John Milton's Relationships - Friendship - Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell

On 21 February 1653, Milton recommended Andrew Marvell for a position with the Commonwealth's Council of State as his assistant after his previous assistant died. It is uncertain when the two first met, but Marvell knew Milton's works and included similar themes within his own poetry a few years prior. Milton liked Marvell, and in his recommendation describes Marvell as

a man whom both by report, & converse I have had with him, of singular desert for the state to make us of; who also offers himselfe, if there by any imployment for him... if upon the death of Mr. Wakerly the Councell shall think that I shall need any assistant in the performance of my place (though for my part I find noe encumberances of that which belongs to me, except it be in point of attendance at Conferences with Ambassadors, which I much confesse, in my Condition I am not fit for) it would be hard for them to find a Man soe fit every way for the purpose as this Gentleman

The Council did not accept Marvell, and they instead made Philip Meadows, a diplomat, assistant to Milton. By September 1657, Marvell was finally allowed to be Milton's assistant, and the two become close. During this time, John Dryden was employed in the same office and, according to Barbara Lewalski, it was "A remarkable happenstance, that the three best poets of the age should be together at the same time in Cromwell's bureaucracy!"

Read more about this topic:  John Milton's Relationships, Friendship

Famous quotes by andrew marvell:

    Here thou art painted in the dress
    Of an inhuman murderess;
    Examining upon our hearts
    Thy fertile shop of cruel arts:
    Engines more keen than ever yet
    Adorned tyrant’s cabinet,
    Of which the most tormenting are
    Black eyes, red lips, and curled hair.
    Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

    With sweetest milk, and sugar, first
    I it as mine own fingers nurst.
    And as it grew, so every day
    It wax’d more white and sweet than they.
    It had so sweet a Breath!
    Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)