Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/101

 JOHN MILTON 63 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 " Eikono- clastes, 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," Mil- ton, 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 trans- lator 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 con- stancy 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 influ- ences the eloquence of Greece would have been vain. The nation was spell- bound ; 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 Frenchman, and at the bar of the whole Christian world. Charles II. had resolved to state his father's case to all Europe. This was natural, for very few people on the continent knew what cause had brought his father to the block, or why he himself was a vagrant exile from his throne. For his advocate he selected Claudius Salmasius, and that was most injudicious. Salmasius betrayed in his work entire ignorance of everything, whether histori- cal or constitutional, which belonged to the case. Having such an antagonist, inferior to him in all possible qualifications, whether of nature, of art, of situation, it may be supposed that Milton's triumph was absolute. He was now thoroughly indemnified for the poor success of his " Eikonoclastes." In that instance he had the mortification of knowing that all England read and wept over the king's book, while his own reply was scarcely heard of. But here the tables were turned ; the very friends of Salmasius com- plained that while his defence was rarely inquired after, the answer to it, " De- fensio pro Populo Anglicano," was the subject of conversation from one end of Europe to the other. It was burned publicly at Paris and Toulouse ; and, by way of special annoyance to Salmasius, who lived in Holland, was translated into Dutch.