Chapter II: Third Section (2)

"Some two days since came to my view a bold sharp pamphlet, called
_Plain English_, directed to the General and his Officers....
It is a piece drawn by no fool, and it deserves a serious answer.
By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect
it for a blot of the same pen that wrote _Eikonoklastes_. It
runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the
murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his
ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his
sacred memory. Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh
[Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it. It
relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness....
Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever else, say
where this worthy person [Monk] ever mixed with you.... Come, hang
yourself; beg right; here's your true method of begging:--'O, for
Tom Scott's sake, for Hasilrig's sake, for Robinson, Holland,
Mildmay, Mounson, Corbet, Atkins, Vane, Livesey, Skippon, Milton,
Tichbourne, Ireton, Gordon, Lechmere, Blagrave, Barebone, Needham's
sake, and, to conclude, for all the rest of our unpenitent
brethren's sake, help a company of poor rebellious devils[1].'"

[Footnote 1: The dates of the two pamphlets, and the extracts, are from copies in the Thomason Collection. Such references to Milton in the pamphlets of March--April 1660 might be multiplied. He was then in all men's mouths.]

We are now, it is to be seen, in the mid-stream of those final forty days which intervened between the self-dissolution of the last fag-end of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Full and Free Parliament called for the conclusive settlement (March 16, 1659-60-April 25, 1660). Monk was Dictator; the Council of State, with Annesley for President, was the body in charge, along with Monk, keeping the peace; but all eyes were directed towards the coming Parliament, the elections for which were going on. It was precisely in the beginning of April that the popular current towards a restoration of Charles Stuart and nothing else had acquired full force and become a roaring and foaming torrent. They were shouting for him, singing for him, treating his restoration as already certain, though the precise manner and date of it must be left to the Parliament. Only the chiefs, Monk, Annesley, Montague, and the other Councillors, kept up an appearance as if the issue must not be anticipated till the Parliament should have actually met. With letters to and from Charles in their pockets, and each knowing or guessing that the others had such letters, they were trying to look as unpledged and as merely cogitative as they could. It was for the multitude to roar and shout for Charles, and they had now full permission. It was for the chiefs to be silent themselves, only managing and manipulating, and watchful especially against any outbreak of Republican fanaticism even yet that might interfere with the plain course of things and baulk or delay the popular expectation. Wherever they could perceive a likelihood of disturbance, by act or by speech, there they were bound to curb or suppress.

At least in one instance they found it necessary to curb a too hasty and impetuous Royalist. This was Dr. Matthew Griffith, a clergyman over sixty years of age, once a _protegé_ of the poet Donne. Sequestered in the early days of the Long Parliament from his rectory of St. Mary Magdalen, London, he had taken refuge with the King through the civil wars, and had been made D.D. at Oxford, and one of the King's chaplains. Afterwards, returning to London, he had lived there through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, one of those that continued the use of the liturgy and other Anglican church-forms by stealth to small gatherings of cavaliers, and that found themselves often in trouble on that account. He had suffered, it is said, four imprisonments. The near prospect of the return of Charles II. at last had naturally excited the old gentleman; and, chancing to preach in the Mercers' Chapel on Sunday the 25th of March, 1660, he had chosen for his text _Prov._ XXIV. 21, which he translated thus: "My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that be seditious or desirous of change." On this text he had preached a very Royalist sermon. There would have been nothing peculiar in that, as many clergymen were doing the like. But, not content with having preached the sermon, Dr. Griffith resolved to publish it, in an ostentatious manner and with certain accompaniments. "_The Fear of God and the King. Press'd in a Sermon preach'd at Mercers Chappell on the 25th of March, 1660. Together with a brief Historical Account of the Causes of our unhappy distractions and the onely way to heal them. By Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King. London, Printed for Tho. Johnson at the Golden Key in St. Pauls Churchyard_, 1660": such was the name of a duodecimo out in London in the first days of April.[1] The volume consists of three parts,--first, a dedicatory epistle "To His Excellency George Monck, Captain-General of all the Land Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and one of the Generals of all the Naval Forces"; then the sermon itself in fifty-eight pages; and then an addition, in the shape of a directly political pamphlet, headed "_The Samaritan Revived_." The gem is the dedication to Monk. The substance of that is as follows:--

[Footnote 1: "April" only, without day, is the date in the Thomason copy; but it was registered at Stationers' Hall, March 31, and there is proof that the publication was immediate.]

