That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by their own infatuation, "under the tyranny of Sulla." Now, though we have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of Cromwell's Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so panegyrized while living.

Fortunately, we are spared the shock.

Monk, not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the metonymy _Sulla_.

He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the other day, containing that specific suggestion of a PERPETUAL NATIONAL COUNCIL in the centre and CITY COUNCILS in all the counties which he developes more at large in his pamphlet.

Perhaps he is thinking also of the more recent remonstrance, called _Plain English_, addressed by some London Republicans, of whom he may have been one, to Monk and his Officers.