And now once more it was a dark void, in which he must grope on, and in which things must happen as they would.
Small comfort at this time can Milton have had from either of his nephews.

Not that they had openly separated themselves from him, or even ceased to be deferential to him and proud of the relationship, but that they had more and more gone into those courses of literary Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious hack-work and balderdash, which he must have noted of late as an increasing and very ominous form of protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism and its belongings.

The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ by his younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality, an Anti-Puritan and Anti-Miltonic production; and, since the censure of that younger nephew by the Council in 1656 for his share in _The Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment_, he had naturally stumbled farther and farther in the same direction.

By the year 1658, I should say, John Phillips had entirely given up his uncle's political principles, and was known among his tavern-comrades as an Anti-Oliverian.

We have no express publications in his name of this date, but he seems to have been scribbling anonymously.