"My Lord,--If you will be pleased to allow me to be a physician in
the same sense that all moral divines do acknowledge the
body-politic (consisting of Church and State) to be a patient,
then I will now give your Highness a just account both how far and
how faithfully I have practised upon it by virtue of my profession.
When I first observed things to be somewhat out of order, by reason
of a high distemper, which then appeared by some infallible
indications, I thought it my duty to prescribe an wholesome
electuary (out of the 122nd Psalm at the 6th verse, in a sermon
which I was called to preach in the Cathedral Church of Saint
Paul's, anno 1642, and soon after published by command under this
title: _A Pathetical Persuasion to pray for the Public
Peace_), to be duly and devoutly taken every morning next our
hearts: hoping that, by God's blessing on the means, I should have
prevented that distemper from growing into a formed disease. Yet,
finding that my preventing physic did not work so kindly and take
so good an effect as I earnestly desired, but rather that this my
so tenderly beloved patient grew worse and worse, as not only being
in process of time fallen into a fever and that pestilential, but
also as having received divers dangerous wounds, which, rankling
and festering inwardly, brought it into a spiritual atrophy and
deep consumption, and the parts ill-affected (for want of
Christian care and skill in such mountebanks as were trusted with
the cure, while myself and most of the ancient orthodox clergy were
sequestered and silent) began to gangrene: and, when some of us
became sensible thereof, we took the confidence (being partly
emboldened by the connivance of the higher powers that then were)
to fall to the exercise of our ministerial functions again in such
poor parishes as would admit us: Then I saw it was high time not
only to prescribe strong purgative medicines in the pulpit
(contempered of the myrrh of mortification, the aloes of confession
and contrition, the rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction, with
divers other safe roots, seeds, and flowers, fit and necessary to
help to carry away by degrees the incredible confluence of ill
humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put
pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and
impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in
all humility begs your Lordship's pardon) wherein my chief scope is
to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded
traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with
oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our
national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might
be in some kind instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the
healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see
these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so
it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered
you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry
bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself
more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by
all your former victories and the long line of your extraction from
the Plantagenets your ancestors ... It is a greater honour to
_make_ a king than to _be_ one. Your proper name minds
you of being St. George for England; you surname prompts you to
stand for order: then let not panic fears, punctilios of human
policy, or state formalities, beguile you (whom we look upon as
Jethro's magistrate, who was a man of courage, fearing God, dealing
truly, and hating covetousness) of that immarescible crown of glory
due to you, whom we hope that God hath designed to be the repairer
of the breach and the temporal redeemer of your native country."

Evidently Dr. Griffith was a silly person, more likely to make a cause ridiculous than to help it. There were things in his sermon and its accompaniments, however, that might harm the King's cause otherwise than by the bad literary taste of the defence. There was a tone of that revengeful spirit which it was the policy of all the more prudent Royalists to disown. Hence the publication annoyed even in that quarter. The unpardonable offence, however, was the address to Monk. He was studying to be as secret as the grave, had signified his leanings to the King by not a single public word, and indeed had hardly ceased to swear he stood for the Commonwealth. And here was an impudent Doctor of Divinity spoiling all by openly assuming and announcing the very thing to be concealed. Monk was excessively irritated; the Council of State sympathized with him; and so, "to please and blind the fanatical party" for the moment, Dr. Griffith was sent to Newgate.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 711-713.--Hyde, writing from Breda, April 16, 1660, says to a Royalist correspondent: "This very last post hath brought over three or four complaints to the king of the very unskillful passion and distemper of some of our divines in their late sermons; with which they say that both the General and the Council of State are highly offended, as truly they have reason to be ... One Dr. Griffith is mentioned." _Ibid._, note by Bliss.]

