248 E. B. Reed, 
in them. During the two years he spent at the home of Fairfax, 
Marvell wrote those nature-poems that determined his fame— Upon 
the Hill and Grove at Billborow, Upon Appleton House, On a Drop 
of Dew, The Garden—poems that show an observation, an appreca- 
tion of the earth, of flowers, birds and trees unsurpassed in all 
the works of his predecessors in English poetry, not excepting the 
very greatest, Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare. That these poems 
were inspired not only by the beauty of Nunappleton, but by its 
owner’s love and appreciation of poetry, there can be little doubt. 
We may go even further, and see in Marvell’s nature-poems some 
hints from Saint-Amant. Marvell’s verse is richer and deeper; 
where Saint-Amant is vague in his descriptions or conventional in 
his thought, Marvell is concrete and original; for it is the Englishman, 
and not the Frenchman, who uses /e mot precis, and yet Saint- 
Amant’s theme—to lose one’s self in Nature—is the theme of The 
Garden and of the finest lines in Appleton House. 
We see now the significance of the poems of Fairfax. They 
throw light on the character of a great Englishman; they remind 
us that the literary influence of /a ville lumuiére was still powerful 
in England, that it had not died with the sonneteers; and they 
give us the atmosphere in which Andrew Marvell lived and wrote 
the tenderest, the sincerest, the deepest nature-poetry of the seven- 
teenth century. 
Yale College, Epwarp Buss REEp. 
February 19, 1909. 
