The lively antiquarian John Aubrey (1626–97) recorded several comments on Marvell in his Brief Lives (first published in 1813), which reappear in part in Letters from the Bodleian and in Anthony à Wood's Athenae Oxonienses (see No. 10).
Extract from Brief Lives, ed. A.Clark (1898), II, pp. 53–4, 56, 304.
In the time of Oliver the Protector he was Latin Secretarie. He was a great master of the Latin tongue; an excellent poet in Latin or English: for Latin verses there was no man could come into competition with him. The verses called ‘The Advice to the Painter’ were of his making.
His native towne of Hull loved him so well that they elected him for their representative in Parliament, and gave him an honourable pension to maintaine him.
He was of a middling stature, pretty strong sett, roundish faced, cherry cheek't, hazell eie, browne haire. He was in his conversation very modest, and of very few words: and though he loved wine he would never drinke hard in company, and was wont to say that, he would not play the good-fellow in any man's company in whose hands he would not trust his life.
He kept bottles of wine at his lodgeing, and many times he would drinke liberally by himselfe to refresh his spirits, and exalt his muse.
As to Tom May, Mr. Edmund Wyld told me that he was acquainted with him when he was young, and then he was as other young men of this town are, scil. he said he was debaucht ad omnia: but doe not by any meanes take notice of it—for we have all been young. But Mr. Marvel in his poems upon Tom May's death falls very severe upon him.
Mr. Andrew Marvell, who was a good judge of witt, was wont to to say that [the Earl of Rochester] was the best English satyrist and had the right veine.