It was more natural, however, for the General and the Council to take similar precautions against too violent expressions of anti-Royalism, too vehement efforts to stir up the Republican embers. Of their vigilance in this respect we have just seen an instance in their instant suppression of the Republican appeal to Monk and his Officers entitled _Plain English_, and their procedure by proclamation against the anonymous publisher of that tract. If I am not mistaken, he was Livewell Chapman, of the Crown in Pope's Head Alley, the publisher of Milton's _Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church_, and also of his more recent _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_. There was, at all events, a printed proclamation of the Council of State against this person, dated "Wednesday, 28 March, 1660," and signed "William Jessop, Clerk of the Council." It began in these terms:--"Whereas the Council of State is informed that Livewell Chapman, of London, Stationer, having from a wicked design to engage the nation in blood and confusion caused several seditious and treasonable books to be printed and published, doth, now hide and obscure himself, for avoiding the hand of justice"; and it ended with an order that Chapman should surrender himself within four days, and that none should harbour or conceal him, but all, and especially officers, try to arrest him. If he was the publisher of _Plain English_, there would be additional reason for suspecting that Milton had some cognisance of that anonymous appeal to Monk; but there can be no doubt that among the "seditious and treasonable books" the publication of which constituted Chapman's offence was Milton's own _Ready and Easy Way_. The authorities had not yet struck at Milton himself, but they were coming very near him. They had ordered the arrest of his publisher.

Within a few days after the order for the arrest of Milton's publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.--Not without difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since 1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling itself _The Public Intelligencer_ on Mondays and _Mercurius Politicus_ on Thursdays), been retained in the service of the Good Old Cause. His Oliverianism having been excessive, to the extent of defending not only Oliver's Established Church, but also all else in his policy that grated most on the pure Republicans, he had been discharged from his editorship on the 13th of May, 1659, by order of the Restored Rump, before it had been six days in power, the place going then to John Canne. But Needham's versatility was matchless, and on the 15th of August the Rump had thought it best to reappoint him to the editorship.[1] Since then, having already in succession been Parliamentarian, Royalist, Commonwealth's man or Rumper, and all but anti-Republican Protectoratist, the world had known him in his fifth phase of Rumper or pure Commonwealth's man again. Not only in his journals, but also in independent pamphlets, he had advocated the Good Old Cause. One such pamphlet, published with his name in August 1659, under the title of _Interest will not lie_,[2] had been in reply to some Royalist who had propounded "a way how to satisfy all parties and provide for the public good by calling in the son of the late King": against whom Needham's contention was "that it is really the interest of every party (except only the Papist) to keep him out." One can understand now why, in the Royalist squib lately quoted, Needham was named as "the Commonwealth didapper"[3] along with Milton as "their goose-quill champion," and why the public were there promised the pleasure of soon seeing the two at Tyburn together.--But the final performance of Needham's, it is believed, was a tract called _News from Brussels, in a Letter from a near attendant on his Majesty's person to a Person of Honour here_. It purports to be dated at Brussels, March 10, 1659-60, English style, and was out in London on March 23. The publication is said to have been managed secretly by Mr. Praise-God Barebone; and, though the tract was anonymous, it was attributed at once to Needham. Being "fall of rascalities against Charles II. and his Court," as Wood says, and professing to give private information as to the terrible severities which they were meditating when they should be restored to England, the pamphlet was much resented by the Royalists; and John Evelyn roused himself from a sickbed to pen an instant and emphatic contradiction, called _The late News or Message from Brussels unmasked_. Needham's connexion, or supposed connexion, with so violent an anti-Royalist tract, and possibly also with the Republican manifesto called _Plain English_, which appeared in the same week, could not be overlooked; and, accordingly, in Whitlocke, under date April 9, 1660, we find this note: "The Council discharged Needham from writing the Weekly Intelligence and ordered Dury and Muddiman to do it." The Dury here mentioned was not our John Durie of European celebrity, but an insignificant Giles Dury. His colleague Muddiman, the real successor of Needham in the editorship, was Henry Muddiman, an acquaintance of Pepys, who certifies that he was "a good scholar and an arch rogue." He had been connected with the London press for some time (for smaller news-sheets had been springing up again beside the authorized _Mercurius_ and _Intelligencer_), and had been writing for the Rumpers. He had just been, owning to Pepys, however, that he "did it only to get money," and had no liking for them or their politics.[4]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. As only the _Intelligencer_ is named in the orders, one infers that Needham retained the editorship of the _Mercurius_ during his three months of suspension. He may have had more of a proprietary hold on that paper.]

[Footnote 2: Thomason Catalogue: large quartos.]

[Footnote 3: _Didapper_: a duck that dives and reappears.]

