The poet left Cambridge, his biographers tell us, without his M.A.

degree, "about the middle of 1657," and it was a taunt against him afterwards that he had begun his London life as "clerk" to Sir Gilbert.

As he cannot have got the L50 from Thurloe for nothing, the probability is that he had been employed, through Sir Gilbert, to do some clerkly or literary work for the Council.

No harm, at all events, in remembering the ages at this date of the three men of letters thus linked to the Protectorate at its centre.

Milton was in his forty-ninth year, Marvell in his thirty-eighth, Dryden in his twenty-seventh.[2] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date.] [Footnote 2: Marvell's _Rehearsal Transprosed_ (in Mr.Grosart's edition of Marvell's Prose Works), I.322; Receipt in Record Office as quoted; Christie's Memoir of Dryden prefixed to Globe edition of Dryden's Poetical Works .-- That Marvell was appointed Milton's colleague or assistant precisely in September 1657 is proved by the fact that his first quarter's salary appears in certain accounts as due in the following December (see Thurloe, VII.