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Thou hadst need to walk warily! 'Zion's Plea against Prelacy, damnation! 'Speech of Mr. Hampden, death and hell! 'Eikonoklastes, may the foul fiend fly away with my soul!" And the Governor closed the cupboard door with a bang, and, with a very red and frowning face, went back to his seat, and there sank into a reverie, which lasted until the entrance of Mistress Betty and Mr.
We may say, and doubtless it is so, that Hawthorne could never have written such magnificent pamphlets as the "Eikonoklastes," the "Apology," the "Tetrachordon": I grant that his refinement, though bringing him something which Milton did not have, has cost him something else which Milton possessed.
Selden, the most learned man, not only of his party, but of Englishmen, was first thought of, but the task was finally assigned to the Latin Secretary. Milton's ready pen completed the answer, Eikonoklastes, a quarto of 242 pages, before October, 1649. It is, like all answers, worthless as a book.
But his chief distinction is to have been marked out for revenge in company with Milton by the miserable Restoration Parliament. Milton's Eikonoklastes and Defensio Populi Anglicani rank, of course, among the masterpieces of English prose, and ought to be read, where they never will be, in every Board and public school of England.
Again of "Eikonoklastes" we are told that "it is like all answers, worthless as a book." Bentley's "Phalaris" is an answer, Demosthenes' "De Corona" is an answer.
He pleaded his authorship, however, as a claim to preferment at the Restoration, when the church spoils came to be partitioned among the conquerors, and he received the bishopric of Exeter. By ceaseless importunity the author of the Eikon Basilike obtained afterwards the see of Worcester, while the portion of the author of Eikonoklastes was poverty, infamy, and calumny.
It is surprising that this plagiarism from so well-known a book as the Arcadia should not have opened Milton's eyes to the unauthentic character of the Eikon. He alludes, indeed, to a suspicion which was abroad that one of the royal chaplains was a secret coadjutor. But he knew nothing of Gauden at the time of writing the Eikonoklastes, and probably he never came to know anything.
Eikonoklastes, the Image-breaker, takes the Image, Eikon, paragraph by paragraph, turning it round, and asserting the negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality.
"Eikonoklastes" was thought, though it was not exact science, and so far as it told it was action, though it was not a pike or a musket. This portion of Mr. Pattison's work is thickly sown with aphorisms to which no one who does not share his special mood can without qualification assent.
"It doth concern me much, Major Carrington, both as a true man, and as the Governor of this Colony, the representative of his blessed Majesty, King Charles the Second, may all whose enemies, private and open, be confounded! that a gentleman who holds a high office in this Colony should have in his possession ay! and read, too, for 'tis a well-thumbed copy that foul emanation from a fouler mind, that malicious, outrageous, damnable, proscribed book, called 'Eikonoklastes!"
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