See how from far upon the Eastern road,
      The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet;
    O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
      And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
      Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
    And join thy voice unto the angel choir,
    From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.

Some years of travel on the Continent matured his mind, and gave full scope to his poetic genius.  At Paris he became acquainted with Grotius, the illustrious writer upon public law; and in Rome, Genoa, Florence, and other Italian cities, he became intimate with the leading minds of the age.  He returned to England on account of the political troubles.

MILTON’S VIEWS OF MARRIAGE.—­In the consideration of Milton’s personality, we do not find in him much to arouse our heart-sympathy.  His opinions concerning marriage and divorce, as set forth in several of his prose writings, would, if generally adopted, destroy the sacred character of divinely appointed wedlock.  His views may be found in his essay on The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; in his Tetrachordon, or the four chief places in Scripture, which treat of Marriage, or Nullities in Marriage; in his Colasterion, and in his translation of Martin Bucer’s Judgment Concerning Divorce, addressed to the Parliament of England.  Where women were concerned he was a hard man and a stern master.

In 1643 he married Mary Powell, the daughter of a Cavalier; and, taking her from the gay life of her father’s house, he brought her into a gloom and seclusion almost insupportable.  He loved his books better than he did his wife.  He fed and sheltered her, indeed, but he gave her no tender sympathy.  Then was enacted in his household the drama of the rebellion in miniature; and no doubt his domestic troubles had led to his extended discussion of the question of divorce.  He speaks, too, almost entirely in the interest of husbands.  With him woman is not complementary to man, but his inferior, to be cherished if obedient, to minister to her husband’s welfare, but to have her resolute spirit broken after the manner of Petruchio, the shrew-tamer.  In all this, however, Milton was eminently a type of the times.  It was the canon law of the established Church of England at which he aimed, and he endeavored to lead the parliament to legislation upon the most sacred ties and relations of human life.  Happily, English morals were too strong, even in that turbulent period, to yield to this unholy attempt.  It was a day when authority was questioned, a day for “extending the area of freedom,” but he went too far even for emancipated England; and the mysterious power of the marriage tie has always been reverenced as one of the main bulwarks of that righteousness which exalteth a nation.

His apology for Smectymnuus is one of his pamphlets against Episcopacy, and receives its title from the initial letters of the names of five Puritan ministers, who also engaged in controversy:  they were Stephen Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcome, William Spenston.  The Church of England never had a more intelligent and relentless enemy than John Milton.