PART I. JUNIUS. In Two Parts. Very likely some of our readers may start with a little impatience, as their eyes catch the heading of this paper, thinking how many times, and for what a host of different originals, the said Junius has been advertised to them. But we trust they will not cast our magazine on one side until they have heard from us a word as to our reason for offering it. selves. Further than this, we hold to the opinion of the Dublin writer, that "It is not true, as some may be disposed to think, that the puzzle of Junius has lost its interest and become an obsolete matter. He has connected himself with the governmental history of his day in England, in a manner too striking to permit the mere lapse of time to nullify him. He waged war with the government of George the Third before the thirteen colonies did, for nearly as long a space, and on something of the same constitutional principle. This alone would give him claims to an undying consideration, and such consideration is further secured by the mystery which has always a power of fascination over the human mind. If we were disposed to forget his powerful pen, his provoking mask would not let us. Then posterity must always be anxious to know who it was who left behind him some of the most elegant and masterly specimens of epistolary literature in the language." While we were turning over, to-day, the leaves of some dusty, rusty volumes, laid away upon an upper shelf, we found ourselves, at length, pausing, quite interested, at this passage: "Sweeping the board clean of all this rubbish of falsified pretension, we find two men left, between whom, certainly, lies the truth of this mystery. These are Lord Chatham and Sir Philip Francis. One of them was Junius, and the other knew it." Glancing a little further along, to learn which of the two was the one only, we discovered these declarations: "It is only in William Pitt (Lord Chat- The successful concealment of Junius strikes ham) that we can find the anonymous letter- us as a prima facie proof that he was a man of writer. In him alone, of all the great characters high consequence, not a secretary or other hireof the time, can we find the full requirements ling. From the care he took of his secret, we of the authorship. He alone could have written may guess the importance of it to himself in the letters. He alone had the compelling mo- his lifetime, and to his family after him. No tives to write them-as a perusal of his career inferior man would take all these precautionswill conclusively show-and the bitter vigour to would push away from his name for ever the keep up the epistolary war for five years. The celebrity of the letters. Everything points only Whig of the time who came near Chatham steadily and conclusively to some distinguished in intellectual power was Burke. When the man-one who would also belong to the arislatter is set aside, the grim earl stands alone. tocracy of England. It is not alone by hand. To suppose Junius to be only Junius-a man writing, punctuation, capital letters, favourite of mean antecedents or none at all--who did words, dates, &c.; neither by what Junius is nothing in his lifetime to equal, in another way, pleased to say of himself or others in his the merit of this epistolary achievement, or public or private letters, that we should be show himself capable of it, is a very violent as-guided in looking for him. The whole subject sumption. The letters give evidence of an intellectual energy which could never be bounded to the production of them. They are, so to speak, aerolitic fragments of some great revolving body which research must find out." From these very positive expressions of belief, we passed back to the beginning of the article, which, by the way, appeared in the "Dublin University Magazine," in the year 1857, and set ourselves in earnest to the work of studying it through. Then it occurred to us that we had somewhere in possession yet another "Junius identified," of a later date, and native, as the identifier asserts, to "the backwoods of America." This, likewise, we searched out and read from opening to end. So, as we ourselves became quite delightedly eager with deciding in our own minds which of the two was the better showing, we concluded that perhaps a portion of our readers, also, would be curious to decide the same for them should be regarded at a distance, and in all its bearings. And because the secret was the result of a comprehensive scheme, we should try to make our means of detection comprehensive in proportion, and gather our conclusions from a wide circle of facts-from the chief political characters and questions of that memorable time, when great things were done and great men walked the stage. The lofty and overbearing literature of Junius, so full of genius and passion, never could come from any understrapper-it was the fruit of one