[Footnote 4: Wood's Ath. III. 1180-1190; Whitlocke as cited; Pepys, under date Jan. 9, 1659-60; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 17, 1659-60 _et seq._; Baker's Chronicle continued by Edward Phillips (ed. 1679), pp. 699-700.--It is curious to read Phillips's remarks on the "several seditious pamphlets" put forth by the Republican fanatics "to deprave the minds of the people" and prevent the Restoration. Though he must have remembered well that his uncle's were the chief of these, he avoids naming him. He mentions, however, the _News from Brussels_, and dilates on the great service done by Evelyn in replying to it. Phillips had meanwhile (1663-1665) been in Evelyn's employment as tutor to his son.]

If they turned Needham out of his editorship, they could hardly do less than turn Milton out of his Latin Secretaryship. About this time, accordingly, he did cease to hold the office which he had held for eleven years. Phillips's words are that he was "sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging"; but, unfortunately, though he gives us to understand that this was shortly before the Restoration, he leaves the exact date uncertain.

Though the last of Milton's state-letters now preserved and known as his are the two, dated May 15, 1659, written for the Rump immediately after the subversion of Richard's Protectorate, we have seen him holding his office in sinecure, and drawing his salary of £200 a year, to as late at least as the beginning of the Wallingford-House Interruption in October 1659; and there is no reason for thinking that the Council or Committee of Safety of the Wallingford-House Government, his dissent from their usurpation notwithstanding, thought it necessary to dismiss him. Far less likely is it that the Republican Rumpers, when restored the second time in December 1659, would have parted with a man so thoroughly Republican and so respectful to themselves, even while they dared not adopt his Church-disestablishment suggestions. We may fairly assume, then, that Milton remained Marvell's nominal colleague till Monk's final termination of the tenure of the Rump by re-admitting the secluded members, i.e. till Feb. 21, 1659-60. Had he been then at once dismissed, it would have been no wonder. How could he, the Independent of Independents, the denouncer of every form of State-Church, the enemy and satirist of the Presbyterians, and moreover the author of the Divorce heresy and the founder of a sect of Divorcers, be retained in the service of a re-Presbyterianized Government, founding itself on the Westminster Confession and the Solemn League and Covenant? There is no proof, however, of any such instant dismissal of Milton by the new powers, but rather a shade of proof to the contrary in the phraseology of the preface to his _Ready and Easy Way_. The probability, therefore, is that it was after March 3, the date of the publication of that pamphlet, that Milton was sequestered, and that it was the pamphlet itself, added to the sum of his previous obnoxiousness to the new powers, that led to the sequestration. Yet, as the new powers were proceeding warily, and keeping up as long as they could the pretence of leaving the Commonwealth an open question, it is quite possible that they were in no haste to discharge Milton, All in all, the most probable time of his dismissal is some time after the dissolution of the Parliament of the Secluded Members on the 16th of March, 1659-60, when Monk and the Council of State were left in the management. As Milton had been originally appointed by the Council of State and not by Parliament, it was in the Council's pleasure to continue him or dismiss him. They were in a severe mood, virtually anti-Republican already, though not yet avowedly so, between March 28, when they ordered Livewell Chapman's arrest, and April 9, when they dismissed Needham; and that or thereabouts may be the date of Milton's discharge.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips's narrative of his uncle's dismissal is a blotch of confused wording and pointing:--"It was but a little before the King's Restoration that he wrote and published his book in defence of a Commonwealth; so undaunted he was in declaring his true sentiments to the world; and not long before his _Power of the Civil Magistrate in Ecclesiastical Affairs_ and his _Treatise against Hirelings,_ just upon the King's coming over; having a little before been sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging, he was force," &c. This, as it stands, defies interpretation. The _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_ appeared in April 1659, or eight months before the same. There ought, I believe, to have been a full stop after _Hirelings_, and the rest should have run on thus:--"Just upon the King's coming over, having a little before been sequestered from his office of latin Secretary and the salary therunto belonging, he was force," &c.]

