Milton, with characteristic ardour and eloquence, plunged into this warfare, and published no less than five treatises on the subject, advocating ecclesiastical reform, condemning prelatical Episcopacy, reasoning against its government, animadverting on the "Defence," and apologizing for Smectymnus. The poet's genius, and his mastery of English prose, are conspicuous in these pamphlets; but the ferocity of temper with which he here uses his scalping-knife is hardly less than what it was in his onslaught upon Salmasius. Andrewes and Ussher are treated as dunces by the imperious scholar, and Lucifer is called the "first prelate angel," by this violent Nonconformist. Yet, behind his bitterest invectives,--with which mercenary feeling or personal grudge had nothing to do--may be seen a virtuous indignation against superstition, formality, and despotism; and it is in the very midst of this stormy assault, that he pauses to speak of that more congenial work--the great poem which even then floated before his imagination--which was "not to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her syren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases." [Illustration.] CHAPTER V. The May-day of 1641 was as merry as usual, save where Puritan opinions interfered with its time-honoured festivities. The May-pole was brought into the City and reared at St. Andrew's Undershaft with the accustomed honours. The morris-dancers, with Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and the other appurtenances of the show, made sport for those citizens who were attached to the old order of things. And in spite of Stubbs' "Anatomie of Abuses," which exposed these sports as heathenish practices, such persons looked on them as the symbols of an anti-Puritan loyalty, and of an old-fashioned affection for Church and State. At the same period, preparations were being made at Whitehall for the nuptials of the Princess Mary and the Prince of Orange; and the next day, being Sunday, the bride was led into the Chapel by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, "convoyed with a number of ladies of her own age of nine and ten years, all in cloth of silver," when the King gave away the bride, and "good Bishop Wren made the marriage."[168] The destinies of England were mysteriously connected with the consequences of this royal union, and little could the brilliant party before the altar, dream that from the wedded pair would spring a son, destined to cut off one branch of the Stuart dynasty for ever from the British throne; to complete the series of revolutionary events beginning to arise at the time of the marriage; and to establish for ages the civil and religious liberties of the English Constitution. [Sidenote: 1641, May.]