of the most self-sustained and lordly intellects of the time. All who look for Junius must look up, not down. Junius boasted that nobody should ever be able to lift his mask-that he was the sole depositary of his secret, and that it should perish with him. Since that time a hundred books and a vast number of articles have been written by men desirous to point out the real author of the letters; and a crowd of undoubted and rejected Juniuses have rewarded the curious infelicity of the inquirers. Mr. Wade, in Bohn's edition of Junius, gives a list of the involuntary candidates for the Junian mantle, to the number of thirty-five. Among those spoken of with most confidence, when the letters were coming out in the Public Advertiser, was Edmund Burke; and there was some appearance of truth in the assumption; for Burke was the only Whig writer of the day whose intellectual powers seemed to bear any comparison with those exhibited in the letters. We say seemed; for the two authors differed widely; and their writings afford intrinsic evidence of this. Burke was a generalizer, and dealt very much in abstract principles, following out his conclusions by long chains of reasoning. Junius was all for particulars-he went directly and dictatorially to his mark, with an impatience of all ratiocination; he would not waste time in the tediousness of outward flourishes. Burke had not the fierce heart of Junius-he would wage war with pomp and circumstance. As for Junius "He had nae thought but how to kill But Burke himself has set this question at rest. He told Dr. Johnson, of his own accord, that he was not Junius. Mr. Butler, of the "Reminiscences," says that he spoke of the letters with disgust, declaring that he could not write like them, and, if he could, he would not be caught at such a work. Gibbon was also spoken of; but he had nothing in common with the Man in the Mask but a splendid style. So Lord George Germaine, Lord Chesterfield, Gerard Hamilton, and Horace Walpole were suspected; but a person is forced to smile when he speaks of these four fastidious members of the aristocracy in the same breath with Junius. General Lee was once confidently put forward; and he certainly was Junius, but with a difference. During the years 1769, 1770, and 1771, he wrote in the Public Advertiser under the signature of "Junius Americanus." [It is a noteworthy coincidence that the first of the real Junian letters was given in the same journal near the commencement of that same year of 1769, though a series, under the name "Poplicola," was started in April, 1767, which Woodfall, the editor of, the Advertiser, afterwards, in 1812, asserted to have come from the same pen that wrote the Junius series.] He wrote also the preamble of the Bill of Rights for the citizens of London; and, in a letter to Wilkes, the actual Simon Pure says that his American namesake is plainly a man of abilities. In 1803, a Mr. Rodney, in a letter which appeared at Wilmington, in America, said Lee confessed to him in 1773 that he was Junius. Lee, doubtless, played off his equivoque upon his auditor; but it made a great sensation, and the people said the "Great Unknown" was an American, after all. The claims of John Wilkes, Horne Tooke, and all the rest are no longer debatable. They have been given up, and nobody thinks of recalling them; so that, at this present writing, the field, we may safely affirm, is clear of candidates, saving, perhaps, a single one-namely, Sir Philip Francis. And him we had thought Mr. Barker had completely laid. But it would seem that he still walks, as, in a dissertation accompanying Mr. Bohn's edition, before alluded to, Wade continues to put him forward. The acquaintance with the War-office, so visible in the letters of Junius, does seem to tell very much in favour of the advocates of Sir Philip. He was a chief clerk in the Waroffice at the time Junius began to write, in 1767, and continued there till 1772, when the letters ceased. Favourable mention is made of him in the "Miscellaneous Letters" (appearing originally not with the signature of "Junius," but published subsequently in the Junian Collection), and Lord Barrington is denounced for dismissing him. Several of the same letters are in sarcastic denunciation He of Barrington for his appointments, and are written in the way young Francis would be supposed to write, if he wrote on such a subject. Again, in 1813, Mr. Taylor, who published Philip's case in another way. a book called "Junius Identified," puts Sir from the fact that young Francis reported argues several speeches delivered by Lord Chatham in the House of Lords. Now, a number of sentiments, metaphors, and peculiar phrases which appear in these speeches (published by Almon in 1791) are also to be found in the letters of Junius, forming a remarkable portion of their style and character. "Of course," argues Taylor, "either of