That such "a smart thing," as Wood calls it, should have appeared in the middle of Cromwell's Protectorate, and that, its anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the author should have been Milton's younger nephew, who had been brought up from his very childhood under his uncle's roof, and educated wholly and solely by his uncle's own care. It would add to the surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton's house; and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late, got quite beyond his uncle's control, and had taken to courses of his own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had forsworn his uncle's politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease with him.[1] [Footnote 1: _A Satyr against Hypocrites_, 1655 (Thomason copy for date of publication); Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_, 49-51; Wood's Ath. IV. 764.--The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ is ascribed in some book-catalogues to Edward Phillips; nay, I have found it ascribed, by a singular absurdity, to Milton himself. That it passed at the time as Edward Phillips's seems proved by the entry of it in the Stationers' Registers under date March 14, 1654-5: "_A Satyr against Hypocrites by Edward Phillips, Gent_," the publisher's name being given as "Nathaniel Brooke." I cannot explain this; but John Phillips was certainly the author. Wood alone would be good authority; but it appears from one of Bliss's notes to Wood that the piece was afterwards claimed by John Phillips, and in Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, published in 1675, the piece is ascribed by name to his brother John, in evidence of his "vein of burlesque and facetious poetry" (Godwin, Lives of the Phillipses, p. 158). It was a rather popular piece when first published, and was twice reprinted after the Restoration.]