"As to myself," he wrote in 1672, "I never had any, not the remotest, relation to public matters, nor correspondence with the persons then predominant, until the year 1657, when indeed I entered into an employment for which I was not altogether improper." When Marvell wrote this, he was oblivious of some particulars; for, though it is true that he was in no public employment under the Protectorate till 1657, it can hardly be said that he had not "the remotest relation" till then to public matters, nor any "correspondence with the persons then predominant." Enough for us that, from the year he specifies, and precisely from September in that year, he was Milton's colleague in the Foreign or Latin Secretaryship.

"_Colleague_" we may call him, for his salary was to be L200 a year (not 200 merks, as had been proposed for Sterry), the same as Milton's was, and the same as Meadows's had been; and yet not _quite_ "colleague," inasmuch as Milton's L200 a year was a life-pension, and also inasmuch as, in stepping into Meadows's place, Marvell became one of Thurloe's subordinates in the office, while something of the original honorary independence of the Foreign Secretaryship still encircled Milton .-- Just as Marvell had for some time been wistful after a place in the Council Office, suitable for a scholar and Latinist, so there was another person now in the same condition of outside waiting and occasional looking-in.

"Received then of the Right honble.

Mr.Secretary Thurloe the sume of fifty pounds: L50: _by mee_, JOHN DRIDEN" is a receipt, of date "19 October 1657," among Thurloe's papers in the Record Office--the words "_by mee_, JOHN DRIDEN" in a neat slant hand, different from the body of the receipt.

The poet Dryden, it may be remembered, was the cousin and client of Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of the most important men in the Council and one of the most strongly Oliverian.