1 Marvell and the Dutch in 1665 Martin Dzelzainis, University of Leicester The death of George Rudolf Weckherlin on 13 February 1653 created a vacancy in the secretariat responsible for handling the English Council of State’s diplomatic correspondence. A post in the higher echelons of the republican executive was much to be prized and, wasting no time, Andrew Marvell had by 21 February secured the backing of the Secretary for Foreign Tongues, John Milton (whose assistant Weckherlin had been), in the form of a letter to John Bradshaw, President of the Council: there will be with you to morrow upon some occasions of busines a Gentleman whose name is Mr Marvile; a man whom both by report, and the converse I have had with him, of singular desert for the state to make use of; who alsoe offers himselfe if there be any imployment for him. His father was the Minister of Hull and he hath spent foure yeares abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spaine, to very good purpose, as I beleeve, and the gaineing of those 4 languages; Besides he is a scholler and well read in the latin and Greeke authors, and noe doubt of an approved conversation, for he com’s now lately out of the house of the Lord Fairefax who was Generall, where he was intrusted to give some instructions in the Languages to the Lady his Daughter (TNA, SP 18/33/152, transcribed in von Maltzahn 2005, 38) Milton foresaw a distinguished career in service of the republican regime for the younger man, adding that he was to be thought of as comparable in his abilities to the English resident in Madrid, Anthony Ascham (recently assassinated by royalists). Not content with this testimonial, Marvell, according to David Norbrook, ‘backed up his application by the publication of a vigorous pro-government satire, “The Character of Holland”’ (Norbrook 1999, 293; cf. Marvell 2007, 246; Kerrigan 2008, 222). What made the poem – a suite of witty variations on anti-Dutch stereotypes – apropos was that the two republics had been at war since the spring of 1652 and the English had just secured a major victory over the Dutch at Portland in a prolonged engagement from 18-20 February. Indeed, Norbrook suggests that the poem was ‘probably written to commemorate a day of thanksgiving’ for the victory scheduled to take place on 12 April (Norbrook 1999, 296). Much of this speculation is highly plausible, but only, it must be said, by way of supplying a context for the composition of the satire. Its publication is a very different matter. The distinction is crucial because Marvell, unlike, say, Milton or Dryden, published very little of his poetry in print (as few as nine poems on some counts), favouring manuscript publication instead – to the extent, that is, that he favoured publication at all. To understand Marvell’s practice better, we can turn to Harold Love’s discussion in The Culture and Commerce of Texts: Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England , where publication is defined in general terms ‘as a movement from a private realm of creativity to a public realm of consumption’. Love then distinguishes further between ‘a “strong” sense in which the text must be shown to have become publicly available and a more inclusive “weak” sense in which it is enough to show that the text has ceased to be a private possession’ (Love 1998, 36). The key moment in the transmissional history of any text moving from the private to the public domain is