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blame for public calamities. These he that his labors as author did no discredit to traces wholly to the executive government, a "newspaper." He evinced his defeat by none of the members of which have the losing his temper, and seeking to make the requisite experience, abilities, or common controversy a personal affair by calling on sense; the king, too, he considerately ex- Junius to unmask and take the responsibilempts from all blame, and lauds him for ity of "strong assertions without proof, "the purest of all possible hearts," and his declamation without argument, and violent anxious endeavor at the outset of his reign censures without dignity or moderation.” to unite parties, and select the most worthy But this concession was inadmissible, as to rule. Having separated the innocent, Junius had only appeared with visor down, he pounces on the guilty, dissects the entire and in such guise Sir William had volunministry, holding up each singly and suc- teered a passage of arms. cessively to scorn and contumely. Grafton, as the head of it, is, of course, the chief delinquent-a "young nobleman already ruined by play," and "an apostate by design from every honorable engagement;" yet to him is committed the "finances of a nation already sinking under its debts and expenses." The chancellor of the exchequer, Lord North, is next arraigned as without parliamentary abilities and influence; "repeatedly called down for absolute ignorance, ridiculous motions ridiculously withdrawn, deliberate plans disconcerted, and a week's preparation of graceful oratory lost in a moment." The rest are depicted in similar disparaging colors, and a string of terse, telling, and compact paragraphs, wound up with the declaration that the "crisis is so full of terror and despair," that nothing less can save the nation from the vices and incapacities of its administration than the "merciful interposition of Providence."

Denunciation of this Olympian pitch at once arrested public attention, and drew into the lists no unworthy opponent, with real name, distinguished in public life for military services, as well as a scholar and accomplished gentleman. Sir William Draper did not aim at a general reply to the anti-ministerial strictures of Junius, but only to rescue his particular friend, the Marquis of Granby, from the talons of his assailant. In his devotion he himself became the victim, and was unmercifully shown up in respect of his own pseudo-public services, pension, honors, and preferment. The position of Junius at the War-office enabled him to do this with minuteness and force, though he inadvertently fell into an error as to forms in his own office, which Sir William laid hold of. The combatants exchanged several missives, and though Sir William had the worst of the conflict, Junius admitted

But Junius aimed at more exalted quarry than a colonel on half-pay. It was the downfall of the ministry he sought, and for this issue singled out its head, the First Lord of the Treasury, for annihilation. It arose from an indefensible attempt of the minister to screen from justice a party of guards who had rescued General Gansel from the hands of the sheriff's officers, after they had arrested him for debt. It was followed by others inculpatory of the public acts of the Duke of Grafton, and his private character was assailed by imputations on his morality in openly parading his mistress in a public theatre. The chancellor of the exchequer, Lord North, is addressed in a lively, sarcastic, and pungent epistle, for rewarding the services of Colonel Luttrell to the ministry, in coming forward to contest with Alderman Wilkes the representation of Middlesex. Upon the Duke of Bedford, Junius concentrated all his venom; his grace had become unpopular from his negotiation of the peace of 1763, but his great offence was his junction with the Grafton ministry, by which its dissolution was delayed. The duke was more unmercifully mangled than any, by a contumacious appreciation of his general character, bitter railing against his political conduct, and personal anecdotical disparagements. But in this consisted the subtlety of the state satirist-the most exalted are the most humiliated-serving thereby a double purpose in reducing the influence of the most powerful and magnifying that of their invisible assailant. It was more by his unsparing attacks on the grandees of the realm than the vigor and finish of his writings that the fame of Junius culminated. Inrespect of literary tact and polish, some of his known earlier writings were little inferior to his later compositions, but they failed, in common with effusions from others, to make a signal