* * * * *

In office or out of office, it was the same to Milton. He had determined that he would not be suppressed, that he would not be silent, till they should tie his hands, or gag his mouth. There is no grander exhibition of dying resistance, of solitary and useless fighting for a lost cause, than in his conduct through April 1680. Alone he then stood, we may say, the last of the visible Republicans. Hasilrig, Scott, Ludlow, Neville, and Vane, had collapsed or were out of sight, the last under ban already by his former brothers of the Commonwealth; Needham was extinguished; most of the Cromwellians had gone over to the enemy, or were hastening to surrender. Blind Milton alone remained, the Samson Agonistes, On him, in the absence of others, the eyes of the Philistine mob, the worshippers of Dagon, had been turned from time to time of late as the Hebrew that could make them most efficient sport; and now it was as if they had all met, by common consent, to be amused by this single Hebrew's last exertions, and had sent to bring him on the stage. They laughed, they shouted, they shrieked, the gathered Philistine thousands:

"He, patient, but undaunted, where they led him
Came to the place."

The first of the feats of strength of Milton, thus alone on the stage, and knowing himself to be confronted and surrounded by a jeering multitude, was a somewhat puny and unnecessary one. It was an onslaught on Dr. Matthew Griffith for his Royalist sermon. He wanted some object of attack, and the very notoriety given to Dr. Griffith's performance by the rebuke of the Council of State recommended it for the purpose despite its intrinsic wretchedness. Accordingly, having had Dr. Griffith's Sermon and its accompaniments read over to him, he dictated what appeared some time in April with this title: "_Brief Notes upon a late Sermon, titled 'The Fear of God and the King'; Preach'd, and since published, by Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King. Wherin many notorious wrestings of Scripture, and other falsities are observed._"[1]

[Footnote 1: Original copies of this pamphlet of Milton must be very scarce. I could not find one in the British Museum, and I have looked in vain elsewhere. Probably, at the date when it was published, the Council of State had become very alert in suppressing such things. I take the title and extracts from Pickering's (1851) collective edition of Milton's Works, "printed from the original editions."]

The tract, which is very short, opens thus:--

"I affirmed, in the Preface of a late Discourse, entitled _The
Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Dangers of
readmitting Kingship in this Nation_, that 'the humour of
returning to our old bondage was instilled of late by some
deceivers': and, to make good that what I then affirmed was not
without just ground, one of those deceivers I present here to the
people, and, if I prove him not such, refuse not to be so accounted
in his stead."

The greater part of the pamphlet consists of an examination of the sermon itself, with minute remarks on its wrestings or misinterpretations of Scripture texts, and on the poverty of the preacher's theology and scholarship generally. There is no actual disguise of the fact that Milton has the lowest opinion of the intellectual _calibre_ of his antagonist, whom he once names "a pulpit-mountebank," and of whom he once says that "the rest of his preachment is mere groundless chat," Yet, on the other hand, he would evidently have Dr. Griffith taken as a fair enough specimen of the average Church-of-England clergyman. "O people of an implicit faith, no better than Romish if these be your prime teachers!" he once exclaims, as if Dr. Griffith were a man of some distinction.

The only portions of the _Notes_ of interest now are those that bear on the historical situation at the moment. Thus, in the notice of the Dedicatory Epistle to Monk prefixed to Dr. Griffith's sermon, there is an evident struggle on Milton's part to speak as if one might still have faith in the General. It is possible that the censure of Dr. Griffith by the Council of State, intended as it was "to please and blind the fanatical party," may have had some such temporary effect on Milton. At all events, he refers to Monk as one "who hath so eminently borne his part in the whole action," and he characterizes one portion of the Dedicatory Epistle, where Monk is prayed "to carry on what he had so happily begun," as nothing less than "an impudent calumny and affront to his Excellence." It charges him, says Milton, "most audaciously and falsely, with the renouncing of his own public promises and declarations both to the Parliament and the Army; and we trust his actions ere long will deter such insinuating slanderers from thus approaching him for the future." Throughout the _Notes_, however, one sees that even this small lingering of confidence in Monk is forced, and that Milton is too sadly convinced of the probable predetermination of all now in power to fulfil the general expectation and bring in Charles. In the following passage there is a half-veiled intimation that, rather than see that ignominious conclusion, Milton would reconcile himself to Monk's own assumption of the Crown:--

"Free Commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest
for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abounding with
prudent men worthy to govern; Monarchy fittest to curb degenerate,
corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire to be of the
former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler, than a Free
Commonwealth; if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the
latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of
our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be
governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet,
choosing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people
and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we
may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a
victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished
was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good
policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the
subdued,--will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and
perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which
what can be more unworthy?"

Of far more moment than the _Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ was a second and enlarged edition of the _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_.

