be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are to cause the same to be forthwith publicly burnt.—­He further reports that Nathaniel Brookes, Stationer, at the Angel in Cornhill, caused the said book to be printed; that the printers thereof were John Grismond, living in Ivy Lane, and James Cotterill, living in Lambeth Hill; and that JOHN PHILLIPS, of Westminster, was the author of the Epistle Dedicatory. Ordered, That it be referred to Sir John Barkstead, Knight, Lieutenant of the Tower [and Major-General for Westminster and Middlesex], to cause the fines to be levied on the said persons according to law:  [also] that the said persons do attend the Council on Tuesday next.”—­Milton’s younger nephew, therefore, had been the editor of the offending volume.  Of the eleven members of Council present when this fact came out, six were among those friends of Milton whom he had specially mentioned in his Defensio Secunda:  viz.  Fleetwood, Lambert, Lawrence, Pickering, Sydenham, and Strickland.

Saturday, April 26, 1656:—­His Highness the Lord Protector approves of a great many recent Orders of Council presented to him all at once by Mr. Scobell, the Clerk of the Council.  Among them is the order “for burning the book called Sportive Wit.”

Friday, May 9, 1656:—­His Highness the Lord Protector present in person, with Lord President Lawrence, Lambert, Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, and Jones:—­Ordered, &c.  “That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do cause all the books entitled Choice Droliery, Songs and Sonnets (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are required to give order that the same be burnt.”

Copies of the second of the two books thus condemned by Cromwell and his Council have, I believe, survived the burning, The publisher was a John Sweeting, who had duly registered the book on the 9th of February 1655-6, shortly after which date it had appeared with this full title, Choice Drollery, Songs and Sonnets:  being a Collection of Divers Eminent Pieces of Poetry of several Eminent Authors, never before printed.  I have not seen any copy of the other book bearing the precise title Sportive Wit, or the Muses’ Merriment; but there are surviving copies of what may be the same with an alternative title, viz. Wit and Drollery:  Jovial Poems, never before printed, by Sir J.M., Jas. S., Sir W.D., J.D., and other admirable wits.  It had been out in London since.  Jan. 18, 1655-6, had been registered on the 30th of that month, and is a respectably printed little book of 160 pages, with the motto “Ut nectar ingenium” under the title, and with,