nd the talk of the gossips, have a considerable
resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer." This last remark
Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer
natural humour, with no ulterior end, the _The Satyr against
Hypocrites_ "is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion,
upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis
under the name of Religion." In other words, it is in a vein of
anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that
of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and
the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency
in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a
specimen:--

"Oh, what will men not dare, if thus they dare
Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer,
Play with that fear, with that religious awe,
Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law!
What can they but the worst of Atheists be
Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety,
Affront the throne of God with their false deeds?
Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds.
Are these the men that would the age reform,
That _Down with Superstition_ cry, and swarm
This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface,
But worship pride and avarice in their place?
_Religion_ they bawl out, yet know not what
Religion is, unless it be to prate!"

That such "a smart thing," as Wood calls it, should have appeared in
the middle of Cromwell's Protectorate, and that, its
anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism
rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable
circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the
author should have been Milton's younger nephew, who had been brought
up from his very childhood under his uncle's roof, and educated
wholly and solely by his uncle's own care. It would add to the
surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton's house;
and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like
evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late,
got quite beyond his uncle's control, and had taken to courses of his
own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had
forsworn his uncle's politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease
with him.[1]

[Footnote 1: _A Satyr against Hypocrites_, 1655 (Thomason copy
for date of publication); Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_,
49-51; Wood's Ath. IV. 7