a glimpse of him, the same political sentiments he had professed on his first appearance before the world, and still ready to renew his efforts the very moment he could perceive they had a chance of being attended with benefit. Under these circumstances, therefore, however difficult it may be to acquit him altogether of personal considerations, it is still more difficult, and must be altogether unjust, ungenerous, and illogical to suspect his integrity.

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"It has often been said, from the general knowledge he has evinced of English jurisprudence, that he must have studied the law professionally and in one of his private letters already quoted, he gives his personal opinion upon the mode in which the information of the King against Woodfall was drawn up, in a manner that may serve to countenance such an opinion. Yet on other occasions he speaks obviously not from his own knowledge, but from a consultation with legal practitioners: The information,' says he, will only be for a misdemeanour, and I am advised that no jury, and especially in these times, will find it. In like manner, although he affirms in his elaborate letter to Lord Mansfield, I well know the practice of the court, and by what legal rules it ought to be directed; yet he is for ever, contemning the intricacies, and little nesses of special pleading, and in his preface declares unequivocally, I am no lawyer by profession, nor do I pretend to be more deeply read than every English gentleman should be in the laws of his country. If therefore the principles I-maintain are truly constitutional, I shall not think myself answered, though I should be convicted of a mistake in terms, or of misapplying the language of the law.'

"That he was of some rank and consequence seems generally to have been admitted by his opponents, and must indeed necessarily follow, as has been already casually hinted at, from the facility with which he acquired political information, and a knowledge of ministerial intrigues. In one place he expressly affirms that his rank and fortune place him above a common bribe;' in another I should have hoped that even my name might carry some authority with it, if I had not seen how very little weight or consideration a printed paper receives even from the respectable signature of Sir W. Draper. On two occasions he intimates an intention of composing a regular history of the duke of Grafton's administration. These observations,' says he, general as they are, might easily be extended into a faithful history of your grace's administration, and may perhaps be the employment of a future hour;* and in a note subjoined to a subsequent letter, the history of this ridiculous administration shall not be lost to the public.' And on one occasion, and on one occasion only, he appears to hint at some prospect, though a slender one, of taking a part in the government of the country. It occurs in a private letter to Woodfall: I doubt much whether I shall ever have the pleasure of knowing you; but, if things take the turn I expect, you shall know me by my works.'

"Of those who have critically analyzed the style of his compositions, some have pretended to prove that he must necessarily have been of Irish descent or Irish education, from the peculiarity of his idioms; while, to shew how little dependance is to be placed upon any such observations, others have equally pretended to prove, from a similar investigation

vestigation, that he could not have been a native either of Scotland or Ireland, nor have studied in any university of either of those countries The fact is, that there are a few phraseologies in his letters peculiar to himself; such as occur in the compositions of all original writers of great force and genius, but which are neither indicative of any particular race, nor referable to any provincial dialect.

"The distinguishing features of his style are ardour, spirit, perspicuity, classical correctness, sententious, epigrammatic compression: his characteristic ornaments keen, indignant invective, audacious interrogation, shrewd, severe, antithetic retort, proud, presumptuous disdain of the powers of his adversary, pointed and appropriate allusions that can never be mistaken, but are often overcharged, and at times perhaps totally unfounded, similes introduced, not for the purpose of decoration, but of illustration and energy, brilliant, burning, admirably selected, and irresistible in their application. In his similes, however, he is once or twice too recondite, and in his grammatical construction still more frequently incorrect. Yet the latter should in most instances perhaps, if not the whole, be rather attributed to the difficulty of revising the press, and the peculiar circumstances under which his work was printed and published, than to any inaccuracy or classical misconception of his own. As to the surreptitious copies of his letters, he frequently complains of their numerous errors. Indeed,' says he, they are in numerable;' and though the genuine edition labours under very considerably fewer, and on several occasions received his approbation on the score of accuracy, yet it would

be too much to assert that it is altogether free from errors. In truth this was not to be expected, for it is not known that a single proof sheet (excepting those containing the first two letters) was ever sent to him. • You must correct the press yourself,' says he in one of his letters to Woodfall; but I should be glad to see corrected proofs of the two first sheets.' The Dedication and Preface he certainly did not revise.

