Article Summary

For a recent project we were assigned, in groups, a topic relating to John Milton and Paradise Lost, charged with individual writing a summary of an important journal article and then as a group address the larger topic. Our group was assigned the English Restoration, and I chose Andrew Marvell as my more specific individual topic. Marvell was a poet and politician, making a name for himself as a staunch defender of his friend John Milton as a member of the post-Restoration Parliament. It was thanks to Marvell that Milton was able to avoid harsh punishment for his support of Oliver Cromwell and the Interregnum Government the followed the ousting of King Charles I.

John McWilliams, a professor of early modern English literature who has taught at several universities in England, recently wrote a critical essay entitled "Marvell and Milton's literary friendship reconsidered." in which he questions the nature of the relationship between the two men. From the days when Milton first recommended Marvell for a job with John Bradshaw, the relationship was one which centered around which man had the power and reputation, and which man was in need of a leg up. In McWilliams' words, "As will prove perenially to be the case for Marvell and Milton, these kinds of difficult personal and political circumstances impinge upon an easy, mutually admiring friendship," which would last until Milton's death in 1674 (159).

After Marvell found work within the Interregnum government, he slowly worked his way up the rank and file to a position of relative power. However, "Marvell was, at this time in his career, dependent on the generosity of men such as Milton, Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, and Sir Thomas Fairfax for his living," until the monarch was restored on the wings of war (159). Marvell was no so high up as to be included among the many who were either executed or imprisoned for their support of Cromwell and the Interregnum, and yet he was able to position himself in such a way as to claim for himself a seat in the new Parliament. Milon was not so fortunate. As McWilliams reminds us, "Several of of Milton's close associates in the Interregnum government lost their lives or their liberty, and Milton had to go into hiding for a while," (160). When he eventually was captured and imprisoned, it was Marvell who campaigned for his release, and then for the hefty fines levied on him to be dropped.

Years later, as Milton appeared to be writing against the government with such works as Paradise Lost, it was Marvell once again who defended Milton in Parliament. He even wrote, "[John Milton] was, and is, a man of great Learning and Sharpness of wit as any man. It was his misfortune, living in a tumultuous time, to be toss'd on the wrong side, and he writ Flagrante bello certain dangerous Treatises," (162). Though McWilliams suggests that Milton was a source of perpetual embarassment for Marvell, the last word was one of friendship, and not resentment. Marvell wrote a poem entitled "On Paradise Lost" which is a stunning homage to Milton's epic masterpiece. Indeed, McWilliams spends several pages analyzing the language of "On Paradise Lost" and details the parallels between the two which show the deferential meaning in the poem from one friend to the other.

In the end, John Milton remains the better known figurem but that is thanks in large part to the determined efforts of Andrew Marvell to assist and protect his colleage who advanced their mutually cherished ideals but in a way uniquely his own.

("Marvell and Milton's literary friendship reconsidered", John McWilliams, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/studies_in_english_literature/v046/46.1mcwilliams.pdf)