of great exultation to Milton; and accordingly gave him new encouragement to proceed in his labours for the public good.'* He seems, himself, to have had no doubt, and Mr. Godwin plainly intimates, that the downfal of Richard was the effect of the Treatise of Civil Power; and the triumphant writer, resolving to follow up so salutary a blow, addressed to the long parliament a second part of his just plan' for a religious constitution, under the title of Considerations touching the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. He calls the long parliament the 'supreme senate, whose magnanimous councils first opened and unbound the age from a double bondage under prelatical and regal tyranny; above our own hopes heartning us to look up at last like men and Christians from the slavish dejection wherein from father to son we were bred up and taught; and thereby deserving of these nations, if they be not barbarously ungrateful, to be acknowledged, next under God, the authors and best patrons of religious and civil liberty that ever these islands brought forth?" Yet, among other laudable works, it was for turning this same parliament out of doors, in 1653, that Cromwell was called, in Milton's Second Defence, the father of his country.'†

But this gifted assembly, from which Milton hoped so much, was soon destined to follow the protectorate of Richard Cromwell. The nation consisted chiefly of royalists and presbyterians; and the long parliament was equally detested by both these parties; who agreed to unite against this common enemy, and only wanted a leader to concentrate and guide their scattered powers. That leader was found in honest George Monk; who marched from Scotland to London with only 6000 men; and found his countrymen so weary of broils and revolutions, that they were willing to follow any body, and submit to any thing, for the sake of repose. For the present, however, the kingdom was in more confusion than ever. Monk would not tell the people, what he intended to do: he did not seem to know himself; and, while the nation was in a state of the most anxious suspense, while every individual was almost in despair of public tranquillity, and those who had the power in their hands appeared to be utterly at a loss how they should use it, -Milton undertook to show, that it was a case of no difficulty, and published a treatise, called the Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth The first edition appeared early in February, 1660; and was designed for the edification of the new parliament, which Monk had ordered to be summoned. But, as the first writs of election were recalled, and the time of meeting necessarily postponed, a second edition, much enlarged, was soon after published.*

Mr. Todd mentions a Letter concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, as having been written by Milton about this period.* A Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, addressed to Monk, in 1659, was, it seems, unquestionably his; and Idia Democratica, or a Commonweal Platform, as well as a Model of a Democratical Government, though anonymously printed, are also thought to betray their origin in the same source.† Nothing, at any rate, can be more thoroughly democratical than Milton's ideas of government. Both he and Mr. Godwin think, that one may rule his fellows, and yet 'walk the street as other men, and be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly.' The Americans are the last persons to think governors a superior order of beings; but it is impossible, that men should maintain authority when they make themselves so cheap. In the same democratical spirit, Milton wrote Brief Notes upon a sermon preached in March, 1660, by one Dr. Griffith; and was immediately answered by L'Estrange, in a pamphlet, illiberally styled No Blind Guides. Milton might have rejoined with a motto from Cicero; whose countrymen, he says, did not reject the advice of Drusus because he was blind; but, 'cum sua ipsa non videbant, cecum adhibebant ducem.'s Wood says, that the Aphorisms of State, which appeared in 1661, and the Cabinet Council, or the Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State, published three years before, were both the productions of our author. They are not mentioned by our predecessors.

Milton seems now to have become weary of polical discussion. He had written in vain, long enough; none of his plans had been adopted; and he had

time,' he adds, 'John Milton published his Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Government, 1659-60. In answer to which came out a waggish Censure, pretended to be made the Rota, printed in the latter end of March, 1660.' Ath. Ox. vol. ii. p. 593. ed. 1721.

* Vol. i. p. 97. Tol. p. 149.

† Todd, vol. i. p. 98.

† Read. and Eas. Way.

Tusc. Quæst. 1. v. §38.

Ath. Ox. 1721. vol. i. p.

finally got out of patience with mankind. In his opinion, there was no longer any hope for them; and, though, in the Ready and Easy Way, he was willing to make one more effort to set his countrymen in the right, he had, after all, but little expectation of their taking his advice. Stocks and stones, he said, could not be less inattentive; and, in the language of forlorn hope, he calls upon the earth to witness the stupidity of man, that could not see the right way, when it is so obvious in itself, and when it had been so often pointed out. Thus much I should perhaps have said,' he concludes, 'though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones; and had none to cry to, but with the prophet, O earth, earth, earth!' to tell the very soil itself, what its perverse inhabitants are deaf to: nay, though what I have spoken should happen (which thou suffer not, who didst create man free! and thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of our expiring liberty.' This, indeed, he fearfully forbodes; and, reconciling himself, as well as he can, to what he considers as the near approach of political death, he asks, for the last boon, that he may only have time to say his prayers. 'If,' says he, '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.'

Yet even this small favour could not be granted. The people and the parliament were tired of experiments: any government was better than anarchy; and, when it was known that Charles the second had landed in England, his subjects were nearly frantic for his restoration. The republicans fled away; and Milton hid himself in Bartholomew Close, near West Smithfield. The bodies of the leading regicides were dug up and hung as traitors; and the Iconoclates and Defensiones of Milton, with the Obstructors of Justice, by Goodwin, were ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. The republican chiefs, who were yet living, suffered either death or imprisonment; and 'it is astonishing,' Mr. Godwin thinks, 'that Milton was not made one of the victims in this sanguinary scene, and that the ministers of Charles the second did not consummate their treachery in the extinction of the future author of Paradise Lost.* We might, perhaps, quiet Mr. Godwin's astonishment, by suggesting, that these wicked ministers did not probably anticipate the commission of such a political enormity as Paradise Lost.

But, why he should be astonished at all, we are at a loss to conceive. He has himself told us, that Milton took no active part in the crimes of the independents; and we learn, from numberless other sources, that he was considered as a person of little consequence during all the time of the commonwealth. He had not imbrued his hands in the blood of his sovereign. He had only offended in his books; and vengeance was taken upon his books, by ordering them to be publicly committed to the flames. As soon as the destruction of the leading rebels had made the royalists secure, they began to feel generous; and Milton, to use the expressive language of Toland, had kept himself hid till the worst of the storm was over. We cannot but admire, indeed, the simplicity of Mr. Godwin, in wondering that 'the future author of Paradise Lost' was not hung, when it is so well known that he was not to be found. No sooner had Charles become firmly seated on his throne, than he gave himself up to all the oblivious pleasures, for which his father's court had been so distinguished; and 'some,' says Toland, 'are of opinion, that Milton was more obliged to that prince's forgetfulness than to his clemency.'t. It was not, according to Dr. Johnson's round period,