ABSTRACT
Andrew Marvel, a thoughtful and graceful poet, a masterly prose-writer and controversialist, a wit of the first water, and above all, an incorruptible patriot, is thought to have had no mean hand in putting an end to the dynasty of the Stuarts. Marvel being pressed by the royal emissary to state what would satisfy his expectations, and finding that there was no other mode of persuading him that he had none, called in his servant to testify to his dining three days in succession upon one piece of mutton. The enmity of such a man was in itself a reproach to them; for Marvel, though bred on the Puritan side, was no Puritan himself, nor a foe to any kind of reasonable and respectable government. He had served Cromwell with his friend Milton but would have aided Charles the Second as willingly, in his place in Parliament, had the king been an honest man instead of a pensioner of France.
