[211:1] In reading the early volumes of the _Parliamentary History_ the question has to be asked, What authority is there for the reports of speeches? In Charles the Second's time some of the speakers, both in the Lords and Commons, evidently communicated their orations to the press. [215:1] Lord Mayor, 1667. [220:1] See _Marvell's Ghost_, in _Poems on Affairs of State_. [223:1] The cottage at Highgate, long called 'Marvell's Cottage,' has now disappeared. Several of Marvell's letters were written from Highgate. CHAPTER VIII WORK AS A MAN OF LETTERS Marvell's work as a man of letters easily divides itself into the inevitable three parts. _First_, as a poet properly so called; _Second_, as a political satirist using rhyme; and _Third_, as a writer of prose. Upon Marvell's work as a poet properly so called that curious, floating, ever-changing population to whom it is convenient to refer as "the reading public," had no opportunity of forming any real opinion until after the poet's death, namely, when the small folio of 1681 made its appearance. This volume, although not containing the _Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland_ or the lines upon Cromwell's death, did contain, saving these exceptions, all the best of Marvell's verse. How this poetry was received, to whom and to how many it gave pleasure, we have not the means of knowing. The book, like all other good books, had to take its chance. Good poetry is never exactly unpopular--its difficulty is to get a hearing, to secure a _vogue_. I feel certain that from 1681 onwards many ingenuous souls read _Eyes and Tears_, _The Bermudas_, _The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Fawn_, _To his Coy Mistress_, _Young Love_, and _The Garden_ with pure delight. In 1699 the poet Pomfret, of whose _Choice_ Dr. Johnson said in 1780, "perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused," and who Southey in 1807 declared to be "the most popular of English poets"; in 1699, I say, this poet Pomfret says in a preface, sensibly enough, "to please everyone would be a New Thing, and to write so as to please no Body would be as New, for even Quarles and Wythers (_sic_) have their Admirers." So liable is the public taste to fluctuations and reversals, that to-day, though Quarles and Wither are not popular authors, they certainly number many more readers than Pomfret, Southey's "most popular of English poets," who has now, it is to be feared, finally disappeared even from the Anthologies. But if Quarles and Wither had their admirers even in 1699, the poet Marvell, we may be sure, had his also.