Minor literary writer and perennial gossip, Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855) compiled her Recollections of a Literary Life in 1852. Despite its misleading title, the work is an anthology dressed with comments. She includes Bermudas,’ ‘The Garden,’ ‘The Nymph’ with omissions, and excerpts from the ‘Horatian Ode’.
Extract from the chapter entitled ‘Old Poets,’ reprinted from the six-volume extra-illustrated edition, III, pp. 251–2.
As a poet, he is little known, except to the professed and unwearied reader of old folios. And yet his poems possess many of the finest elements of popularity: a rich profusion of fancy which almost dazzles the mind as bright colours dazzle the eye; an earnestness and heartiness which do not always, do not often belong to these flowery fancies, but which when found in their company add to them inexpressible vitality and savour; and a frequent felicity of phrase, which when once read, fixes itself in the memory and will not be forgotten.
Mixed with these dazzling qualities is much carelessness and a prodigality of conceits which the stern Roundhead ought to have left with other frippery to his old enemies, the Cavaliers. But it was the vice of the age—all ages have their favourite literary sins—and we must not blame Marvell too severely for falling into an error to which the very exuberance of his nature rendered him peculiarly prone. His mind was a bright garden, such a garden as he has described so finely, and that a few gaudy weeds should mingle with the healthier plants does but serve to prove the fertility of the soil.