Young Love is well known, and its merits speak for themselves. It is marred by the intrusion in the third and fourth stanzas of the fiercer and coarser passion. The Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland cannot be positively proved to be the work of Marvell. Yet we can hardly doubt that he was its author. The point of view and the sentiment, combining admiration of Cromwell with respect and pity for Charles, are exactly his: the classical form would be natural to him; and so would the philosophical conceit which disfigures the eleventh stanza. The epithet indefatigable applied to Cromwell recurs in a poem which is undoubtedly his; and so does the emphatic expression of belief that the hero could have been happier in private life, and that he sacrificed himself to the State in taking the supreme command. The compression and severity of style are not characteristic of Marvell; but they would be imposed on him in this case by his model. If the ode is really his, to take it from him would be to do him great wrong. It is one of the noblest in the English language, and worthily presents the figures and events of the great tragedy as they would impress themselves on the mind of an ideal spectator, at once feeling and dispassionate. The spirit of Revolution is described with a touch in the lines "Though Justice against Fate complain And plead the ancient rights in vain (But those do hold or break As men are strong or weak).' Better than anything else in our language this poem gives an idea of a grand Horatian measure, as well as of the diction and spirit of an Horatian ode. Of the lines On Milton's Paradise Lost some are vigorous; but they are chiefly interesting from having been written by one who had anxiously watched Milton's genius at work. Marvell's amatory poems are cold; probably he was passionless. His pastorals are in the false classical style, and of little value. Clorinda and Damon is about the best of them, and about the best of that is 'Near this a fountain's liquid bell The Satires in their day were much admired and feared: they are now for the most part unreadable. The subjects of satire as a rule are ephemeral; but a great satirist like Juvenal or Drvden In preserves his flies in the amber of his general sentiment. Marvell's satires there is no amber: they are mere heaps of dead flies. Honest indignation against iniquity and lewdness in high places no doubt is there; but so are the meanness of Restoration politics and the dirtiness of Restoration thought. The curious may look at The Character of Holland, the jokes in which are as good or as bad as ever, though the cannon of Monk and De Ruyter have ceased to roar; and in Britannia and Raleigh the passage of which giving ironical advice to Charles II is a specimen of the banter which was deemed Marvell's peculiar gift, and in which Swift and Junius were his pupils. Like Milton, Marvell wrote a number of Latin poems. One of them had the honour of being ascribed to Milton. GOLDWIN SMITH. VOL. II. THE GARDEN. How vainly men themselves amaze, Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen When we have run our passion's heat, CC What wondrous life is this I lead! Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, The mind, that ocean where each kind To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, My soul into the boughs does glide: Such was that happy garden-state, What other help could yet be meet! How well the skilful gardener drew And, as it works, the industrious bee How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers? A DROP OF Dew. See, how the orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn, (Yet careless of its mansion new, And, in its little globe's extent, Like its own tear, Because so long divided from the sphere. Trembling, lest it grow impure; Of the clear fountain of eternal day, Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green, Does, in its pure and circling thoughts express In how coy a figure wound, Every way it turns away, Yet receiving in the day, Dark beneath, but bright above, |