popular impression. It was only when du- | with varying degrees of proof, from resemcal statesmen, or still more exalted person-blance of sentiment, handwriting, style, and ages, were subjected to his incisive pen that so forth, were six peers of the realm, two bishgeneral attention was aroused. This gave a ops, numerous commoners, and some of the marked impulse to the sale of the Public Ad- principal literati of the time. Dr. Johnson vertiser, in which they first appeared, and thought it was Burke's thunder, but Edmund were thence reprinted by other journals. His satisfied the Gamaliel of his innocence. Infamous address to the king completed his re- deed, Burke was among the bewildered, and nown, established him as the most bold and equally carried off his feet with the great accomplished gladiator that ever figured in moralist. It originated his well-known dejournalist columns. Of this spirited and dig-scription of the mighty boar of the forest, nified effusion he himself appears to have who had broken through all the toils of the thought highly. In a private note to the law, bearing away in his tusks the mangled printer he says, "I am now meditating a "limbs of king, lords, and commons." Lord capital, and, I hope, a final, piece." It must North sought to comfort the orator, assuring have answered his utmost expectations, for him that "the mighty Junius, who had foiled an unprecedented number (seventeen hun- the hunters, would in the end be speared." dred and fifty) of extra copies were printed This extravagance must have been as of the Public Advertiser, and not a single amusing as gratifying to the unknown in his copy was to be procured a few hours after War-office retreat. The extreme caution and its publication. It was for this production dexterous contrivances by which he threw Mr. Woodfall was prosecuted, and obtained the hunters, who were many besides Mr. the celebrated verdict of" guilty of printing Garrick, on a wrong scent, were quite equal, and publishing only." This novel and equiv- if not superior, in cleverness to his writings. ocal return gave rise to two distinct motions Discovery would have been fatal to him in in court, one by defendant, for arrest of every respect-to his official permanence, to judgment, and an adverse one by the crown. the weight and celebrity of his Letters, and On the case being argued, the court of to his future hopes from a Chatham restoraKing's Bench granted a new trial. But this tion. Consequently, false lights were thrown also failed, from the neglect of tah attorney- out in every direction to divert suspicion general in not producing the original news- from the Horse Guards. Junius thus bepaper by which the publication could be came, to the imagination of his contemporaproved. ries and other inquirers, a patrician figure, in which every feature of personalty, birth, and position differed from the reality. "My rank and fortune," he says, "place me above a common bribe." A seat in the Cabinet, of course, or more potential individuality, could only buy him. Probably he was one of the great but disappointed hereditary heads of parties-a Rockingham, Grenville, Shelburne, or Chatham. A fallen angel certainly, perhaps the highest, with Satanic powers, intense pride, hatred, and ambition. "You shall know me by my works," he tells Woodfall. Mere gain from his writings appears beneath notice. In a note respecting a reprint of his Letters, he says, "What you say about profits is very handsome. I like to deal with such men. As for myself, I am far above all pecuniary views."

These futile and blundering proceedings of course made an immense noise, and elevated Junius to the highest pinnacle, on which for a season he continued as the greatest and most mysterious incendiary that had appeared, defiant of authority in its highest seats. The celebrated Horne Tooke, with others of no little consideration, essayed to break a lance with him; they helped to diversify the incidents of the battle-field, and were dealt with in that pleasant put-aside fashion that made it appear like a condescension to notice such small fry. The loftiest in the literary and political world esteemed it not beneath them to speculate on the new Hercules that had strangled, sans pity, all who had excited his ire. That he was a person of the highest mark in scholarship, unsurpassed in ability in state and legislation, in court life and personal connections, not a particle of doubt was entertained. Among the suspected by different writers,

Not content with creating an impression of affluence and rank, he sought to clothe himself, though a young man, with the venerableness of age. As one of the fruits of

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his past life, he strongly inculcates honesty cil, project, or change escaped his all-prying to Woodfall. "After long experience in the eyes. If a secret expedition was fitting out, world," he tells him, "I can assure you I he knew it; if war impended, he anticipated never knew a rogue who was happy." Wilkes all the quidnuncs of the Cocoa-tree. If mintries to draw him to a Mansion-house ball; isterial changes were in prospect, Junius was offers him tickets, and expresses the joy he the first to signal them. Were a nobleman would feel to see him dance with Polly, his affronted, he was the earliest to denounce it. daughter. Junius replies: Many thanks for "That Swinney," says he, "is a wretched your obliging offer, but, alas, my age and fig-but dangerous fool to address Lord George ure would do little credit to my partner." Sackville." "Beware of David Garrick; he Would not any one have inferred the writer was sent to pump you, and went directly to was an old man; or, if not advanced in years, beyond middle life and somewhat portly. But Francis was never corpulent; bone and muscle, as in his writings, were dominant over the softer tissues.

Mr. Woodfall, who had been his schoolfellow at St. Paul's, and who in personal contact must have recognized him, he was very apprehensive of meeting. At one time he thought Woodfall had made the discovery; but he was re-assured, and was successful in completely blinding him. The printer became so awe-struck by a sense of the great unknown with whom he was in correspondence, that he reverentially sought his guidance in the discharge of his electoral duties. The great demi-gorgon of the city lay prostrate. "I do not mean," says Wilkes, "to indulge the impertinent curiosity of finding out the most important secret of our times -the authorship of Junius. I will not attempt with profane hands to tear the sacred veil of the sanctuary. I am disposed, with the inhabitants of Attica, to erect an altar to the unknown god of our political idolatry, and will be content to worship him in clouds and darkness." To whom the god replies, first reproving the lax ethics of his worshipper: "I find I am treated as other gods usually are by their votaries, with sacrifice and ceremony in abundance, and very little obedience. The profession of your faith is unexceptionable; but I am a modest deity, and should be full as well satisfied with morality and good works.*

