The same passion coerced
by police is but driven underground.
So it came to pass that, in these years, the Protector's Council of
state was much exercised by attempts of the London press to supply the
public, weary of sermons, with some light literature of the class now
(1879) known as facetious. On April 25, 1656, the august body which
had upon its hands the government of three kingdoms and the protection
of the protestant interest militant throughout Europe, could find
nothing better to do than to take into consideration a book entitled
_Sportive Wit, or The Muse's Merriment_. Sad to relate, the book
was found to contain "much lascivious and profane matter." And the
editor?--no other than John Phillips, Milton's youngest nephew! It is
as if nature, in reasserting herself, had made deliberate selection of
its agent. The pure poet of _Comus_, the man who had publicly boasted
his chastity, had trained up a pupil to become the editor of an
immodest drollery! Another and more original production of John
Phillips, the _Satyr against Hypocrites_, was an open attack, with
mixed banter and serious indignation, on the established religion.
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