Dr. Wordsworth has distinguished himself as an author by a very useful republication, entitled, "Ecclesiastical Biography," which he has enriched with valuable notes. And in his own person, besides other works more professional, he is the author of one very interesting work of historical research upon the difficult question of "Who wrote the 'Eicon Basilike'?" a question still unsettled, but much nearer to a settlement, in consequence of the strong presumptions which Dr. Wordsworth has adduced on behalf of the King's claim.[106] [106] "_Eicon Basilike_":--By the way, in the lamented Eliot Warburton's "Prince Rupert," this book, by a very excusable mistake, is always cited as the "Eicon Basili_con_": he was thinking of the "Doron Basilicon," written by Charles's father: each of the nouns _Eicon_ and _Doron_, having the same terminal syllable--_on_--it was most excusable to forget that the first belonged to an imparisyllabic declension, so as to be feminine, the second not so; which made it neuter. With respect to the great standing question as to the authorship of the work, I have myself always held that the natural freedom of judgment in this case has been intercepted by one strong prepossession (entirely false) from the very beginning. The minds of all people have been pre-occupied with the notion that Dr. Gauden, the reputed author, obtained his bishopric confessedly on the credit of that service. Lord Clarendon, it is said, who hated the Doctor, nevertheless gave him a bishopric, on the sole ground of his having written the "Eicon." The inference therefore is that the Prime Minister, who gave so reluctantly, must have given under an irresistible weight of proof that the Doctor really had done the work for which so unwillingly he paid him. Any shade of doubt, such as could have justified Lord Clarendon in suspending this gift, would have been eagerly snatched at. Such a shade, therefore, there was not. Meantime the whole of this reasoning rests upon a false assumption: Dr. Gauden did _not_ owe his bishopric to a belief (true or false) that he had written the "Eicon." The bishopric was given on another account: consequently it cannot, in any way of using the fact, at all affect the presumptions, small or great, which may exist separately for or against the Doctor's claim on that head.--[So far De Quincey; but let not the reader trust to him too much in this matter. The evidence is overwhelming that Clarendon gave Gauden his bishopric after the Restoration because he believed Gauden to have been the author of the _Eikon Basilike_ and dared not face Gauden's threats of revelations on the subject if promotion were refused him; and the evidence is conclusive, all Dr. Wordsworth's arguments notwithstanding, that Gauden _was_ the real author of the book.--M.]