ding the nicety of the
times. All the king's furniture was put to sale: his pictures, disposed
of at very low prices, enriched all the collections in Europe: the
cartoons, when complete, were only appraised at three hundred pounds,
though the whole collection of the king's curiosities was sold at above
fifty thousand,[***]

* Neale's History of the Puritans, vol. iv. p. 123.

** Page 639.

*** Parl. Hist. vol. xix. p. 83.

Even the royal palaces were pulled in pieces, and the materials of them
sold. The very library and medals at St. James's were intended by the
generals to be brought to auction, in order to pay the arrears of some
regiments of cavalry quartered near London; but, Seiden, apprehensive
of the loss, engaged his friend Whitlocke, then lord-keeper for the
commonwealth, to apply for the office of librarian. This expedient saved
that valuable collection.

It is, however, remarkable, that the greatest genius by far that
shone out in England during this period, was deeply engaged with these
fanatics, and even prostituted his pen in theological controversy, in
factious disputes, and in justifying the most violent measures of the
party. This was John Milton, whose poems are admirable, though liable to
some objections; his prose writings disagreeable, though not altogether
defective in genius. Nor are all his poems equal: his Paradise Lost,
his Comus, and a few others, shine out amidst some flat and insipid
compositions. Even in the Paradise Lost, his capital performance, there
are very long passages, amounting to near a third of the work,
almost wholly destitute of harmony and elegance, nay, of all vigor
of imagination. This natural inequality in Milton's genius was much
increased by the inequalities in his subject; of which some parts are of
themselves the most lofty that can enter into human conception; others
would have required the most labored elegance of composition to support
them. It is certain that this author, when in a happy mood, and employed
on a noble subject, is the most wonderfully sublime of any poet in any
language, Homer, and Lucretius, and Tasso not excepted. More concise
than Homer, more simple than Tasso, more nervous than Lucretius, had he
lived in a later age, and learned to polish some rudeness in his verses;
had he enjoyed better fortune, and possessed leisure to watch
the returns of genius in himself; he had attained the pinnacle of
perfection, and borne away the pal