raphers. 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 coll