THE FALSE JUNIUSES. "Who and what art thou?" a nation said. Lord Byron. But, after all, who or what was JUNIUS? This shadow of a name, who thus shot his unerring arrows from an impenetrable concealment, and punished without being perceived? The question is natural; and it has been repeated almost without intermission, from the appearance of his first letter. It is not unnatural, moreover, from the pertinacity with which he has at all times eluded discovery, that the vanity of many political writers of inferior talents should have induced them to lay an indirect claim to his Letters, and especially after the danger of responsibility had considerably ceased. Yet, while the Editor does not undertake to communicate the real name of JUNIUS, he pledges himself to prove from incontrovertible evidence, afforded by the private letters of Junius himself, during the period in question, in connexion with other documents, that not one of these pretenders has ever had the smallest right to the distinction which some of them have ardently coveted. Dr. Good's Prelim. Essay, p. 9. I CHAPTER V. Names of the principal Persons to whom the Letters of Junius have been attributed.-Reason given by the Critics for concluding that Junius must have been an Irishman.-Some account of the false Juniuses.-Edmund Burke.-William Gerard Hamilton.-Hugh Macaulay Boyd.-Richard Glover. -General Charles Lee.-The Earl of Chesterfield.-William Greatrakes.-Lachlan Macleane. - Earl of Chatham.— Curious theory of a Reviewer respecting Junius.—Jeu d'esprit, entitled Junius with his Vizor up.-Lord Byron's hypothesis.-Anxiety of the friends of the different pretenders to disclaim the malignant spirit shewn by Junius.The competitors reduced to three individuals; viz. Lord George Sackville, Sir Philip Francis, and Mr. Charles Lloyd. THE FALSE JUNIUSES. I think there be six Richmonds in the field, Shakspeare. HAVING satisfactorily shewn that Junius could not have been an author by profession, a lawyer, or a divine, it becomes unnecessary to notice the pretensions of such of the claimants as belong to any of these professions,-we shall therefore proceed to consider the claims of the other principal candidates. It may, however, in the first place, be proper to mention, that the Letters of Junius have at various times been attributed to Lord George Sackville, Edmund Burke, William Gerard Hamilton, the Duke of Portland, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Chatham, Dr. Butler, bishop of Hereford, Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, Charles Lloyd, secretary to Mr. George Grenville, John Roberts, a clerk in the Treasury, the Rev. Philip Rosenhagen, the American General Lee, John Wilkes, Henry Flood, Richard Glover, the author of Leonidas, Hugh Macaulay Boyd, Samuel Dyer, Dr. Wilmot, and lastly Sir Philip Francis, with many others of less note. On perusing the above list, it will be observed, that several of the aspirants are natives of the Emerald Isle, and the pertinacity with which their claims in particular have been advocated, is rather remarkable. This appears somewhat singular when we find Junius has expressly, and repeatedly declared that he was an Englishman. Without some consideration, one might be inclined to suspect, that such ardent aspirations after laurels so hopeless, could only proceed from a certain confusion of ideas, which has been considered peculiar to the natives of that country. The apparent anomaly may, however, be thus accounted for: a vague, but very general suspicion has been rife from the first appearance of the Letters, that their author would ultimately prove to be a native of Ireland,--this suspicion is founded on the minute, and extensive knowledge displayed by Junius, of Irish families and affairs, combined with certain peculiarities in the diction, and phraseology of the Letters themselves, which seem to indicate that the author was an Irishman, or at least, had been educated in the University of Dublin. For instance, in one of his letters in reply to Mr. Horne, Junius uses the word cOLLEGIAN for an academic or gownsman, which is the term used in the University of Dublin, but not at either Oxford or Cambridge; and from this it has been inferred, that he could not have been a member of either of the English universities. On this point Dr. Good remarks (Preliminary Essay, p. 88): "Of those who have critically analyzed the style of Junius's 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 dependence is to be placed upon any such observations, others have equally pretended to prove, from a similar investigation, that he could not have been a native either of Scotland or Ireland, nor have studied in any university of either of these 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." Mr. Barker, on the contrary, says (p. 56), "Junius was so universally suspected to be an Irishman, or of Irish descent, that any attempt to prove it from his writings would be unnecessary for our present purpose." A writer, who signs himself Oxoniensis, mentions some of Junius's Hibernicisms. We shall quote one paragraph from his letter, chiefly for the sake of the proof it brings that Junius, whoever he might be, was a member of the University of Dublin:-"Edmund Burke received his education amongst the Irish Jesuits at St. Omer's, and finished his studies in Ireland. If any one will take the trouble of reading over the Letters of Junius, he will find that Edmund, notwithstanding all his care and pains, sometimes falls into Hibernicisms. In one place, he says, 'make common cause.' This is not English, though to be sure the phrase is common enough in Dublin. In Junius's letter of the 13th of August, he talks of the sophistries of a collegian.' This expression is not English; and the word collegian is never used in this sense, except in the College of Dublin and (perhaps) of St. Omer's. We say, indeed, fellow-collegian; but at the great schools here, those of the college are called collegers; and at our two universities, the members of a college are called gownsmen; at Dublin they are called collegians." Though Oxoniensis was wrong in his suspicion of Mr. Burke, his arguments to prove that Junius was, in his sense of the word, a collegian, are worthy of attention. |