[Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating of Sonnets 1, 3, and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself) will be found in the Introductions to those Sonnets in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12 of No. 2 I have substituted the word "talks" for the word "rings," now always printed in that place. "Of which all Europe rings from side to side," is the reading in the copy of the Sonnet as first printed by Phillips in 1694 at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy is corrupt in several places. The original dictated draft of the Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is to be taken as the true text; and there the word is "talks." Phillips had doubtless the echo of "rings" in his ear from the Sonnet to Fairfax. The more sonorous reading, however, has found such general acceptance that an editor hardly dares to revert to "talks."] We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655. Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not, however, into total idleness. "_Scriptum Dom. Protectoris Reipublicæ Anglicæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c., ex Consensa atque Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicæ Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2] Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch, which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been printed in Latin only. [Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.] [Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]