two things must have happened: either that Francis adopted these peculiarities from the speaker, and used them as his own; or that, from the affluence of his mind and manners, he clothed the meaning of Chatham with his own phraseology, figures, &c., doing for the speeches what he did for his letters-that is, pouring the Franciscan characteristics over both!" This likeness between Lord Chatham's reported matter and the letters is so strong, so startling, that Mr. Taylor comes to the obvious conclusion that Francis was Junius! Upon his premises, he had no other alternative, of course. But the inference from our ground is, that the likeness, which we admit, is simply that of Junius in his letters to his other self in his speeches-in other words, that Junius was like Chatham because he was his written embodiment. Nevertheless, we aware of Sir Philip's pretension to Junian honours. This can be traced in a hundred passages of his life, sayings, and writings. In 1811, he published a pamphlet on the Regency, written very much in the style of Junius. The are a year to a young man who had only five hun dred pounds in the War Office seems unacountable except on some supposition of this kind. And this cunning winding up of this whole system of false appearances would be only of a piece with the astute policy of the anonymous writer. Perhaps, also, this arrangement was well understood by the young man, who would do all in his power to guard, if not to keep honourably, the secret of one he revered and esteemed so much-a secret, too, by which he profited so considerably. Indeed, the imitations and pretences to which we have already referred may, after all, be only the evidences of Sir Philip's gratitude to the earl, not those of his own personal or literary vanity. Be this as it may, in all that he achieved in his life-long career, he gave no proof that he possessed the mind-the large intellectual mould in which the lava-literature of Junius took shape-none whatever. Even Wade admits that he shows himself very inferior to Junius in everything else he wrote. From the age of twenty-seven to thirtytwo (the period covering the appearance of the Letters"), he came out vigorously; but afterwards (being exhausted, probably) faded away into a maker of still-born pamphlets, forgotten letters, and fugitive verses-a mere moonlight reflection of his former self! Who will credit it? We repeat, to come to a just conclusion on this matter, we must take a broad view of things. We must look to the life of the man whose character presents a well-defined likeness of that shifting and shadowy apparition which has disconcerted so much admirable logic. motto of it was a part of one of Chatham's William Pitt was born in 1708, and educated at Oxford, where he had the name of a good scholar, an excellent debater, and a writer of very elegant verse. After leaving college he travelled on the Continent, and on his return was made a cornet of horse. In 1736 he went into Parliament for the borongh of Old Sarum. The gout, which seldom left him untormented during his life, and certainly helped his vehe ment politics to exacerbate his mind, obliged "The plumed troop and the big wars That make ambition virtue." As a soldier, we can easily conceive how he would have rivalled the celebrity of Marlborough. In Parliament he was distinguished for a bold and original style of oratory, which amazed and offended Sir Robert Walpole and his supporters; and the exclamation, "Will no one muzzle that terrible cornet of horse?" shows the minister's perplexity, and perhaps something of his admiration. From the beginning Pitt set his face against the ascendency of Sir Robert, in the irrespective, intrepid spirit which Junius afterwards exhibited in his assaults upon the ministries of Grafton and Bute. He thwarted George the Second long before he called George the Third "the falsest hypocrite in Europe;" but in 1746 the high and popular character of Pitt obliged George the Second, much against his will, to admit him into office, and he was made Paymaster of the Forces. Bath, says of him: "Mr. Pitt keeps his bed After the death of George the Second, a systematic proscription of all Whiggery commenced. Pitt's Parliament was dissolved, and his friend Mr. Legge dismissed from the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. At the same time, John Stewart, Earl of Bute, the King's sometime tutor, was added to his council; and Lord Barrington, whom Junius so fiercely denounces as bloody Barrington," was put into the place of Legge. In 1761 the Grenvillite League, that sustained Pitt so long, was overpowered in the council. Being outvoted there, on the question of declaring war against Spain, Pitt and Earl Temple resigned their seats. In a short time Poplicola;" after which followed, in all the the former gave up the reins of government, modes of hostility-sarcastic, vehement, or