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.
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