JUNIUS IDENTIFIED. CHAPTER I. IN reading the late enlarged edition of the Letters of JUNIUS, with the design of profiting from the study of what has long been deemed an English Classic, I found so decided a connection, and so many traces of resemblance, between SIR PHILIP FRANCIS and the anonymous author, that I was tempted to lay the facts before the public. I am now aware of many inaccuracies in that statement. It was too hastily put together, to justify the confidence with which it was advanced. I did not consider that the various minor proofs, "As thick and numberless "As the gay motes that people the sunbeams," which were constantly present to my eyes, from the situation in which I had placed myself, would be of course unseen, and unsuspected, by all those B who either gave the subject but a momentary glance, or were inclined to view it under a different aspect. Nor were the weightier matters worthy, of themselves, to establish that conviction in the mind of others with which my own was impressed, partly from unskilfulness in the selection of them, and partly from the difficulty of doing justice to so complicated a question without too great prolixity. In one particular there was, I believe, a fundamental error in my former statement: whether it was sufficiently important to be styled a "falsehood" I shall not stop to inquire, satisfied if under that mistake the charge finds honourable shelter. I had attributed the production of the Letters of JUNIUS as well to Dr. FRANCIS, as to his son Sir PHILIP. Of some connection between the latter and the writer of those Letters, I could not on the evidence of JUNIUS have a doubt. The difficulty of supposing him to be the sole author, lay in the belief that he was at that time only in his 19th year, and therefore too young to have that knowledge of the world, and that experience in composition, for which the author of the Letters was distinguished. This opinion, into which I was led by an incorrect account of his life, naturally caused me to look around for a probable coadjutor; and in the character of the celebrated Dr. FRANCIS, I cer tainly found many of those elements which seemed to me indicative of JUNIUS. As the translator of Demosthenes, he had appeared before the world in a capacity which well qualified him for accomplishing the great work which had been undertaken by JUNIUS, who was often styled by his contemporaries the English Demosthenes. Dr. FRANCIS was an ardent admirer of liberty, though no friend to a republican form of government. In his notes to Demosthenes and Horace, he abounds with passages written in the very spirit of JUNIUS. And of the free use of interrogatives, which contribute so much to the strength and beauty of the style, and form so peculiar a feature in the writings of JUNIUS, Dr. FRANCIS speaks in the highest terms, and furnishes many fine examples *. But his own character may be more correctly gathered from one passage in his Introduction to Demosthenes, than from any description that can be given. It shews not only the sentiments but the ability of the writer. "Our orator now appears upon the scene in a character well worthy of his own great abilities; indeed, of all the powers of eloquence. We behold him in personal opposition to, perhaps, the greatest prince that ever sat upon a throne; yet neither awed by his power, imposed upon by his artifices, or corrupted by his gold. Animated by the love FRANCIS'S Demosthenes, i. 54. of liberty, that noblest of all human passions, he stands forth the guardian and defender of his country: an equal terror to the tyrant, who would enslave her, as to the traitors who would betray. Whatever sentiments that passion can inspire, whatever arguments good sense can dictate, whatever ideas of highest sublimity his own great genius could conceive, the reader will find in the following orations, philippics, and olynthiacs. After such a character of them, what modest excuse can be made for the translator? He professes, and surely without suspicion of affectation, his apprehension of sinking under the attempt. Yet while he feels the influence of the same passions that animate the original, he will not wholly despair of the translation*." It is said that Dr. FRANCIS was a favourite with the king, who consulted him on many occasions. He was also the intimate friend of Garrick, whose endeavours to discover JUNIUS gave him so much annoyance. And in addition to these instances of general resemblance, it must not be unnoticed that Dr. FRANCIS had that connection with the family of the late Lord Holland, which accounts satisfactorily for the respect and forbearance which JUNIUS observed, whenever they were mentioned. As in the following pages it is not attempted |