them had taken to any profession, or had any other means of
subsistence than private pedagogy, with such work for the booksellers
as could be obtained by their own ability or through their uncle's
interest. The younger, as we know, had made some name for himself by
his _Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio_ of 1652, written in
behalf of his uncle, and under his uncle's superintendence; and it is
probable that both the brothers had in the interval been doing odds
and ends of literary work. There are verses by both among the
commendatory poems prefixed to the first two parts of Henry Lawes's
_Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, or three Voices_, published
in 1653, as a sequel to that previous publication of 1648, entitled
_Choice Psalmes put into musick for three Voices_, which had
contained Milton's own sonnet to Lawes; and in the _Divine
Poems_ of Thomas Washbourne, a Gloucestershire clergyman,
published in 1654, there are "Verses to his friend Thomas Washbourne"
by Edward Phillips. In this latter year, I find, John Phillips must
have been away for some time in Scotland, for in a letter to Thurloe
dated "Wood Street, Compter, 11th April, 1654", the writer--no other
than Milton's interesting friend Andrew Sandelands, now back from
Scotland himself--mentions Phillips as there instead. Sandelands had
not ceased, under the Protectorate, to try to make himself useful to
the Government, and so get restored to his Rectory; and, as nothing
had come of his grand proposal about the woods of Scotland, he had
interested himself in a new business: viz. "the prosecution of that
information concerning the Crown Lands in Scotland which his Highness
and the late Council of State did refer to the Commissioners at
Leith." Assuring Thurloe that he had been diligent in the affair, he
says, "I have employed Mr. John Phillips, Mr. Milton's kinsman, to
solicit the business, both with the Judges at Edinburgh and with the
Commissioners at Leith; who by _his last letter_ promiseth to
give me a very good account very speedily." Whether this means that
Sandelands had himself sent Phillips from London to Scotland on the
business, or only that, knowing Phillips to be already in Scotland,
he had put the business into his hands, in either case one discerns
an attempt on Milton's part to find some public employment, other
than clerkship under himself, for the unsteady Phillips. The attempt,
however, must have failed; for in 1655 Phillips was back in London,