On all grounds Phillips's authority is the best. And yet there are difficulties in his account. According to that account, it was the non- return of Milton's wife at or about Michaelmas (Sept. 29) 1643, and not only her non-return then, but her obstinate and repeated refusal to return after that date, and the insulting conduct of her family to the messenger he finally sent to urge her return, that roused Milton's indignation, put the thought of divorce into his mind, and induced him to write his first Divorce Tract. If so, the tract could hardly have been ready till some weeks after Michaelmas 1643--say, till about Christmas of the same year. There is proof, however (and I do not think it has been observed before), that Milton's first Divorce Tract was already published and in circulation two months _before_ the Michaelmas in question. The proof is not, where we might expect it, in the books of the Stationers' Company; for the Tract, like all Milton's previous pamphlets, was published by him, rather defiantly, without the required legal formalities of licence and registration. But there is a precious copy of it in Thomason's great collection of pamphlets, called "the King's Pamphlets," in the British Museum. The title in that copy is as follows: "_The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Restor'd, to the good of both Sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes, to Christian Freedom, guided by the Rule of Charity; wherein also many places of Scripture have recovered their long-lost meaning: seasonable to be now thought on in the Reformation intended._" Underneath this title there follows on the title-page the quotation "Matth. xiii. 52. Every Scribe instructed to the Kingdome of Heav'n is like the Maister of a house which bringeth out of his treasurie things old and new;" and at the foot of the title-page is the legend "_London, Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley_: 1643." [Footnote: Copy in British Museum Library Press mark, 12. G.F. 17 119.] This printed legend alone would all but determine the publication to have been prior to Christmas 1643; but the question is set at rest by a manuscript note on the title-page, "_Aug. 1st_." The note was put there by, or by the direction of, the collector, Thomason, to indicate the day on which the copy came into his hands, and is to be relied on implicitly. The Tract, it will be observed, was anonymous; but the words "_Written by J. Milton_," penned on the title-page by the same hand that penned the date "_Aug. 1st_," show that the authorship was no secret from the all-prying Thomason. In short, on evidence absolutely conclusive, Milton's first Divorce Tract was in print and on sale in London on the 1st of August, 1643, or two months before Phillips's fatal Michaelmas. [Footnote: This may be the place for a word or two about the collector of those Pamphlets in the British Museum among which I have had so frequently to range for the purposes of