, with a selection of other
prose-writings of his, chiefly of a political kind; and the volume
did appear immediately, as a handsome small folio, bearing date 1655,
and "printed by Henry Hills for Rich. Tomlins and himself." As Henry
Hills was one of the printers to his Highness and the Council, the
appearance from his press of a volume so full of conservative
doctrine, inculcating so strongly the duty of submission to kingly
prerogative and to constituted authority, may not be without
significance. Another interesting circumstance about it is that it
had appeared under the charge of a London editor, "Mr. Hall of Gray's
Inn,"--i.e., unless I am mistaken, that Mr. John Hall whom we saw
brought in, at L100 a year, to do pieces of literary hackwork for the
Council under Milton as long ago as May 1649, and who had been in
some such employment for the Council, at least occasionally, ever
since (ante p. 177). Accidental or not, the fact that the editor of
Drummond's Prose Writings, selected by Scotstarvet or by the printer
Hills, should have been a servant of the Council of State, and a kind
of underling of Milton in that capacity, is at least curious. But it
becomes more curious when taken in connexion, with the fact that the
editor of the companion volume, containing the first professedly
complete edition of Drummond's Poems, was Milton's elder nephew. This
volume, though announced by Mr. Hall in his Introduction to the
Prose Volume, did not appear till about a year afterwards, and then
as an octavo of 224 pages, with this title, _"Poems by that most
famous Wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden ... London, Printed for
Rickard Tomlins, at the Sun and Bible, neare Pye-Corner,_ 1656."
The volume is dedicated to Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, and includes
about sixty small pieces of Drummond never before published, which
Sir John had supplied from the Hawthornden MSS. Apart from revision
of the proofs, Phillips's editorship consisted in a prose preface,
signed "E.P.," and a set of commendatory verses, signed in full
"Edward Phillips."

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, March 9 and March 19, 1654-5.]

Drummond's Poetry had long been known to Milton in the fragmentary
state in which alone it had been till then accessible, i.e. in the
successive instalments of it published by Drummond himself in
Edinburgh between 1613 and 1638. There might be proof also that
Drummond was one of Milton's favourites, and regarded by him as one
of t