t
preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several
foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O.
Protector and Mr. J. Milton; and [they] would see the house and
chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at
home." This corresponds with all our own evidence hitherto, though we
have heard nothing of those invitations and offers of foreign
preferment of which Aubrey speaks.

[Footnote 1: The copy I have seen of Guentzer's _Dissertatio_ is
in the British Museum Library. The figure "17" is inserted in MS.
after the word "_die_" in the title-page.]

In May 1658, three or four months before Cromwell's death, there was
published in London a little volume of about 200 pages, with this
title-page: "_The Cabinet Council; Containing the chief Arts of
Empire, and Mysteries of State; Discabineted in Political and
Polemical Aphorisms, grounded, on Authority, and Experience; And
illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations.
By the Ever-renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John
Milton Esq._-Quis Martem tunica tectum Adamantina digne
scripserit?-_London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Tho. Johnson at
the sign of the Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, near the West-end,
1658."_ Prefixed to the body of the volume, which is divided into
twenty-six chapters, is a note "_To the Reader,"_ as follows:
"Having had the manuscript of this Treatise, written by Sir Walter
Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance
among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a
kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author
from the public: it being both answerable in style to other works of
his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me
for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected
several such pieces.-JOHN MILTON."[1]

[Footnote 1: There were subsequent reprints of Raleigh's _Cabinet
Council_ from this 1658 edition by Milton, with changes of
title. See Bohn's Lowndes under _Raleigh_]

By far the most interesting fact, however, in Milton's literary life
under the Second Protectorate is that he had certainly, before its
close, resumed his design of a great English poem, to be called
Paradise Lost. Phillips's words might even imply that he had resumed
this design before the end of the First Protectorate. For, after
having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was