Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it in a grand exhortation.[1] [Footnote 1: As the date of the second edition of Milton's _Ready and Easy Way_ is a matter of real interest, it may be well to note here the evidence on the point furnished by the extracts that have been made.

In the second extract the phrase "_What can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant &c. ?_" seems distinctly to certify that Milton was writing after the 16th of March, when the Parliament of the Secluded Members had dissolved itself.

The first extract, giving the new and enlarged form of the opening paragraph, farther indicates that, while Milton was writing, the country was in the midst of the elections for the new "free and full" Parliament which had been called,--i.e.what is now known as The Convention Parliament.

He thinks that his pamphlet, as modified, "_may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament or their sitting to consider freely of the Government_." Now, the elections went on from the end of March to about the 20th of April, and Milton's words almost imply that he expected them to be pretty well advanced before his second edition was in circulation, so that the effect of that new edition, if it had any, would rather be on the Parliament itself after its meeting on April 25.

The passages referring to Harrington, and which seem to imply that Milton had read the _Censure of the Rota_ on his first edition, would also bring the second edition into the month of April, inasmuch as the _Censure_ was not out till March 30.
Finally, the whole tone of the added passages implies, as we have already said, that Milton was at least a month farther down the stream towards the Restoration than when the first edition appeared, and the fact that in this second edition he utterly cancels and withdraws the small lingering of faith in Monk which he had expressed in his _Notes to Dr.Griffith's Sermon_ seems more particularly to certify that those _Notes_ preceded the new edition of the _Ready and Easy Way_ by a week or more.