The Usurpation was not without its poets of far loftier reach than May, though he, too, was no dwarf. It would have been ridiculous in Cromwell to appoint a poet-laureate. The thing was impossible, though the flatteries of his kinsman, Waller, show that it was not the want of a subservient royalist gentleman of station, as well of talent, that made it so. Andrew Marvel, though he wrote such vigorous verse on Cromwell's victories in Ireland, would hardly have accepted the office, and what other Puritan would? But without the form, the Protector of the commonwealth had the reality in his Latin secretary, to whom Marvel was assistant. The lineal heir of the most ancient race of kings might have been proud of such a poet. The greatness of Milton might be a pledge to all ages of the greatness of Cromwell, unchallenged even by those who most detest grim Oliver of Hungtindon for "Darwent stream with blood of Scots imbrued," and "Worcester's laureate wreath." Here it is the poet who confers on the conqueror a laurel crown, of which the imperishable leaves, green as ever bard or victor wore, mitigate, though they do not hide, the evil expression on the casque-worn brow of the _senex armis impiger_, and give it a dignity that might abate the stoutest loyalist's abhorrence, but for one fatal remembrance, which forbids him to exclaim, "_Nec sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces._" Sir William Davenant, who recovered the laureateship at the Restoration, and retained it till his death in 1668, was succeeded by Dryden. Glorious John, although he had hastily flattered Richard Cromwell's brief authority by an epicede on Oliver, was not rejected by the merry monarch, who could laugh at poets' perjuries as lightly as at those of lovers. During that disgraceful reign, the poet made it no part of his vocation and privilege to check the profligate humours brought into fashion by the court. "Unhappy Dryden! in all Charles' days, Roscommon only boasts unspotted lays."