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"The Farewell Address itself, while in one respect the question of its authorship it has had the fate of the Eikon Basilike, in another it has been more fortunate; for no Iconoclasts has appeared, or ever can appear, to break or mar the image and superscription of Washington, which it bears, or to sully the principles of the moral and political action in the government of a nation, which are reflected from it with his entire approval, and were, in fundamental points, dictated by himself."
The rise and prosperity of the believers in the Zen dogmas, which in their early history used sparingly the eikon, idol and sutra, give some indication of protest against too much use of externals in religion. May we call them the Quakers of Japanese Buddhism? Certainly, theirs was a movement in the direction of simplicity.
It was claimed that Milton was guilty of an infamous imposture in robbing Charles I. of the sad glory of being the author of the "Eikon Basilika," a book long dear to the royalists, and which Charles I., it was said, had composed in his prison to serve as consolation for his deplorable adversity.
He then lived in retirement abroad, made a translation into Latin of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" which his servants negligently used, after his death, as waste paper, and of the "Eikon Basilike" which was published in 1649. After the Restoration, Dr. Earle was made Dean of Westminster; then, in 1662, Bishop of Worcester.
We knew why Beatrix had been so dutiful on a sudden, and why she spoke of "Eikon Basilike." She writ this letter to put the Prince on the scent, and the porter out of the way. "We have a fine moonlight night for riding on," says Esmond; "Frank, we may reach Castlewood in time yet."
In the first the picture of Charles I., as painted in the Eikon Basilike, was unmercifully torn to pieces. Charles's religion, Milton declares, had been all hypocrisy. He had resorted to "ignoble shifts to seem holy, and to get a saintship among the ignorant and wretched people." The prayer he had given as a relic to the bishop at his execution had been stolen from Sidney's Arcadia.
But in spite of Milton, the Eikon Basilike sold rapidly, and contributed greatly to the reaction; and the Secretary of the Council of State had just reason to complain of the perverseness of his generation, "who, having first cried to God to be delivered from their king, now murmur against God for having heard their prayer, and cry as loud for their king against those that delivered them."
This was the "Eikon Basilike, or Royal Image," professing to be a series of meditations drawn up by the late king, on the leading events from the very beginning of the national troubles.
Better to believe that Dietrich committed once in his life, a fearful crime, than that good Boethius' famous book is such another as the Eikon Basilike. Boethius, again, says that the Gothic courtiers hated him, and suborned branded scoundrels to swear away his life and that of the senate, because he had opposed 'the hounds of the palace, Amigast, Trigulla, and other greedy barbarians.
In Milton's day it was otherwise; the widest circle of readers could only be reached through Latin. For this reason, when Charles II. wanted a public vindication of his father's memory, it was indispensable that it should be composed in that language. The Eikon was accordingly turned into Latin, by one of the royal chaplains, Earle, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.
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