would have passed for broad, though his latitudinarianism was more the
result of love of ease than of philosophy. Though a royalist he sat in
the Westminster Assembly, and took the covenant, for which compliance
he nearly lost the reward which, after the Restoration, became his
due. Like the university-bred men of his day, Gauden was not a man of
ideas, but of style. In the present instance the idea was supplied
by events. The saint and martyr, the man of sorrows, praying for
his murderers, the King, who renounced an earthly kingdom to gain
a heavenly, and who in return for his benefits received from an
unthankful people a crown of thorns--this was the theme supplied to
the royalist advocate. Poet's imagination had never invented one more
calculated to touch the popular heart. This _imitatio Christi_ to
which every private Christian theoretically aspires, had been realised
by a true prince upon an actual scaffold with a graceful dignity of
demeanour, of which it may be said, that nothing in life became him
like the leaving it.

This moving situation Gauden, no mean stylist, set out in the best
academical language of the period. Frigid and artificial it may read
now, but the passion and pity, which is not in the book, was supplied
by the readers of the time. And men are not dainty as to phrase when
they meet with an expression of their own sentiments. The readers of
_Eikon Basilike_--and forty-seven editions were necessary to supply
the demand of a population of eight millions--attributed to the pages
of the book emotions raised in themselves by the tragic catastrophe.
They never doubted that the meditations were those of the royal
martyr, and held the book, in the words of Sir Edward Nicholas, for
"the most exquisite, pious, and princely piece ever written." The
Parliament thought themselves called upon to put forth a reply. If one
book could cause such a commotion of spirits, another book could allay