[Footnote 1:  The Rota Club, as we already know (ante p. 555), can have had no meeting on the day supposed in the burlesque, having disappeared, with all its appurtenances, ballot-box included, at or immediately after the swamping of the old Rump by the readmission of the secluded members.  The last glimpses we have of it are these from Pepys’s Diary:—­Jan. 10, 1659-60.  “To the Coffee-house, where were a great confluence of gentlemen:  viz.  Mr. Harrington, Poulteney (chairman), Gold, Dr. Petty, &c.; where admirable discourse till 9 at night.”—­Jan. 17.  “I went to the Coffee Club, and heard very good discourse.  It was in answer to Mr. Harrington’s answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government, and so it was no wonder that the balance of property was in one hand and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war; but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government, though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it was an unsteady government:  so to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another.”—­Feb. 20 (day before Restitution of the Secluded).  “I to the Coffee-house, where I heard Mr, Harrington and my Lord Dorset and another Lord talking of getting another place [for the Club meetings] at the Cockpit, and they did believe it would come to something.”  Had there been an express order for closing the Club?]

Mr. Harrington is supposed to begin by expressing his regret to Mr. Milton that his duty obliges him to make so unsatisfactory a report as to the reception of Mr. Milton’s last pamphlet by the Club.  “For, whereas it is our usual custom to dispute everything, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at one another with our heads (as rams fight) till we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the Box, and seldom anything, how slight soever, hath appeared without some person or other to defend it, I must confess I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did against you when anything was put to the question from the beginning of your book to the end.”  First, one gentleman had objected to the very name of the book, The Ready and Easy Way, &c., and had remarked that Mr. Milton was generally unlucky in his titles to his pamphlets, most of them having been absurd or fantastic.  A second gentleman had been even more impolite.  “He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of chandlers and tobaccomen, who are your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours.  He said that he himself reprieved the whole Defence of the People of England for a groat,... though it cost you much oil and labour