re. Spenser was
for years his master; in his verse we find every evidence of his "loving
study" of Shakespeare, and his last great poems show clearly how he had
been influenced by Fletcher's _Christ's Victory and Triumph_. But it is
significant that this first ode rises higher than anything of the kind
produced in the famous Age of Elizabeth.

While at Cambridge it was the desire of his parents that Milton should take
orders in the Church of England; but the intense love of mental liberty
which stamped the Puritan was too strong within him, and he refused to
consider the "oath of servitude," as he called it, which would mark his
ordination. Throughout his life Milton, though profoundly religious, held
aloof from the strife of sects. In belief, he belonged to the extreme
Puritans, called Separatists, Independents, Congregationalists, of which
our Pilgrim Fathers are the great examples; but he refused to be bound by
any creed or church discipline:

As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.

In this last line of one of his sonnets[164] is found Milton's rejection of
every form of outward religious authority in face of the supreme Puritan
principle, the liberty of the individual soul before God.

A long period of retirement followed Milton's withdrawal from the
university in 1632. At his father's country home in Horton he gave himself
up for six years to solitary reading and study, roaming over the wide
fields of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Italian, and English
literatures, and studying hard at mathematics, science, theology, and
music,--a curious combination. To his love of music we owe the melody of
all his poetry, and we note it in the rhythm and balance which make even
his mighty prose arguments harmonious. In "Lycidas," "L'Allegro," "Il
Penseroso," "Arcades," "Comus," and a few "Sonnets," we have the poetic
results of this retirement at Horton,--few, indeed, but the most perfect of
their kind that our literature has recorded.

Out of solitude, where his talent was perfected, Milton entered the busy
world where his character was to be proved to the utmost. From Horton he
traveled abroad, through France, Switzerland, and Italy, everywhere
received with admiration for his learning and courtesy, winning the
friendship of the exiled Dutch scholar Grotius, in Paris, and of Galileo in
his sad imprisonment in Florence.[165] He was on his way to Greece when
news reached him of the break between king and parliame