For country’s cause, that glorious thing and sweet;
    To speak not forward, but in action brave,
    In giving generous, but in council grave;
    Candidly credulous for once, nay twice;
    But sure the devil cannot cheat them thrice.”

No member of Parliament’s library is complete without Marvell, who did not forget the House of Commons smoking-room:—­

    “Even iron Strangways chafing yet gave back
    Spent with fatigue, to breathe awhile tabac.”

Charles hastened to make peace with Holland.  He was not the man to insist on vengeance or to mourn over lost prestige.  De Ruyter had gone after suffering repulses at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Torbay.  Peace was concluded at Breda on the 21st of July.  We gave up Poleroone. Per contra we gained a more famous place, New Amsterdam, rechristened New York in honour of the duke.  All prisoners were to be liberated, and the Dutch, despite Sheerness and the Royal Charles, agreed to lower their flag to all British ships of war.

The fall, long pending, of Clarendon immediately followed the peace.  Men’s tempers were furious or sullen.  Hyde had no more bitter, no more cruel enemy than Marvell.  Why this was has not been discovered, but there was nothing too bad for Marvell not to believe of any member of Clarendon’s household.  All the scandals, and they were many and horrible, relating to Clarendon and his daughter, the Duchess of York, find a place in Marvell’s satires and epigrams.  To us Lord Clarendon is a grave and thoughtful figure, the statesman-author of The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, that famous, large book, loftily planned, finely executed, full of life and character and the philosophy of human existence; and of his own Autobiography, a production which, though it must, like Burnet’s History, be read with caution, unveils to the reader a portion of that past which usually is as deeply shrouded from us as the future.  If at times we are reminded in reading Clarendon’s Life of the old steward in Hogarth’s plate, who lifts up his hands in horror over the extravagance of his master, if his pedantry often irritates, and his love of place displeases, we recognise these but as the shades of the character of a distinguished and accomplished public servant.  But to Marvell Clarendon was rapacious, ambitious, and corrupt, a man who had sold Oliver’s Dunkirk to the French, and shared the price; who had selected for the king’s consort a barren woman, so that his own damaged daughter might at least chance to become Queen of England, who hated Parliaments and hankered after a standing army, who took money for patents, who sold public offices, who was bribed by the Dutch about the terms of peace, who swindled the ruined cavaliers of the funds subscribed for their benefit, and had by these methods heaped together great wealth which he ostentatiously displayed.  Even darker crimes than these are hinted at.  That