at large, for whom they were first written. The
translation, accordingly, may run definitely thus:--

"This advice we have given
Sulla himself: 'tis for the People now."

In one or two of the added passages, or modifications of phraseology,
we note reference to the course of events since the publication of
the former edition. Compare, for example, the following portion of
the prefatory paragraph with the corresponding portion of the same
paragraph as it first stood (p. 645):--

... "I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that
it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely
published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament, or
their sitting to consider freely of the Government; whom it behoves
to have all things represented to them that may direct their
judgment therein: and I never read of any state, scarce of any
tyrant, grown so incurable as to refuse counsel from any in a time
of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute
determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude
they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak
freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former
edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were
suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took
the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to
enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for
a Perpetual Senate. The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as
follows."

Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late
Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh
text. He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly
would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the
fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it
was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service
as a new argument against the recall of Charles. The first of the
following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest
is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:--

"What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the
good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought
persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse
principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and
Spani