"Yet if the grammatical construction be occasionally imperfect, (sometimes hurried over by the author, and sometimes mistaken by the printer) the general plan and outline, the train of argument, the bold and fiery images, the spirited invective that pervade the whole, appear to have been always selected with the utmost care and attention. Such finished forms of composition bear in themselves the most evident marks of elaborate forecast and revisal, and the author rather boasted of the pains he had bestowed upon them than attempted to conceal his labour. In recommending to Woodfall to introduce into his purposed edition various letters of his own writing under other signatures, he adds, If you adopt this plan I shall point out those which I would recommend; for you know, I do not, nor have I time to give equal care to them all.-As to Junius I must wait for fresh matter, as this is a character which must be kept up with credit.' The private note accompanying his first letter to Lord Mansfield commences thus, enclosed, though begun within these few days, has been greatly laboured; it is very correctly copied, and I beg that you will take care that it be literally printed as it stands." The note accompanying his last and most celebrated letter observes

The

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as follows: At last I have concluded my great work, and assure you with no small labour.' On sending the additional papers for the genuine edition he asserts, I have no view but to serve you, and consequently have only to desire that the Dedication and Preface may be correct. Look to it ;-if you take it upon yourself, I will not forgive your suffering it to be spoiled. I weigh every word; and every alteration, in my eyes at least, is a blemish. In like manner in his letter to Mr. Horne, he interrogates him, What public question have I declined, what villain have I spared? Is there no labour in the composition of these letters?" In effect no excellence of any kind is to be attained without labour and the degree of excellence that characterises the style of these addresses, intrinsically demonstrates the exercise of a labour unsparing and unremitted. Mr. Horne, in his reply, attempts to ridicule this acknowledgment: I compassionate,' says he, your labour in the composition of your letters, and will communicate to you the secret of my fluency Truth needs no ornament; and, in my opinion, what she borrows of the pencil is deformity.' Yet no man ever bestowed more pains upon his compositions than Mr. Horne has done: nor needed he to have been more ashamed of the' confession than his adversary. To have made it openly would have been honest to himself, useful to the young, and salutary to the conceited.

"His most elaborate letters are that to the King, and that to Lord 'Mansfield upon the law of bailments: one of his most sarcastic is that to the Duke of Grafton, of the date of May 30, 1769; and one

of the best and most truly valuable, that to the printer of the Public Advertiser, dated October 5, 1771, upon the best means of uniting the jarring sectaries of the popular party into one common cause.

"His metaphors are peculiarly brilliant, and so numerous, though seldom unnecessarily introduced, as to render it difficult to know where to fix in selecting a few examples. The following are ably managed, and require no explanation. The ministry, it seems, are labouring to draw a line of distinction between the honour of the crown and the rights of the people. This new idea has yet been only started in discourse, for, in effect, both objects have been equally sacrificed. I neither understand the distinction, nor what use the ministry propose to make of it. The king's honour is that of his people. Their real honour and real interest are the same. I am not contending for a vain punctilio.-Private credit is wealth; public honour is security.-The feather that adorns the royal bird, supports its flight. Strip him of his plumage and you fix him to the earth. Again: Above all things let me guard my countrymen against the meanness and folly of accepting of a trifling or moderate compensation for extraordinary and essential injuries. Concessions, such as these, are of little moment to the sum of things; unless it be to prove, that the worst of men are sensible of the injuries they have done us, and perhaps to demonstrate to ns the imminent danger of our situation. In the shipwreck of the state, trifles float and are preserved; while every thing solid and valuable sinks to the bottom, and is lost for ever. Once more: 'The very sun-shine you live in, is a pre

lude

lude to your dissolution. When you are ripe, you shall be plucked. The commencement of his letter to Lord Camden shall furnish another instance: I turn with pleasure, from that barren waste, in which no salutary plant takes root, no verdure quickens, to a character fertile, as I willingly believe, in every great and good qualification.'

