PREFACE TO VOLUME VI.

Ir is naturally with some satisfaction that I complete at last a work begun so long ago. It is a satisfaction also, to myself at least, to have been able to persevere to the very end in the original plan, omitting nothing, slurring nothing, that the plan required. In the present volume, for example, I have done my best towards the conjunction of a sufficient History of the Restoration and its Consequences with the concluding Fourteen Years of Milton's Biography.

It is unnecessary, I hope, to repeat my assurance that the historical portions of the six volumes, even those that are most summary in appearance, are no mere compilations from any existing history, or from all existing histories together, but are the results of original and independent survey and inquiry, according to gradually formed notions of what English History ought to be and to include, with very deep digging, and much use of the pickaxe, in many tracts and spots of previously neglected ground. What may be more necessary is the repetition of an acknowledgment made, more than eight years ago, in the Preface to Volume II.. "I never can pass a sheet of the historical kind for the press," I then wrote, "without a dread lest, from inadvertence or from sheer ignorance, some error, some blunder even, may have escaped me." No sincere historical inquirer but will understand this confession and sympathise with it; but I would repeat it now expressly with reference to the entire work. The errors of fact that have yet been pointed out in the previous volumes are few and slight; but I am aware of some that have not been pointed out. The gradual

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execution of the work and the publication of it in successive
instalments have occasioned also some flaws of mechanical
form, which revision might amend. As it stands, I can but
offer it as, on the whole, a faithful fulfilment of a large
design, and trust that it may not be without its uses in
its professed character, as combining a more thorough and
minute Life of Milton than had before been attempted
with a new Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of
Milton's whole Time.

Though the dimensions of the book are somewhat unusual

they are even moderate for such a combination of the

Biography of Milton with a History of England, and of the

connexions of England with Scotland and Ireland, and with

foreign countries, through the Civil Wars, the Common-

wealth, the Protectorates of Oliver and Richard, the Anarchy,

and the first fourteen years of the Restoration. A copious

Index is needed and is in preparation; and meanwhile there

may be some convenience in the Tables of Contents prefixed

to the several volumes and in the studied fulness of those for

Volumes IV, V, and VI.

EDINBURGH: December, 1879.