t this
critical moment, and co-operating with the strong reaction of the
public mind, already effected in the king's favor by his violent
death, this book produced an impression absolutely unparalleled in any
age. Fifty thousand copies, it is asserted, were sold within one year;
and a posthumous power was thus given to the king's name by one
little book, which exceeded, in alarm to his enemies, all that his
armies could accomplish in his lifetime. No remedy could meet the evil
in degree. As the only one that seemed fitted to it in kind, Milton
drew up a running commentary upon each separate head of the original;
and as that had been entitled the king's image, he gave to his own the
title of "Eikonoclastes, or Image-breaker," "the famous surname of
many Greek emperors, who broke all superstitious images in pieces."

This work was drawn up with the usual polemic ability of Milton; but
by its very plan and purpose it threw upon him difficulties which no
ability could meet. It had that inevitable disadvantage which belongs
to all ministerial and secondary works: the order and choice of topics
being all determined by the "Eikon," Milton, for the first time, wore
an air of constraint and servility, following a leader and obeying his
motions, as an engraver is controlled by the designer, or a translator
by the original. It is plain, from the pains he took to exonerate
himself from such a reproach, that he felt his task to be an invidious
one. The majesty of grief, expressing itself with Christian meekness,
and appealing as it were, from the grave to the consciences of men,
could not be violated without a recoil of angry feeling, ruinous to
the effect of any logic or rhetoric the most persuasive. The
affliction of a great prince, his solitude, his rigorous imprisonment,
his constancy to some purposes which were not selfish, his dignity of
demeanor in the midst of his heavy trials, and his truly Christian
fortitude in his final sufferings--these formed a rhetoric which made
its way to all hearts. Against such influences the eloquence of Greece
would have been vain. The nation was spellbound; and a majority of its
population neither could nor would be disenchanted.

Milton was ere long called to plead the same great cause of liberty
upon an ampler stage, and before a more equitable audience; to plead
not on behalf of his party against the Presbyterians and Royalists,
but on behalf of his country against the insults of a hired Fr