Marvell, Andrew

Marvell, Andrew (1621–78), was educated at Hull Grammar school and Trinity College, Cambridge. He travelled for four years (1643–7) in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain. On his return he apparently moved in literary circles and had friends among Royalists. His poems to Lovelace (‘his Noble Friend’) and on the death of Lord Hastings were published in 1649. In 1650 he wrote ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland’, perhaps the greatest political poem in English.

From 1650 to 1652 Marvell tutored the daughter of Lord Fairfax at Nun Appleton in Yorkshire, when, it is usually assumed, he wrote ‘Upon Appleton House’ and lyrics such as ‘The Garden’ and the Mower poems. In 1653 he became tutor to Cromwell's ward William Dutton, and moved to John Oxenbridge's house at Eton, where he probably wrote ‘Bermudas’. In 1654 with ‘The First Anniversary’ (1655) he began his career as unofficial laureate to Cromwell, and was appointed in 1657 Latin secretary to the Council of State (a post previously occupied by his friend and sponsor Milton, now blind). He mourned Cromwell in ‘Upon the Death of His late Highness the Lord Protector’ (1658). The following year he was elected MP for Hull; at the Restoration his influence secured Milton's release from prison.

During 1662–3 Marvell was in Holland on unknown political business, possibly espionage, and in 1663 he travelled with the earl of Carlisle as private secretary on his embassy to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. His satires against Clarendon were written and published in 1667. Later that year he composed his finest satire ‘Last Instructions to a Painter’, attacking financial and sexual corruption at Court and in Parliament, and took part in the impeachment of Clarendon. The Rehearsal Transpros'd (1672, Part II 1673) was a controversial mock-biblical prose work advocating toleration for Dissenters, which set new standards of irony and urbanity. Gilbert Burnet called these ‘the wittiest books that have appeared in this age’. The second edition of Paradise Lost contained a commendatory poem by Marvell, and in his prose works he continued to wage war against arbitrary royal power. Mr Smirk, Or the Divine in Mode and A Short Historical Essay Concerning General Councils (both 1676), and An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England (1677), were all Marvell's though prudently published anonymously. His Miscellaneous Poems (1681) were printed from papers found in his rooms by his housekeeper Mary Palmer. The satires (the authorship of some of which is still disputed) appeared in Poems on Affairs of State (1689–97).

Famed in his day as patriot, satirist, and foe to tyranny, Marvell was virtually unknown as a lyric poet. It was not until after the First World War, with Grierson's Metaphysical Lyrics and T. S. Eliot's ‘Andrew Marvell’, that the modern high estimation of his poetry began to prevail. His oblique, ironic, and finally enigmatic way of treating what are often quite conventional poetic materials (as in ‘The Nymph Complaining for the death of her Faun’ or ‘To his Coy Mistress’) has especially intrigued the modern mind. (See metaphysical poets.)