t, if it sufficed, some years past, to convince and satisfy
the unengaged of other nations in the justice of your doings,
though then held paradoxal, it may as well suffice now against
weaker opposition in matters (except here in England, with a
spirituality of men devoted to their temporal gain) of no
controversy else among Protestants."

This is, unmistakeably, a public testimony of Milton's re-adhesion to
the Rumpers, with something like an expression of regret that he had
ever parted from them. After all, he could call them "the authors and
best patrons of religious and civil liberty that ever these Islands
brought forth"; and, with this renewed conviction, and remembering
also their former confidence in himself, especially in the Salmasian
controversy, he could now congratulate them and the country on their
return to power. But is not the Address also a recantation of his
Oliverianism? To some extent, it must be so interpreted. It seems
utterly impossible, indeed, that the phrase "_a short but
scandalous night of interruption_" was intended to apply to the
entire six years of the Cromwellian Dictatorship and Protectorship.
That had not been a "short" interruption, for it had exceeded in
length the whole duration of the Commonwealth it had interrupted; and
it would be the most marvellous inconsistency on record if Milton
could ever have brought himself to call it "scandalous." Who had
written the panegyric on Cromwell and his actually established
Protectorship in the _Defensio Secunda?_ Who had been Oliver's
Latin Secretary from first to last, and penned for him his despatches
on the Piedmontese massacre and all his greatest besides? The
likelihood, therefore, is that "the short but scandalous night of
interruption" in Milton's mind was the fortnight or so of
Wallingford-House usurpation which broke up Richard's Parliament and
Protectorate, and from the continuance of which, with all the
inconveniences of a mere military despotism, the restoration of the
Rump had seemed a happy rescue. But, though this single phrase may be
thus explained, the tone of the whole address intimates far less of
gratitude to Oliver dead than there had been of admiration for Oliver
living. And the reason at this point is most obvious. Was it not
precisely because Cromwell had failed to fulfil Milton's expectation
of him, in his sonnet of May 1652, that he would deliver the
Commonwealth from the plague of "hireling wolves," calli