Marvell became Milton’s assistant in September 1657, and the friendship between the two men was thus consolidated by the strong ties of a common duty.  Milton’s blindness making him unfit to attend the reception of foreign embassies, Marvell took his place and joined in respectfully greeting the Dutch ambassadors.  After all he was but a junior clerk, still he doubtless rejoiced that his lines on Holland had been published anonymously.  Literature was strongly represented in this department of State just then, for Cromwell’s Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering, who represented Northamptonshire in Parliament, had taken occasion to introduce his nephew, John Dryden, to the public service, and he was attached to the same office as Andrew Marvell.  Poets, like pigeons, have often taken shelter under our public roofs, but Milton, Marvell, and Dryden, all at the same time, form a remarkable constellation.  Old Noll, we may be sure, had nothing to do with it.  Marvell must have known Cromwell personally; but there is nothing to show that Milton and Cromwell ever met.  The popular engraving which represents a theatrical Lord-Protector dictating despatches to a meek Milton is highly ludicrous.  Cromwell could have as easily dictated a book of Paradise Lost, on the composition of which Milton began to be engaged during the last year of the Protectorate, as one of Milton’s despatches.

In April 1657 Admiral Blake, the first great name in the annals of our navy, performed his last feat of arms by destroying the Spanish West Indian fleet at Santa Cruz without the loss of an English vessel.  The gallant sailor died of fever on his way home, and was buried according to his deserts in the Abbey.  His body, with that of his master, was by a vote of Parliament, December 4, 1660, taken from the grave and drawn to the gallows-tree, and there hanged and buried under it.  Pepys, who was to know something of naval administration under the second Charles, has his reflections on this unpleasing incident.

Marvell’s lines on Blake’s victory over the Spaniards are not worthy of so glorious an occasion, but our great doings by land and sea have seldom been suitably recorded in verse.  Drayton’s Song of Agincourt is imperishable, but was composed nearly two centuries after the battle.  The wail of Flodden Field still floats over the Border; but Miss Elliot’s famous ballad was published in 1765.  Even the Spanish Armada had to wait for Macaulay’s spirited fragment.  Mr. Addison’s Blenheim stirred no man’s blood; no poet sang Chatham’s victories.[70:1] Campbell at a later day did better.  We must be content with what we get.

Marvell’s poem contains some vigorous lines, which show he was a good hater:—­

“Now does Spain’s fleet her spacious wings unfold, Leaves the new world, and hastens for the old; But though the wind was fair, they slowly swum, Freighted with acted guilt, and guilt to come; For this rich load, of which so proud they are, Was raised by tyranny, and raised for war. ... ...  For now upon the main themselves they saw That boundless empire, where you give the law.”

The Canary Islands are rapturously described—­their delightful climate and their excellent wine.  Obviously they should be annexed:—­