to serve my constituents: the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not

one.'

Although his poetry is inferior to his prose, and only a few of his verses are of transcendant grace and beauty, Marvell can have been excluded from an honourable post among our minor poets only by political prejudice and a want of taste and feeling. Nearly all the poems which can be proved to be his were juvenile productions. We quote one of them which, though well known, has not been so universally read as it deserves to be.

THE EMIGRANTS.

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In th' ocean's bosom unespy'd;
From a small boat that row'd along
The list'ning winds receiv'd this song.

"What should we do but sing his praise,
That led us through the wat'ry maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own.
Where He the huge sea-monsters racks,
That lift the deep upon their backs;
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the sotrms, and prelates' rage.
He gave us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels every thing;
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night;

And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon, He stores the land.
And makes the hollow seas, that roar,
Proclaim the ambergrease on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast,
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple, where to sound his name.
Oh! let our voice his praise exalt,
'Till it arrive at heav'n's vault;
Which thence, perhaps, rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay."

Thus sung they in the English boat,
An holy and a cheerful note;
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

Among the satirical poems attributed to him, there are some so flat and dull and so offensively coarse, that we cannot for our lives believe that they were ever written by the friend and bosom companion of Milton. Marvell, as we have said, put forth a good many of his productions anonymously. On the title-page of other pieces he placed some fictitious fanciful name, which other writers of the day, according to a prevalent practice, may have assumed after him for their frouzy trash. He has been very unfortunate in his editor, Captain Edward Thompson, who collected and published his works in 1776, in three vols. 4to. This captain, who wrote the bombastical inscription for the portrait, to which we have alluded, had much zeal and reverence for his author, but no taste, no critical discrimination, nor any other qualification for the task he undertook. He challenges for Marvell the authorship of two very sweet poems which were written long after Marvell's time, the one by Addi

son, and the other by Mallet.* This is decisive as to his authority in such matters. From his utter want of taste and literary information he was not competent to select and decide upon the anonymous productions of his author; and he certainly swelled his volumes by printing much which Marvell had not written.

Bishop Burnet, who vilifies Marvell by calling him the "liveliest droll of the age," assures us, that "his books were the delight of all classes, from the king to the tradesman -a sentence which, as Mr. Hartley Coleridge has remarked, accidentally points out the limits of reading in those days. As a senator honest Andrew's character does indeed appear to have been unimpeachable. He was above corruption when nearly all were corrupt his untiring attention to the interests of his constituents, and to parliamentary business in general, might make him a model for parliamentary men, now that gross and direct corruption at least has ceased.

*Addison's Ode 'The spacious firmament on high,' &c.; and Mallet's ballad of William and Margaret.'