"In a few instances his metaphors are rather too far-fetched or recondite: Yet for the benefit of the succeeding age, I could wish that your retreat might be deferred, until your morals shall be happily ripened to that maturity of corruption, at which the worst examples cease to be contagious.' The change which is perpetually taking place in the matter of infection gives it progressively a point of utmost activity:-after which period, by the operation of the same continued change, it becomes progressively less active, till at length it ceases to possess any effect whatever. The parallel is correctly drawn, but it cannot be followed by every one. In the same letter we have another example: His views and situation required a creature void of all these properties; and he was forced to go through every division, resolution, composition, and refinement of political chemistry, before he happily arrived at the caput mortuum of vitriol in your grace. Flat and insipid in your retired state, but brought into action, you become vitriol again. This figure is too scientific, and not quite correct: vitriol cannot, properly speaking, be said to be, in any instance, a caput mortuum. He seems, however, to have been unjustly charged with an incongruity of metagbor in his repartee upon the following observation of Sir W. Draper, You,

indeed, are a tyrant of another sort, and upon your political bed of torture can excruciate any subject, from a first minister down to such a grub or butterfly as myself. To this remark his reply was as follows: If Sir W. Draper's bed be a bed of torture, he has made it for himself. I shall never interrupt his repose.' We need not ramble so far as to vindicate the present use of this last word by referring to its Latin origin: he himself has justly noticed under the signature of Philo-Junius, that those who pretend to espy any absurdity either in the idea or expression, cannot distinguish between a sarcasm and a contradiction.'

"To pursue this critique further would be to disparage the judgment of the reader. Upon the whole these letters, whether considered as classical and correct compositions, -` or as addresses of popular and impressive eloquence, are well entitled to the distinction they have acquired; and quoted as they have been, with admiration, in the senate by such nice judges and accomplished scholars as Mr. Burke and Lord Eldon, eulogized by Dr. Johnson, and admitted by the author of the Pursuits of Literature, to the same rank among English classics as Livy or Tacitus among Roman, there can be no doubt that they will live commensurately with the language in which they are composed.

"These few desultory and imperfect hints are the whole that the writer of this essay has been able to collect concerning the author of the Letters of Junius Yet desultory and imperfect as they are, he still hopes that they may not be utterly destitute both of interest and utility. Although they do not undertake

positively

positively to ascertain who the author was; they offer a fair test to point out negatively who he was not; and to enable us to reject the pretensions of a host of persons, whose friends have claimed for them so distinguished an honour.

"From the observations contained in this essay it should seem to follow unquestionably that the author of the letters of Junius was an Englishman of highly cultivated education, deeply versed in the language, the laws, the constitution and history of his native country that he was a man of easy if not of affluent circumstances, of unsullied honour and generosity, who had it equally in his heart and in his power to contribute to the necessities of other persons, and especially of those who were exposed to troubles of any kind on his own account: that he was in habits of confidential intercourse, if not with different members of the cabinet, with politicians who were most intimately familiar with the court, and intrusted with all its secrets that he had attained an age which would allow him, without vanity, to boast

of an ample knowledge and experience of the world: that during the years 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, and part of 1772, he resided almost constantly in London or its vicinity, devoting a very large portion of his time to political concerns, and publishing his political lucubrations, under different signatures, in the Public Advertiser ; that in his natural temper, he was quick, irritable and impetuous; subject to political prejudices and strong personal animosities; but possessed of a high independent spirit; honestly attached to the principles of the constitution, and fearless and indefatigable in maintaining them; that he was strict in his moral conduct, and in his attention to public decorum; an avowed member of the established church, and, though acquainted with English judicature, not a lawyer by profession.

"What other characteristics he may have possessed we know not; but these, are sufficient; and the claimant who cannot produce them conjointly is in vain brought forwards as the author of the Letters of Junius."

“W

1812.

twelfth century, Ailward de Wymondham having been a person of some consideration in the time of Henry the First. His posterity remained there till the middle of the fifteenth century, when one of them, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, purchased considerable estates on the north-east coast of Norfolk,,in Felbrigg and its neighbourhood, which, from that time, C

became