he Tower. Strange that it should have been Lambert after all that
Milton found maintaining last by arms the cause which he was himself
maintaining last by the pen. Lambert was the Republican he least
liked, hardly indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a
desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had
happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as
the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a
small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it in a grand exhortation.[1]

[Footnote 1: As the date of the second edition of Milton's _Ready
and Easy Way_ is a matter of real interest, it may be well to note
here the evidence on the point furnished by the extracts that have
been made. In the second extract the phrase "_What can this last
Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the
Covenant &c.?_" seems distinctly to certify that Milton was
writing after the 16th of March, when the Parliament of the Secluded
Members had dissolved itself. The first extract, giving the new and
enlarged form of the opening paragraph, farther indicates that, while
Milton was writing, the country was in the midst of the elections for
the new "free and full" Parliament which had been called,--i.e. what
is now known as The Convention Parliament. He thinks that his
pamphlet, as modified, "_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_." Now, the elections went on from the end of March to
about the 20th of April, and Milton's words almost imply that he
expected them to be pretty well advanced before his second edition
was in circulation, so that the effect of that new edition, if it had
any, would rather be on the Parliament itself after its meeting on
April 25. The passages referring to Harrington, and which seem to
imply that Milton had read the _Censure of the Rota_ on his
first edition, would also bring the second edition into the month of
April, inasmuch as the _Censure_ was not out till March 30.
Finally, the whole tone of the added passages implies, as we have
already said, that Milton was at least a month farther down the
stream towards the Restoration than when the first edition appeared,
and the fact that in this second edition he utterly cancels and
withdraws the small lingering of faith in Monk which he had expressed
in his _Notes to