Phineas did this in his vast allegorical poem, "The Purple Island" (1633) (the human body). His stanzas are of seven lines, the first four rhyming alternately, the last three have all the same rhyme. Both poets imitate Spenser with a difference in stanza, and a notable difference in genius; both have musical passages, and both anticipate Milton in their choice of sacred subjects. Quarles saluted Phineas as "The Spenser of this age". Phineas is the more musical, but also by far the more lengthy of these Kentish swains. His "Piscatory Eclogues" follow Spenser's pastorals. They are of a moral tendency and would not have interested Izaak Walton. The fisher (in salt water there are no anglers), is born "To sweat, to freeze, to watch, to fast, to toil". Phineas attacks the indolent clergy, as Milton did.
They are
a crew of idle grooms,
Idle and bold that never saw the seas.
It is probable that Milton, as a Cambridge man, and a man with views like those of Phineas, was well acquainted with the poems of both the Fletchers, which are in fact the sunken stepping-stone from Spenser to Milton.
The puritanism of Phineas's long poem, "The Locusts or Apollyonists" (1627) preludes to the civil war. The poet will tell
Of priests, O no! Mass-priests, priests cannibal,
and
Thou purple whore, mounted on scarlet beast,
namely the Church of Rome. Satan says,
Meantime I burn, I broil, I burst with spite,