Ss 
- thought, 
1609.] 
printed in the four hundred and fifty-third 
Number of the Spectator, confers great 
credit on Mr. Marvell’s poetry. 
‘© When all thy mercies, O'! my God, 
My rising soul SUTVEYS5 
Transported with the view, I’m lost, 
In wonder, love, and praise. 
¢¢ O! how shall words with equal warmth, 
The gratitude declare, 
‘That glows within my ravish’d heart ! 
But Thou can’st read it there. 
*« Thy providence my life sustain’d, 
And all my. wants redress’d 5 
When in the silent womb I lay, 
And hung upon the breast.”” &c. 
Perhaps, however, an ode, also inserted 
in the Spectator, im point of dignity of 
and harmony of composition, 
ought to be considered as one of the first 
productions of the author. 
‘¢ The spacious firmament on high, 
With all the blue ethereal sky ; 
And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 
Their great Original proclaim, 
The unweary’d sun from day to day 
Does his Creator’s power display ; 
And publishes to ev’ry land 
The work of an Almighty hand. 
** Soon as the ev’ning shades prevail, 
‘The moon pursues the wond’rous tale ; 
And nightly to the list’ning earth 
Repeats the story of her birth.” 
The celebrated elegiac ballad of 
‘¢ William and Margaret,” claimed and 
printed by Mr. Mallet, in his Poems, 
is said, by Captain Thompson, to have 
been written by our author, in 1670. 
Having thus attempted to‘convey some 
idea of the works of Andrew Marvell, it 
only remains to be lamented, that the 
account of his latter years 1s involved in 
almost inextricable obscurity. After 
publishing his celebrated work respect- 
ing the growth of popery and arbitrary 
government, he appears to have with- 
drawn for a while. The last letter 
extant, is one from him to, his friend 
Mr. Popple, dated June 10, 1678, in 
which he observes: ‘‘ There have been 
great rewards offered in private, and 
_ considerable in the Gazette, to any one 
that would inforn of the author. Three 
or four printed -books since have de- 
scribed, as near as it was proper to go, 
the man being a member of parliament, 
Mr. Marvell, to have been the author: 
but if he had, surely he should not tiave 
___ escaped being questioned in parliament, 
te 
| 
- or some other place.” 
On the 29th of 
July, however, he appears to have been 
at Hull; and it is evident, from an entry 
ia the books of the cor oe, that 
Memoirs of Andrew Marvell. 45 
he held several sdiscourses about the 
towii’s affairs.” 
Captain Thompson, the last editor of 
his works, who supposes him to have 
been treacherously murdered, by means 
of a potion, expresses himself in the 
following manner: 
“And yet, alas! the period of his 
days was suddenly made on the 16th of 
August, and by poison; for he was health- 
ful and vigorous, to the moment he was 
seized with the premeditated ruin. 
fell this great, good, and glorious man, 
in the fifty-eighth year of his age; after 
passing through a rugged life of per- 
petual danger, a cruel sacrifice to the 
diabolical machinations of the most 
profligate and wicked nen. But what 
could virtue look for and expect in a 
reign, when the king was himself a stu- 
dious professor of profligacy! And what 
“must be the chance of the writer, who 
would attack arbitrary government in 
the reign of a tyrant, and attempt to 
defend the protestant church, when the 
head of it died a papist !” 
Andrew Marvell, whose life was illus- 
trious, and whose death appears to have 
been equivocal, is described by Dr. 
Grangér, “as of a middling stature, 
pretty strong set, roundish. faced, ener, 
cheeked, hazel eyed, brown haired.” 
We are told also in the Biographical 
History, ‘‘that he was in conversation 
very modest, and of very few words.” 
There was a portrait of him, painted in 
1661, in the possession of the late Tho- 
mas Hollis, esq. of Lincoln’s Inn, F.R. 
and A.S.S. who was a great admirer of 
his character, independence, and talents. 
Basire executed a print after this, in 
1776, and-it is @bserved of the original, 
“ that if it does not look so hively- and 
witty, it is from the chagria and awe he 
had of the Restoration,just then effected.” 
The dress is, the clerical whiskers adorn 
the upper lip, and the countenance pos- 
sesses rather a sombrous appearance: 
in short, according to one who esteemed 
‘him preatly, “he is exhibited when he 
was forty- one, m all the sobriety and 
deceney of the then departed common- 
wealth.” 
In point of language, many of his come 
positions are penned in a majestic style ; 
although at times he could assume the 
burlesque, and was considered hy his 
contemporaries, as one of the witticst 
and most humorous writers of that day. 
In Latin too, as well as English, he wrote 
with great facility and eloquence; and 
it was he who drew up the state-papers, 
- daring the protectorate of Cromwell, 
under 
Thus ~ 