and his memorable administration terminated. comic-a series of attacks on the heterogeneous Meantime, the paper war against Pitt and the ministry, which Chatham's strange absence had Whigs raged furiously. Flying pamphlets left at sixes and sevens, complaining, with its darkened the air. Smollett wrote for preroga- several voices, of his want of participation. It tive and Toryism, while Wilkes charged for repented him that he had made the ministry, Whiggery and liberty. The genius of Whig- and we hold that, in his exasperated solitude, he gery was fated to sink before the Toryism of addressed himself to the task of destroying it, George the Third, then mounting to its long by the anonymous aid of public letters. It is and steady ascendant. Pitt, now Lord Chatham, not improbable that the idea of making use of soon seemed to feel the omens were against him; such a regular system of political warfare was still he did his best to beat against the surf. He working for a long time in his brain before 1767. made a ministry, which Burke has termed the Ten years before, the Rev. Dr. Brown published mosaic ministry. He himself was Lord Privy a pamphlet, in which the characters of Pitt and Seal in it, and the Duke of Grafton, Lord Shel- Junius were outlined in what we should call a burne, Charles Townsend, and Mr. Conway spirit of prophecy, if we did not suspect it came filled the chief offices of it. It was an eminently from an intimate knowledge of men and things, disastrous ministry, and Chatham's efforts to or was inspired by foregone conclusion. At form it from the discordant materials about him, that time Pitt was about to take the reins of his and afterwards to keep it together, tortured him glorious ministry. After speaking of the genefar worse than the gout. The overtures he was ral corruption of society and the deterioration obliged to make the Marquis of Rockingham, of the national interests, Dr. Brown goes on: the Duke of Bedford, and other meaner men, "Necessity must, in such a case, be the parent and the rebuffs and refusals he received, were of reformation. Effeminacy, rapacity, and facgall and wormwood to the high, unchastened tion will be then ready to resign the reins they spirit of Chatham. The refusal of Bedford in- would now usurp; virtue may rise on the ruins flicted upon it its sorest wound. The Duke had of corruption, and a despairing nation may yet be been instrumental in undoing what Pitt had saved by the wisdom, the integrity, and the undone in his former ministry-he had signed shaken courage of some great minister." The away at Paris, in 1763, the fruits of Pitt's or- writer, of course, alluded to Pitt. When he ganized victories. To be forced to make over-proceeds and writes the following, we cannot but tures to him, and have them refused by the feel as if some unexpected light were coming Dr. Brown must have known "the angry duke, was a dire humiliation-such as was upon us. retorted in the fiercest invectives, three years great minister" well, and known all the sides of afterwards, in the twenty-third letter of Junius. his mind-known that he could be as powerful Such were the circumstances in which Chat- with the pen as in the tribune. He says: ham found himself in the fifty-ninth year of his "There is another character, I mean the politiage. He had been struggling, in open combat, cal writer. He would choose an untrodden with Toryism from his youth upward had path of politics, where no party man ever dared "always been in a triumph or a fight." His to enter. The undisguised freedom and boldstruggle was vain. He must now resort to secret ness of his pen would please the brave, astonish strategy. the weak, and confound the guilty. He would be called arrogant by those who call everything arrogance that is not servility. As he would be defamed by the dissolute great without cause, so he would be applauded by an honest people beyond his deservings." That is either a wonderful prophecy, or a knowledge of facts and tendencies-most likely the latter. So that we have Pitt and Junius brought together by a Following the fate of the mosaic ministry, we may the more clearly perceive how naturally and necessarily Chatham converts himself into Junius. It was scarcely framed when he went away to Bath, to drink the waters for the gout that just then seized him, as if it were Tory too, and tormented him on principle. At the close of the year 1766, Lord Chesterfield, writing from very striking piece of circumstantial evidence. If ¦ “ Reminiscences," that the way he happened to Pitt employed the pen, as here suggested, why commence examining into the authorship of have not the productions made a stir in the Junius was, that in 1776 one of his letters to John the world, like those of "Junius"? But if it is Wilkes, written while he was on a visit to the Junian letters themselves which are prophe- Ireland, was