ABSTRACT
Sir William Temple, ambassador to the United Provinces during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, described like a true Dutchophile in his Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands the miraculous rise of that small republic of such uncertain beginnings. Marvell’s Painter Poems were initiated by the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a conflict that greatly contrasted with its predecessor. Trading disagreements were again part of the dispute, but ideologies between the two nations were now also radically different. Unlike some of the more common devilish representations of the Dutch, Milton’s image draws in a whole range of senses. There is a thread of suspicion running through many of Milton’s works, connecting spicy odours with bodily or moral corruption. Indulgence in ‘pompous delicacies’ is one of the temptations presented to the Son in Paradise Regained, Satan’s serving up spiced foods, emblematic of over-reaching and vain greed.