The myrmidons of the court and responsible advisers of the crown stood aghast, confounded by the mortal shafts aimed by the invisible archer. It was the apparent omnipresence of the foe and his universal knowledge of great and small affairs that alarmed and distracted suspicions. No state coun

Excerpts from the writer's "Essay," and essential to bring out the aim of the present article.

tell the king." Of the cabals, clubs, and officials of the city of London he was equally cognizant. He cautions Alderman Wilkes against making "himself so cheap by walking the streets so much." Doubtless, wishing it to be understood he had descried him from his carriage, or other patrician stall, in the practice of so plebeian a style of locomotion.

In such assumptions consist the chief comedy of the Junius' Letters. The writer was nearly at the lowest step of promotion's ladder, and adroitly scheming, by false lights and intense labor, to reach a higher round. His extraordinary industry and efforts to compass this issue it is impossible to consider without admiration. The composition of the Letters must have been the result of elaborate pains, thought, and research, independent of the ordinary duties of his clerkship. Traces appear in some of them, from the absence of sequence, in the construction of the paragraphs, that they were not thrown off at a heat, but composed, or sketched, probably, on separate slips of paper, and then from haste, or want of time, sent to the printer without a proper fusion and arrangement of parts, Composition was only one of the anxious duties pertaining to the Letters. The materials had been to collect, inquiries to be made in various channels and of divers persons; and, lastly, the conveyance of the finished product, all under strict secrecy, to the office of the Advertiser.

All this, however, comports well with the history and character of Sir Philip Francis, whose ambition was less the desire of literary celebrity than of official pre-eminence. He was never a recluse, but a man of action; clever and alert in society, as well as a precocious scholar. When a minor, he frequently dined with his elders at the tabled'hôte of Slaughter's Coffee-house. Higher

sources of intelligence than that of town ad- the bitter objects of the attacks of Junius,

when his favorite patron, Lord Chatham, had recovered from his suspended animation, and had become eager to regain the premiership by the destruction of the coalition ministry. At this later period Calcraft, who had been deputy-commissary of musters, after enriching himself in the service of Lord Holland, but unable to reach the height of his ambition, had deserted his lordship for the opposite party, and become the confidential secretary of Lord Chatham. He was a member of the House of Commons, but, Junius says, gave silent votes. Though no speaker, he was extensively connected with, and well informed on, all state affairs. With him the younger Francis appears, from the "Chatham Correspondence," to have been in constant

ventures flowed from his peculiar connection at the War-office, or from persons who, like himself, were busy in the gossip, hopes, and affairs of political life. In all these respects he was advantageously placed, both from his position in a public department and personal affinities. Early in life, from ability and trustworthiness, he had obtained the confidential patronage of the first Lord Holland, next of the Earl of Chatham; these able and influential noblemen, not directly, probably, but through the intermediate agency of Earl Temple, Mr. Calcraft, and Dr. Francis, became the chief sources of the private information of Junius. They had ample means for contributing all the parliamentary, court, and club news that rendered the Letters remarkable. The City communication under the denomination of a news passed partly through the same hands, "friend." That this "friend" was the especially Mr. Calcraft's, and was obtained younger Francis, the author of the Letters, first from Alderman Beckford, and after his and the Sir Philip Francis of a later period, death from Alderman Sawbridge. Wilkes there can be no doubt. Evidence of the communicated with Junius through the me- most intimate and friendly ties between them dium of Mr. Woodfall. Such were the real may be readily adduced. Mr. Calcraft exbut unconscious dramatis persona, none of erted himself to obtain for Francis the apwhom appear to have been in the secret at pointment of deputy secretary-at-war; failthe outset of the Letters, and only some of ing in that, he on the same day Francis was them afterwards, when they had become cel- dismissed from the War-office, added a codebrated. That they were competent aux-icil to his will, bequeathing him a handsome iliaries, though unknowingly so, to all the legacy, and an annuity for life to Mrs. requirements of the Junius undertaking, and that their available aid, it is likely, suggested to Francis his enterprise, will be evident from some brief indication in the Essay referred to, of their social and official relations.