Though it is announced distinctly and emphatically in the opening paragraph that this edition is a "revised and enlarged" one, not till after a careful comparison with the former edition is it seen how much the announcement implies. There are large additions; there are omissions; there are changes of phraseology in every page. The new pamphlet, were it nothing else, would be an interesting study of Milton's art in authorcraft, of the expertness he had acquired in recasting a composition of his, ingeniously dove-tailing passages into it without spoiling the connexion, and ejecting phrases that had ceased to be relevant or vital, all under the difficulties of his blindness, when his ear listening to some mouth beside him and his own mouth interrupting and replying were his sole instruments. But there is much more than this. The later edition is Milton about a month farther down the torrent than the first, a month nearer the falls; and the additions, omissions, and alterations, convey what had passed in his mind through that month. The second edition of the _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_ is to be taken, in short, for Milton's Biography at least, as an important new publication. Only the essential additions and omissions can be here noticed.[1]

[Footnote 1: The fact that there are two editions of the _Ready and Easy Way_, though Milton calls express attention to it in the second, seems to have escaped all the bibliographers. There is no note of it in Lowndes. What is most curious, however, is that, while it is the second or enlarged edition alone that is now accessible to everybody in the collective editions of Milton's Prose Works, from the so-called Amsterdam edition of 1898 to Pickering's and Bonn's, yet original copies of this second edition seem, to have wholly disappeared. There are several original copies of the _Ready and Easy Way_ in the British Museum, but all of the first edition, not one of the second; the Bodleian has no copy of the second; every original copy of the tract that I have been able to see or hear of anywhere else has always turned out to be one of the first edition. In my perplexity, I began to ask myself whether this was to be explained by supposing that Milton, after he had prepared the second edition for the press, did not succeed in getting it published, and so that it was not till 1698 that it saw the light, and then by the accident that his enlarged press-copy had survived, and come (through Toland or otherwise) into the hands of the printers of the Amsterdam edition of the Prose Works. But, though several pieces in that edition are expressly noted as "never before published" (see notes ante, p. 617 and p. 656), there is no such editorial note respecting _The Ready and Easy Way_, but every appearance of mere reprinting from a previously published copy of 1660. On the whole, therefore, I conclude that Milton did publish his second and enlarged edition some time in April 1660; and I account for the rarity of original copies of this second edition by supposing that either the impression was seized before many copies had got about, or the Restoration itself came so rapidly after the publication as to make it all but abortive. Original copies of Milton's contemporary _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ seem, as I have mentioned (ante p. 675, note), to be equally scarce with original copies of the second edition of the _Ready and Easy Way_. They were the two last utterances of Milton before the Restoration, and so close to that event as perhaps to be sucked down in the whirlpool. Yet, as we know for certain that the _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ did appear, there is no need for a contrary supposition respecting the other. Very possibly original copies of both _have_ survived somewhere; and I should be glad to hear of the fact. As it is, I have had to take my descriptions of both from the copies in the collective Prose Works. By the bye, it is an error in bibliographers and editors to give only the titles of old books from the original title-pages, without adding the imprints of the publishers. Much historical and biographical information lies in such imprints. In the present instance, for example, I should have liked very much to know whether Livewell Chapman was nominally the publisher of the second edition as well as of the first, or whether Milton was obliged to put forth the second edition without any publisher's name.]

Among the _additions_ the most prominent is this motto (an extension of Juvenal I. 15, 16) prefixed to the whole:--

"_Et nos_
_Consilium dedimus Syllæ: demus Populo nunc_";

which may be translated:--

"We have advised
Sulla himself: advise we now the People."

Had this been prefixed to the first edition, the inevitable conclusion would have been that Sulla stood for Oliver Cromwell, and that Milton meant that, having taken the liberty in his _Defensio Secunda_ of tendering wholesome advices even to the great Protector in the height of his power, it might be allowed to him now to advise the general body of his countrymen. Much would have depended then on Milton's estimate of the character of the real or Roman Sulla. That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by their own infatuation, "under the tyranny of Sulla." Now, though we have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of Cromwell's Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so panegyrized while living. Fortunately, we are spared the shock. Monk, not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the metonymy _Sulla_. He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the other day, containing that specific suggestion of a PERPETUAL NATIONAL COUNCIL in the centre and CITY COUNCILS in all the counties which he developes more at large in his pamphlet. Perhaps he is thinking also of the more recent remonstrance, called _Plain English_, addressed by some London Republicans, of whom he may have been one, to Monk and his Officers. He has now done with Monk; he knows that the suggestions have taken no effect in that quarter, perhaps have been rebuffed; he will therefore dedicate them afresh to the people at large, for whom they were first written. The translation, accordingly, may run definitely thus:--

"This advice we have given
Sulla himself: 'tis for the People now."

