Absolutely, I agree with you that the writing and production comes within the reviewer’s remit. To redress, three years ago, I remember seizing upon a miserly two typographical errors in a monograph merely to find a blot on the landscape that might validate an otherwise sparkling review.

The impression I received from your review was that the consequences of the lapses of technique that you found were particularly severe, which I didn’t believe to be the case. Having read your response, I’m naturally much more comfortable (and in agreement) with your sentiment. And when I next read The Chameleon through again, I’m going to be acutely aware of repetition, and perhaps it will suddenly strike me where it didn’t before.

Many thanks for your input, which has made this fascinating exercise all the more worthwhile.

I wonder if my excitement with modern Marvellian criticism stems from the monographs of old becoming far too comfortable in making assumptions: that Marvell never married, for example, or that the poems to Villiers and on Tom May aren’t Marvell’s because they compromise a more comfortable political consistency. I don’t think that problem was unique to Marvellians, though. How Harold Love can say the Horatian Ode was meant to reach Cromwell’s hands is beyond me. Realising that too little is black and white with Marvell has pushed us to subjective and esoteric directions for illumination. And this, ironically enough, is likely to divide more.

What I would say, though, is that encapsulating Marvell as a whole across a theme – while I enjoy its creativity – does risk neglecting what is so special about him. I miss the work of John Creaser in the Cambridge Companion, for example. My favourite critical works remain Rosalie Colie’s My Ecchoing Song and Warren Chernaik’s The Poet’s Time, so maybe there’s slight hope for me yet.