Francis.* This fact, and the disclosures in the Chatham papers of the constant interchange of intelligence between Calcraft and Francis, led me to conclude that letters and papers which Francis had addressed to Lord Chatham's secretary might be in the possession of his descendants. Under this impression, I wrote to Mr. Calcraft, but almost immediately after I had done so, I learned from an unquestionable source that my application would be fruitless, as nearly half a century before Sir Philip Francis, aware that a mine existed in that quarter, had got back all his papers. No doubt Sir Philip destroyed them, as no scrap of them remains with his family; they shared in common, it is likely, the fate of the manuscript of Junius' Letters and the vellum-bound copy he received from Mr. Woodfall. It was in 1787 he got back his papers; he was then in hot

Dr. Francis, the accomplished father of Sir Philip, and not very dissimilar from him, was the favorite chaplain of Lord Holland, living in intimate fellowship with him. They met at the house of Mrs. G. A. Bellamy, the noted courtesan, then in the keeping of Mr. John Calcraft, who had been the confidential clerk of his lordship in the busiest period of his career. Lord Holland, after retiring from the king's service, continued a favorite at court: he was, in fact, the confidential adviser of both the king and Lord Bute in the chief ministerial crises that rapidly ensued from 1763 to 1770. It was by his lordship's intervention the Grafton ministry was strengthened by the Bedford party, and it was this ducal union that subsequently rendered the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford | sary.

*Not the lawfully affianced, as I have been informed by a lady contemporary of the parties, but she had previously done with the deputy-commisliving with Francis on the same terms, probably,

war against Warren Hastings, when any dis- fast and anxious disavowal of them? Ex

covery that he was the redoubtable Junius would have been damaging to his influence, as several of his colleagues in the impeachment of the ex-governor-general were among those he had bitterly reviled under the shelter of his nom de guerre.

The Calcraft disclosure added an important link to the chain of testimony. In an article on Hastings, Lord Macaulay enumerated five points, identifying in his position, pursuits, and connections Sir. P. Francis with Junius, and only two of which could be found in any other person. For myself, I reduced the roll of candidates immensely, by showing that Junius was certainly not a clergyman of any grade, nor a lawyer, nor a member of either House of Parliament. In addition, I cleared up the difficulties preceding investigators had left relative to the intellectual competence of Sir Francis to the task of Junius; his ready and various sources of intelligence; his evasive denial of the Letters; the different style of his later public writings, and the conditions of reticence which his compact with Lord North enforced both on himself and others in the secret of his authorship.

Junius will ever rank among the most able, best-sustained, and successful of literary impostures. By big words, classic style, loud professions of disinterestedness, and patrician demeanor, the public was misled for almost a century. The anxious vigilance the deception imposed on the author must have been immense, and for which his direct reward was nil. He wholly failed in his leading purpose; in lieu of a Chatham, a North became premier, and the people, weary, of changes without amendments, acquiesced in the substitution. Disgusted with the results, Junius withdrew from the arena to a new sphere of action, and, it may be added, of disappointment and baffled schemes.

cept indirectly, in a kind of death-bed confession, never the slightest admission or indication escaped him of the authorship. Overtly and conclusively he never seems to have coveted any fame or merit pertaining to them. Indeed, he considered himself superior to them, Lord Brougham intimates; and, no doubt improving with the fashion of the age, he had become so in respect of the private details and calumnies in which Junius had freely indulged, to give piquancy to his writings. But more cogent reasons may be adduced for his abstinence in the later incidents and connections of his public life. The avowal of the authorship would have exiled him from society; for how could many of the distinguished persons with whom he subsequently became intimately connected have associated with the anonymous defamer of their dearest connections, both by blood and political ties? How, for instance, could the Dukes of Grafton or Bedford, who survived during the active portion of the life of Francis, and whom Junius had calumniated with unscrupulous bitterness, have consorted with him. Their numerous descendants must have cherished corresponding provocatives to alienation and resentment. In what way some of them felt towards Junius may be instanced in a distinguished living personage, better known for amiability than the violence of his antipathies. I allude to the comments of Lord John Russell in his Introductions to the "Bedford Correspondence." Junius, in the fashion of his age, sought to lessen the influence of public men by defaming their private character, a species of irrelevant hostility to which political disputants of the present day have become superior. After some reflections on this abuse of the liberty of the press, and the tendency of anonymous writing to exaggeration, Lord John Russell adverts in strong terms to Junius. "But it seems," says his lordship, "to have been the delight of this libeller to harrow the souls of those who were prominent in public life; and while he had not the courage

His labors in the composition of the Letters and concealment of their authorship were enormous, without enabling him to carry off any brilliant trophy, or derive any comfort, not even that of self-satisfaction. to fight with the sword in the open daylight, Whatever contemporary pride he might have had in the Letters, he appears to have had none afterwards. Else why his stead

* Edinburgh Review, October, 1841.

he had too much malignity to refrain from the use of the dagger, covered by a mask, and protected by the obscurity of the night. Nor can any excuse be found for him in the warmth of his ardor for public liberty. His

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