second edition of it appeared in the following year; that in 1652 it was again published in London by Du Gard in a French translation; and that it received two answers, one with the title of 'Eixar anλaolos (Icon aclastos, or the Image unbroken) in 1651; and the other, called Vindicia Carolinæ, in 1692.

Though it was more consistent with Milful of decorum as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the King might be less conversant, but one, whom we well know was the closet companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare; who introduces the person of Richard III speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage of this book; and sometimes to the same sense and purpose with some words in this place: "I intended," saith he (the King) "not only to oblige my friends but my enemies:" the like saith Richard (act ii, scene 1.) "I do not know that Englishman alive

With whom my soul is any jot at odds
More than the infant that is born to-night-
I thank my God for my humility."

Mr. Waldron, in his republication of Downes's Roscius Anglicanus," has preceded me, as I am told, (for I have not read Mr. Waldron's work,) in the detection of this false arraignment of Milton by the late Poet Laureat, a circumstance of which I was not aware when I first printed my note. But this repeated refutation of the injurious falsehood has not prevented its revival, (with the aggravation of making Milton contemptuously call Shakespeare a player,) by Mr. Walter Scott in his newly published Life of Dryden."* Are we hence to conclude that this slander of Milton is to be employed, as a common place, by every writer who may be attached to the despicable Stuarts, and who can force it into his page?

* See Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 18.

ton's object to direct his reply immediately against the King and consequently to consider the Icon Basilikè as the production of the royal pen, he could not altogether refrain from intimating his suspicions of its authenticity. "But as to the author of these soliloquies," (he observes,)" whether it were undoubtedly the late King, as is vulgarly believed, or any secret coadjutor, and some stick not to name him, it can add nothing to nor shall take from the weight, if any be, of reason which he brings.""" But the mat ter here considerable is not whether the King, or his household rhetorician, have made a pithy declamation against tumults, but first whether there were tumults or not," &c. To these suspicions Milton was obviously led by the internal evidence of the work, which seemed strongly tainted with the pedantry of the gown and discovered in its style a more scholastic and artificial form than was likely to be the result of the education and the habits of a prince.

On a passage in this production, in which is introduced the word, demagogue, at that time not common in our language, our author remarks, "Setting aside the affrightment of

"P. W. ii. 421.

> Ibid. 398.

this goblin-word; for the King, by his leave, cannot coin English, as he could money, to be current: and it is believed this wording was above his known style and orthography, and accuses the whole composure to be conscious of some other author."

66

"These petty glosses and conceits," says the Iconoclastes in another place, on the high and secret judgments of God, besides the boldness of unwarrantable commenting, are so weak and shallow and so like the quibbles of a court sermon, that we may safely reckon them either fetched from such a pattern, or that the hand of some household priest foisted them in.":

These feelings of doubt respecting the author of the Icon were not wholly confined to Milton for the same internal evidence of forgery which in this instance had influenced his judgment, was sufficiently strong to influence the conviction of others. In an able work, published, soon after the Iconoclastes, in 1649, with the title of " 'Ev aλnow," (Icon alethine) or the true Image, the charge of spuriousness is brought and urged with great power against the Icon; which is ascribed by this anonymous writer, who exhibits much of

P. W. ii. 427.

z Ibid. 452.

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Milton's spirit, to a doctor of the Church of England, seeking, by an enterprize so meritorious with his party as this serviceable fraud, to force his way on a fortunate change of things to some of the rich preferments of his church. To this work is prefixed a frontispiece, in which, on a curtain's being drawn aside by a hand issuing from the roof, is discovered a dignitary of the English Church in his full canonical dress: and beneath are inscribed the following lines, which, in their close connexion with my subject, have sufficient merit to justify me for inserting them.

The curtain's drawn: all may perceive the plot,
And him, who truly the black babe begot.
Whose sable mantle makes me bold to say,
A Phaeton Sol's chariot ruled that day.
Presumptuous Priest! to skip into the throne;
And make the King his bastard issue own!
The author therefore hath conceived it meet,
The doctor should do penance in this sheet.a

But neither the charge of forgery against the King's book, as it was then called, thus

This work, (which was printed in London by Thomas Paine in 1649) was answered the same year, by a very inferior writer in a pamphlet entitled "'Em," or "the faithful Image," and these productions may be regarded as the precur sors of that long and violent controversy, which, after some interval, ensued on the subject of the authenticity of the Icon.

directly and articulately pronounced; nor the suspicions of imposition, which were clearly expressed in the Iconoclastes, found any echo in the general mind; and the Icon, continuing to make proselytes to the cause of its reputed author, retained the idolatrous regard of a numerous party, whose prejudices it flattered and to whose interests it was essentially subservient. The first shock to the public conviction, respecting its genuineness, was occasioned by the discovery on a blank page of one of these books, when offered for sale by auction with the library of the first earl of Anglesey, of a memorandum,” in that nobleman's own hand-writing, attesting the formal disavowal of the Icon as a work of their father's by Charles II and the duke of York.

b The memorandum is as follows:- King Charles the Second and the duke of York did both (in the last session of parliament, 1675, when 1 showed them, in the lords house, the written copy of this book, wherein are some corrections and alterations written with the late King Charles the First's own hand,) assure me that this was none of the said King's compiling, but made by Dr. Gauden, bishop of Exeter: which I here insert for the undeceiving of others in this point, by attesting so much under my own hand. ANGLESEY."

The sale in question was in the year 1686, by the celebrated auctioneer, Millington, who accidentally saw the memorandum as he was turning over the pages of the book during the slow bidding of the auction.

Z