s, "You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as I
understand of these affairs, freely imparted, at your request and the
persuasion you wrought in me that I might chance hereby to be some
way serviceable to the Commonwealth in a time when all ought to be
endeavouring what good they can, whether much or but little. With
this you may do what you please. Put out, put in, communicate or
suppress: you offend not me, who only have obeyed your opinion that,
in doing what I have done, I might happen to offer something which
might be of some use in this great time of need. However, I have not
been wanting to the opportunity which you presented before me of
showing the readiness which I have, in the midst of my unfitness, to
whatever may be required of me as a public duty." The expressions
might suggest that the friend who had been talking with Milton was
Vane or some one else of those Councillors of the Rump who still sat
on at Whitehall consulting with the Wallingford-House Chiefs as to
the form of Government to be set up instead of the Rump (ante pp.
494-495). It may, however, have been some lesser personage, such as
Meadows, back from the Baltic this very month. In any case, the
letter was meant to be shown about, if not printed. It was, in fact,
Milton's contribution, at a friend's request, to the deliberations
going on at Whitehall.

[Footnote 1: It was first published in the so-called Amsterdam
Edition of Milton's Prose Works (1698); and Toland, who gave it to
the publishers of that edition, informs us that it had been
communicated to him "by a worthy friend, who, a little after the
author's death, had it from his nephew"--i.e. from Phillips.]

He does not conceal his strong disapprobation of Lambert's _coup
d'etat_. Indeed he takes the opportunity of declaring, even more
strongly than he had done two months before, how heartily he had
welcomed the restoration of the Rump. Thus:--

"I will begin with telling you how I was overjoyed when I heard
that the Army, under the working of God's holy Spirit, as I
thought, and still hope well, had been so far wrought to Christian
humility and self-denial as to confess in public their backsliding
from the good Old Cause, and to show the fruits of their repentance
in the righteousness of their restoring the old famous Parliament
which they had without just authority dissolved: I call it the
famous Parliament, though not the harmless, since none
well-affecte