presumed Junius; which, however, had much the air of his feeling no strong dislike to being suspected of this new title to celebrity.* But further exaꞌnination extinguished the title; and left the secret, which had perplexed so many unravellers of literary webs, to perplex the grave idlers of generations to

come.

Yet the true wonder is not the concealment, for a multitude of causes might have produced the continued necessity even after the death of the writer, but the feasibility with which the chief features of Junius may be fastened on almost every writer, of the crowd for whom claims have been laid to this dubious honour; while, in every instance, some discrepance finally starts upon the eye, which excludes the claim.

Burke had more than the vigour, the information, and the command of language; but he was incapable of the virulence and the disloyalty. Hoine Tooke had the virulence and the disloyalty in superabundance; but he wanted the cool sarcasm and the polished elegance, even if he could have been fairly supposed to be at once the assailant and the defender. Wilkes had the information and the wit; but his style was incorrigibly vulgar, and all its metaphors were for and from the mob: in addition, he would have rejoiced to declare himself the writer: his well-known answer to an inquiry on the subject was, "Would, to Heaven I had!" Utinam scripsissem! Lord George Germaine has been lately brought forward as a candidate; and the evidence fully proves that he possessed the dexterity of style, the powerful and pungent remark, and even the individual causes of bitterness and partisanship, which might be supposed to stimulate Junius: but, in the

*His note, on the occasion, to the editor of one of the newspapers, might mean any thing or nothing. It was in this style :-" Sir, you have attributed to me the writing of Junius's letters. If you choose to propagate a false and malicious report, you may. "Yours, &c. "P.F

private correspondence of Junius with his printer, Woodfall, there are contemptuous allusions to Lord George's conduct in the field, which at once put an end to the question of authorship.

Dunning possessed the style, the satire, and the partisanship; but Junius makes blunders in his law, of which Dunning must have been incapable. Gerard Hamilton (Single-speech) might have written the letters, but he never possessed the moral courage; and was, besides, so consummate a coxcomb, that his vanity must have, however involuntarily, let out the secret. The argument, that he was Junius, from his notoriously using the same peculiarities of phrase, at the time when all the world was in full chase of the author, ought of itself to be decisive against him; for nothing can be clearer, than that the actual writer was determined on concealment, and that he would never have toyed with his dangerous secret so much in the manner of a schoolgirl, anxious to develop her accomplishments.

It is with no wish to add to the number of the controversialists on this bluestocking subject, that a conjecture is hazarded; that Junius will be found, if ever found, among some of the humbler names of the list. If he had been a political leader, or, in any sense of the word, an independent man, it is next to impossible that he should not have left some indication of his authorship. But it is perfectly easy to conceive the case of a private secretary, or dependant of a political leader, writing, by his command, and for his temporary purpose, a series of attacks on a ministry; which, when the object was gained, it was of the highest importance to bury, so far as the connexion was concerned, in total oblivion. Junius, writing on his own behalf, would have, in all probability, retained evidence sufficient to substantiate his title, when the peril of the discovery should have passed away, which it did within a few years; for who would have thought, in 1780, of punishing

even the libels on the king in 1770? or when, if the peril remained, the writer would have felt himself borne on a tide of popular applause high above the inflictions of law.

But, writing for another, the most natural result was, that he should have been pledged to extinguish all proof of the transaction; to give up every fragment that could lead to the discovery at any future period; and to surrender the whole mystery into the hands of the superior, for whose purposes it had been constructed, and, who, while he had no fame to acquire by its being made public, might be undone by its betrayal.

The marks of private secretaryship are so strong, that all the probable conjectures have pointed to writers under that relation; Lloyd, the private secretary of George Grenville; Greatrakes, Lord Shelburne's private secretary; Rosenhagen, who was so much concerned in the business of Shefburne House, that he may be considered as a second secretary; and Macauley Boyd, who was perpetually about some public man, and who was at length fixed by his friends on Lord Macartney's establishment, and went with him to take office in India.

But, mortifying as it may be to the disputants on the subject, the discovery is now beyond 1ational hope for Junius intimates his having been a spectator of parliamentary proceedings even farther back than the year 1743; which, supposing him to have been twenty years old at the time, would give him more than a century for his experience. In the long interval since 1772, when the letters ceased, not the slightest clew has been discovered; though doubtless the keenest inquiry was set on foot by the parties assailed. Sir William Draper died with but one wish, though a sufficiently uncharitable one, that he could have found out his castigator before he took leave of the world. Lord North often avowed his total ignorance of the writer. The king's reported

observation to Gen. Desaguiliers, in 1772, “We know who Junius is, and he will write no more," is unsubstantiated; and if ever made, was probably prefaced with a supposition; for no publicity ever followed; and what neither the minister of the day nor his successors ever knew, could scarcely have come to the king's knowledge but by inspiration, nor remained locked up there but by a reserve not far short of a political error.

But the question is not worth the trouble of discovery; for, since the personal resentment is past, its interest can arise only from pulling the mask off the visage of some individual of political eminence, and giving us the amusing contrast of his real and his assumed physiognomy; or from unearthing some great unknown genius. But the leaders have been already excluded; and the composition of the letters demanded no extraordinary powers. Their secret information has been vaunted; but Junius gives us no more than what would now be called the "chat of the clubs;" the currency of conversation, which any man mixing in general life might collect in his halfhour's walk down St. James's Street: he gives us no insight into the purposes of government; of the counsels of the cabinet he knows nothing. The style was undeniably excellent for the purpose, and its writer must have been a man of ability. If it had been original, he might have been a man of genius; but it was notoriously formed on Col. Titus's letter, which, from its strong peculiarities, is of easy imitation. The crime and the blunder together of Junius were that he attacked the king, a man so publicly honest and so personally virtuous, that his assailant inevitably pronounced himself a libeller. But if he had restricted his lash to the contending politicians of the day, justice would have rejoiced in his vigorous severity. Who could have regretted the keenest application of the scourge to the Duke of Grafton, the most incapable of ministers, and the most openly

M

and offensively profligate of men; to the indomitable selfishness of Mansfield; to the avarice of Bedford, the suspicious negotiator of the scandalous treaty of 1763; or to the slippered and drivelling ambition of North, sacrificing an empire to his covetousness of power?

CHAPTER VIII.

The King's Illness.

THE prince's adoption of whig politics had deeply offended his royal father; for the coalition ministry had made Fox personally obnoxious to the monarch, who remembered its power by a series of mortifications, so keen that they had inspired the desperate idea of abandoning England for a time, and seeking refuge for his broken spirit and insulted authority in Hanover. This conception the king was said to have so far matured as to have communicated to Thurlow; who, however, repelled it in the most direct manner, telling his majesty, that "though it might be easy to go to Hanover, it might be difficult to return to England; that James the Second's was a case in point; and that the best plan was, to let the coalition take their way for a while, as they were sure to plunge themselves into some embarrassment, and then he might have them at his disposal."

The king

The advice was solid and successful. thenceforth exhibited his aversion to the ministry in the most open manner, by steadily refusing to bestow a single English peerage, while they were in power; and it was surmised, that Fox was driven by his consciousness of this total alienation, to the rash and defying measure of the India bill, as a support against