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 Billboroiv, Upon Applcton House, On a Drop 

 of Deiv, 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 le tnot 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 la ville lumiere 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, Edward Bliss Keed. 



February 19, 1909. 