In one or two of the added passages, or modifications of phraseology, we note reference to the course of events since the publication of the former edition. Compare, for example, the following portion of the prefatory paragraph with the corresponding portion of the same paragraph as it first stood (p. 645):--

... "I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that
it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely
published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament, or
their sitting to consider freely of the Government; whom it behoves
to have all things represented to them that may direct their
judgment therein: and I never read of any state, scarce of any
tyrant, grown so incurable as to refuse counsel from any in a time
of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute
determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude
they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak
freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former
edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were
suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took
the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to
enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for
a Perpetual Senate. The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as
follows."

Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh text. He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service as a new argument against the recall of Charles. The first of the following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:--

"What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the
good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought
persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse
principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and
Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence?
Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having
revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged
themselves never to readmit Episcopacy? Which no son of Charles
returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard
the last and strictest charge of his father, _to persevere in not
the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and]
not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and
Schisms_,--among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief.
Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the
Covenant, how will he keep faith to _us_ with disobedience to
_him_, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the
breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the
reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against
Presbyterian and Independent Discipline?"

Perhaps the most striking instance of _omission_ in the new edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made at p. 653. He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion between Church and State. There was practical sagacity in this omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet. It was no time then to be obtruding upon the public, or upon the Presbyterians that were flocking in to the new Parliament, his peculiar Disestablishment notion, however precious it might be to himself. His real business was to stir up all, by any means, to the defence even yet of the Republican form of Government; in such an argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back, and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part and parcel of it, and the special battle of Disestablishment should have to be postponed. To keep out the Stuarts, to rouse dread and disgust even yet at the idea that the Stuarts should return, was the single all-including possibility, or impossibility, for which he was now striving. To this end it is that again and again in the course of the pamphlet he inserts new passages heightening the contrast between the glories and advantages of free Republican Government and the miseries and degradation of subjection to a Monarchy. Near the beginning there is an enlargement of this kind, to the extent of three pages, in which he reviews, in greater detail than before, the steps that had led to the establishment of the English Commonwealth; and appeals to his countrymen whether their experience of Commonwealth government had not been on the whole satisfactory. Had not the very speeches and writings of that period, he had asked in his first edition, "testified a spirit in this nation no less noble and well-fitted to the liberty of a Commonwealth than in the ancient Greeks or Romans"? In returning to that topic now, he cannot refrain from breaking out once more, though it should be the last time, in his characteristic vein of self-appreciation. "Nor was the heroic cause," he adds, "unsuccessfully defended to all Christendom against the tongue of a famous and thought invincible adversary, nor the constancy and fortitude that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our victory at once against two the most prevailing usurpers over mankind, Superstition and Tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated in a written monument likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto convinced or silenced not a few detractors, especially in parts abroad." Readers who may think that we are already too familiar with this strain may be reminded that Milton was here taking account of the contemptuous notices of his Defences of the Commonwealth in some of the recent Royalist pamphlets, and also that, as he dictated, the thought must have been passing in his mind that very probably his days were numbered, and those Defences of the Commonwealth would have to remain, after all, his last important bequest to the world.

There is proof that Milton had read the burlesque Censure of the Rota on the first edition. Not only are two or three sentences omitted or modified in consequence of remarks there made; but, in the considerable enlargements he thinks necessary for the support of his main notion of PERPETUITY OF THIS NATIONAL GREAT COUNCIL, he takes care to extend also his former references to Harrington's principle of Rotation and other doctrines. Of course, he was well aware that it was not Harrington himself that had complained of the slightness of the former references, but only some Royalist wit caricaturing Harrington together with himself. While disagreeing with Harrington, he shows his respect for him. The following are specimens of these particular enlargements:--

_The Rotation Principle_:--"But, if the ambition of such as
think themselves injured that they also partake not of the
Government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the
perpetuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that
long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known
expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually (or, if
the space be longer, so much perhaps the better) the third part of
Senators may go out, according to the precedence of their election,
and the like number be chosen in their places, to prevent the
settling of too absolute a power if it should be perpetual: and
this they call _Partial Rotation_. But I could wish that this
wheel or partial wheel in State, if it be possible, might be
avoided, as having too much, affinity with the Wheel of Fortune.
For it appears not how this can be done without danger and
mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in
whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced,
and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the
worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual
Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this
land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing
Army or in a Settled Militia, have their arms in their own hands.
Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or
interruption to affairs, that none of the Grand Council be moved,
unless by death or just conviction of some crime; for what can be
expected firm or stedfast from a floating foundation? However, I
forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be
found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side."

