ective
Prose Works. By the bye, it is an error in bibliographers and editors
to give only the titles of old books from the original title-pages,
without adding the imprints of the publishers. Much historical and
biographical information lies in such imprints. In the present
instance, for example, I should have liked very much to know whether
Livewell Chapman was nominally the publisher of the second edition as
well as of the first, or whether Milton was obliged to put forth the
second edition without any publisher's name.]

Among the _additions_ the most prominent is this motto (an
extension of Juvenal I. 15, 16) prefixed to the whole:--

"_Et nos_
_Consilium dedimus Syllae: demus Populo nunc_";

which may be translated:--

"We have advised
Sulla himself: advise we now the People."

Had this been prefixed to the first edition, the inevitable
conclusion would have been that Sulla stood for Oliver Cromwell, and
that Milton meant that, having taken the liberty in his _Defensio
Secunda_ of tendering wholesome advices even to the great
Protector in the height of his power, it might be allowed to him now
to advise the general body of his countrymen. Much would have
depended then on Milton's estimate of the character of the real or
Roman Sulla. That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional
one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present
edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by
their own infatuation, "under the tyranny of Sulla." Now, though we
have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of
Cromwell's Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an
epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so
panegyrized while living. Fortunately, we are spared the shock. Monk,
not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the
metonymy _Sulla_. He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the
other day, containing that specific suggestion of a PERPETUAL
NATIONAL COUNCIL in the centre and CITY COUNCILS in all the counties
which he developes more at large in his pamphlet. Perhaps he is
thinking also of the more recent remonstrance, called _Plain
English_, addressed by some London Republicans, of whom he may
have been one, to Monk and his Officers. He has now done with Monk;
he knows that the suggestions have taken no effect in that quarter,
perhaps have been rebuffed; he will therefore dedicate them afresh
to the people