The Satires are, of course, out of reach for their inordinate
length. The celebrated Satire on Holland certainly makes the
utmost of the fun to be easily found in the physical facts of the
country whose people "with mad labour fished the land to shore."
The Satire on "Flecno" makes the utmost of another joke we know of-
-that of famine. Flecno, it will be remembered, was a poet, and
poor; but the joke of his bad verses was hardly needed, so fine
does Marvell find that of his hunger. Perhaps there is no age of
English satire that does not give forth the sound of that laughter
unknown to savages--that craven laughter.
THE PICTURE OF T. C. IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS
The presence of a furtive irony of the sweetest kind is the sure
sign of the visit of that unlooked-for muse. With all spirit and
subtlety does Marvell pretend to offer the little girl T. C. (the
future "virtuous enemy of man") the prophetic homage of the
habitual poets. The poem closes with an impassioned tenderness not
to be found elsewhere in Marvell.
THE DEFINITION OF LOVE
The noble phrase of the Horatian Ode is not recovered again, high
or low, throughout Marvell's book, it we except one single splendid
and surpassing passage from The Definition of Love -
"Magnanimous despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing.
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