seized and opened by the Governsied, or known of from facts and tendencies, ment, while in the post-office, upon the belief does not the idea necessarily follow, either that that, as the handwriting resembled that of Dr. Brown had been somehow apprized of Junius, it was a letter of that mysterious perwhat had not yet entered the thought of his sonage. Now Sir Philip went to India two political writer himself, or that such writer was years before, in 1774, and did not return to goading himself on to the destruction of his last England until 1780. If the Government gave mosaic ministry" long before this had come him the India office because he was known to into existence, and even while he was rising, be Junius, why be rifling the letters of private prosperously, with that first "glorious min- gentlemen, when it was known likewise that the istry"? same Junius was on the other side of the world? 66 that displayed by Junius, and of his dissolate habits. That a young man, we care not how able he may have been, only twenty-three years of age, a drunken, gambling roué about town, should have been the author of the elaboratelyfinished and highly-wrought letters of Junius, every line and word of whose brilliant mosaic sparkles and glows as though it had been rubbed and polished with pumice-stone, is a proposition so improbable upon its very face, as to require proof of the strongest and most overwhelming nature to satisfy one of its truth. The perfect secrecy with which the conveyancing part of this anonymous business was Lyttelton is objected to on the score of his carried on, and which has covered the author-youthfulness, his want of ability compared with ship till now, is surprising. Junius says he did it alone, and alone held his secret. But the feminine character of the handwriting, differing in the letter to the king from that of the others, shows he must have had assistance. Now, Lady Chatham was a woman of strong understanding and fine accomplishments. She wrote with great ease and spirit, and had been in the habit of acting the part of amanuensis for her husband. Aided by such a wife the secret writer could work in safety. All that Wilkes (who studied the hand of "Junius ") could make out of it was the hand used by ladies at the beginning of the century; and he said it strongly resembled the writing on the card of invitation which he had had from the Countess Temple, mother of Lady Chatham. The knowledge shown by Junius of what passed in court circles, in the penetralia of the palace, excited a good deal of astonishment. Our hypothesis removes all wonder from the matter; for Chatham's sister (Mrs. Anne Pitt) was keeper of the privy-purse to the Princess Dowager, mother of George the Third. She passed her life in the very atmosphere of courtly gossip, and was in the way of knowing all the secrets of royalty. Mr. Reese takes no notice, save in a general way, of any other candidate, with the exception of Lord Chatham. We sum up the objections to him as follows:-Almost all of the claimants for the honour of being "the Great Unknown were members of one or the other of the Houses of Parliament, and, on this account, their claims will have to be unhesitatingly set aside. We will not stop to show why this is so, further than to state that Junius, in his confidential notes to Woodfall, manifests how anxious he was that the ministry should be shamed into throwing open the door of the House of Lords during the debate on the question concerning the Falkland Islands, so that he might get an opportunity to listen to it. If he had been a member of either House, he would have been entitled to an entrance, and would not have had to put himself to so much trouble to force the Ministry into granting him the privilege of hear Then, in conclusion, from a fair consideration of Chatham's antecedent career, of his political sympathies and antipathies, we can very readily conceive how he would participate in all the warfare waged by Junius for five years against the Tory power, and for the re-establishment of Whiggery-waged, too, with like vehe-ing that debate. Overlooking or forgetting this mence and boldness of speech, full of assurance, invective, vernacular, idiom, metaphor, &c. Mr. Reese, before presenting the letters of introduction for his original of Junius, arrays his testimony against the claims of other candidates. He says that, of the whole thirty-eight persons who have been brought forward, there are but two whose claims have been advocated with anything like vigour. These are Sir Philip Francis and Lord Lyttelton. Francis is disposed of in much the same manner that he is by the Dublin writer; so it is not needful that we give the argument. We will, however, offer one item, which is not referred to in the other investigation. We are told, by Mr. Charles Butler, in his insuperable objection to the claims of Lord |