_Contrast of Harrington's Model with Milton's, and a Suggestion
for the mode of Elections_:--"And this annual Rotation of a
Senate to consist of 300, as is lately propounded, requires also
another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable
Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those
inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be
troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session,
to the whole land,--unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so
great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any
be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts
remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then
to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or
ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation;
incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and
always jarring with the other Senate. The much better way doubtless
will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the
changing or circumscribing of our Senate, more than may be done
with ease, till the Commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and
safety and they themselves give us the occasion.... Another way
will be to well qualify and refine Elections: not committing all to
the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only
those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they
will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose
a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth
sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen
who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest....
But, to prevent all mistrust, the People then will have their
several Ordinary Assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate
the odious power and name of _Committees_) in the chief towns
of every County,--without the trouble, charge, or time lost, of
summoning and assembling from so far, in so great a number, and so
long residing from their own houses, or removing of their
families,--to do as much at home in their several shires, entire or
subdivided, towards the securing of their liberty, as a numerous
Assembly of them all formed and convened on purpose with the
wariest rotation."

_Glance at some of Harrington's other notions_:--"The way
propounded [Milton's] is plain, easy, and open before us: without
intricacies, without the introducement of new or obsolete forms or
terms, or exotic models,--ideas that would effect nothing, but with
a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of
mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and
necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian
Liberty."

As if the very closeness of the vision of returning Royalty had rendered Milton's defiance of it more desperate and reckless, he inserts, wherever he can, some new expression of his contempt for Charles and all his family, and of his prophetic horror of the state of society they will bring in. Thus:--

"There will be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood
outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already,
together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal
issue, and ere long severally _their_ sumptuous Courts, to the
multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of
nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but
of court offices, to be Stewards, Chamberlains, Ushers, Grooms."

But the most terrific new passage in prediction of the Restoration and its revenges is the following: in which the reader will observe also the recognition, as in one spurn of boundless scorn, of the Royalist scurrilities against himself:--

"Admit that Monarchy of itself may be convenient to some nations;
yet to us who have thrown it out, received back again, it cannot
but prove pernicious. For Kings to come, never forgetting their
former ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves
sufficiently for the future against all such attempts hereafter
from the People; who shall be then so narrowly watched and kept so
low that, though they would never so fain, and at the same rate of
their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what
they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from
any yoke imposed upon them. Nor will they dare to go about
it,--utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest
attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the triumph of all
Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and
their song will then be to others _How sped the Rebellious
English?_, to our posterity _How sped the Rebels your
fathers?_.... Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate
this new gilded yoke which thus transports us. A new Royal Revenue
must be found, a new Episcopal,--for those are individual: both
which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or
assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be
recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men's
estates, or a heavy imposition on all men's purses,--benefit to
none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to
be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by
it. But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on
our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered
and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his
adherents: accounts and reparations that will be required, suits,
indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints,
informations,--who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps
neuters,--if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines,
banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet disfavour,
discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known
Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the
new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old
doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever
conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will they not believe this,
nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how
other solemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now read the
diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now
appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers
of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but
hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly
animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their
Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the
spew of every drunkard, every ribald: nameless, yet not for want of
licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring
to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us
to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever
they have power, with more wicked deeds. Let our zealous
backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how
_their_ necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,--these new
fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with
nothing holier than the venereal pox,--can draw one way, under
Monarchy, to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these
new-disgorged Atheisms. Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke
with these, but shall be yoked under them: these shall plough on
_their_ backs. And do they among them who are so forward to
bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long
regarded? So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are
wont reconciled enemies,--neglected and soon after discarded, if
not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and
more than to the third part actors, of all that followed."