244 BB. Reed; 
interesting that I have reprinted but four Psalms, enough to 
show his method.t' In his hymns we notice most of all that he 
writes in an impersonal style, for we have in them no picture of 
his own mind, no account of his spiritual conflicts, his doubts, his 
defeats, or his victories. Religious verse is valuable in proportion 
as it shows us the soul of a man, and this is precisely what Fair- 
fax does not attempt to do. 
This same lack of the personal element in his writing is a marked 
defect of the secular verse also, for he gives us practically nothing 
of his own life, even in remote allusion. When we consider the 
great scenes he had witnessed, the part he had played in shaping 
the destinies of England, it is rather surprising that he should choose 
to write on Envy, Temperance, Anger. Surely he might have written 
with more spirit on Liberty, Tyranny, or Valor. He collects many 
popular proverbs, but he does not jot down the song of his soldiers. 
For a fighting man, how faint and unrealistic are such lines: 
As men besieged with mines about 
Ready to spring and ruing [sic] all, 
Hearing the alarm beat, runne out 
To th’ assault and gard ther wall, 
And by the blast in ruins sinke 
Vanquist are when they least thinke.? 
And yet they are quite unusual, so rarely does he refer to the 
shock of battle. As Fairfax does not tell us what he has felt, so 
he has little desire to write down what he has seen. Apart from 
all considerations of the immeasurable distance that separates 
Andrew Marvell’s work from that of Fairfax, it is yet surprising 
that Marvell should describe Appleton House and the estates so 
fully, and that Fairfax, who delighted in them, should give us but 
a few faint lines on the new-built house. Similarly we should 
expect the sympathetic picture of the last moments of Charles to 

1 Markham, in his Life of Fairfax, p. 369, mentions another copy of 
Fairfax’s version of the Psalms, owned by Mr. Cartwright of Aynho. 
I have not attempted to trace this. At the end of the MS. of the 
Short Memorial, at Leeds Castle, are versions of the 18th, 24th, 30th, 
and 85th Psalms. He prefaces Psalm 18 with the following: ‘That I 
chuse this 18 Psalm let none think that I arrogate anything to myself, 
for farre be it from me to applie it otherwise than as David’s triumph 
over his enemies.’ See Markham’s Fazrfax, p. 415. 
2 A Hymne to Christ the Messiah. 
