fine; nor, that ancient Spanish honour, so much esteemed in England, would gladly pay the stipulated ransom. But the event proved different. The Spaniards, after peace had been concluded, could not fear that Britain would, for the sake of the Manila ransom, renew the war. They refused the payment; the bills were protested; and General Draper, and Admiral Cornish, were left to solicit the British ministry with long and fruitless assiduity, to procure from Spain that justice which was due to themselves, and the soldiers and sailors, the companions of their perils and their victory. But General Draper was honoured with the approbation of his country; from his king, obtained the ribbon of the Order of the Bath, with other advantages, of which JUNIUS Sufficiently speaks; and, having returned from the east, not without considerable acquisitions of fortune, was enabled to retire to the respectable enjoyment of ease and dignity, at Clifton, near Bath, where he possessed an elegant house and gardens ; or, occasionally, among his friends of taste, rank, and fashion, in London. In his garden at Clifton, he erected a cenotaph, with a fine inscription, written by himself, sacred to the memory of his old military comrades, the officers and soldiers of the sixty-ninth regiment, in company with whom he had often fought, and who had fallen in the east. On several occasions, his ability as a writer was made known to the public; always with advantage. He had a vanity in shewing, that he was no less an elegant scholar, than a gallant and. skilful soldier. There was a mixture of literary ambition, soldierly frankness, and ardent friendship, in his eager interposition, in the following Letter, to defend the Marquis of Granby against the bold imputations of JUNIUS. So far as literary fame might be his object, he has not been disappointed. He is generally confessed to have been an adversury not unworthy of him to whom he opposed himself. In his Letter, which he seems to have sitten down, in a great passion to write, Sir William expatiates, first, on the mischief of libellous attacks on the characters of great men; and, with no small felicity of phrase, names the neglect to vindicate worth thus libelled—a sort of mispri sion of treason against society. He describes the character of Lord, Granby, from personal knowledge, as exhibiting a noble assemblage of all the military virtues; brave, untainted with any meanness of sen timent, loyal, to want and distress even prodigally bountiful, a - stranger to vanity, though more than almost any one else alive to the sense of true glory. He affirms, this nobleman never, in his of

fice

fice of commander in chief, to have bestowed commissions otherwise than upon men whose condition would give them a natural interest to defend their country, without making themselves instruments for the suppression of its liberties. He relates, that the Marquis employed, at least, as much care upon the general state of the army, as was necessary to preserve its spirit and discipline. And he denies, that any commissions were improperly disposed of, from the selfish anxiety of the commander in chief, to provide, exclusively, for his own relations and dependents. Concluding himself to have thus sufficiently vindicated his friend from every aspersion JUNIUS had thrown out against him; he closes his Letter with calling on that writer to ask Lord Granby's pardon, and with quoting a few of his own words against himself.

SIR,

26. January, 1769.

THE kingdom swarms with such numbers of felonious robbers of private character and virtue, that no honest or good man is safe; especially as these cowardly, base, assassins stab in the dark, without having the courage to sign their real names to their malevolent and wicked productions. A writer, who signs himself JUNIUS, in the Public Advertiser of the 21st instant, opens the deplorable situation of his country in a very affecting manner: with a pompous parade of his candour and decency, he tells us, that we see dissensions in all parts of the empire, an universal spirit of distrust and dissatisfaction, and a total loss of respect towards us in the eyes of foreign powers. But this writer, with all his boasted candour, has not told us the real cause of the evils he so pathetically enumerates. I

shall

shall take the liberty to explain the cause for him. JUNIUS, and such writers as himself, occasion all the mischief complained of, by falsely and maliciously traducing the best characters in the kingdom. For when our deluded people at home, and foreigners abroad, read the poisonous and inflammatory libels that are daily published with impunity, to vilify

JUNIUS, and such writers as himself, occasion all the mischief, &c.] This is the wild outcry of passion blind to all true discernment. Yet, even in this error, there was a mixture of truth. The first cause of the weakness of the government; and the discontents of the people, existed, in the inability of the old Whig party, the followers of the Pelhams, to maintain themselves in office, exercising a vigorous, popular government, and in their strength, which they, however, still retained, to disturb any rivals who should endeavour to supplant them in the administration. The second existed in that progress of events, and in those particular counsels, which had made the resolution to govern by an union of Whigs with Tories, in which the latter should if possible predominate, a fixed principle of the present reign. The third arose from its being not a man of lofty disinterestedness, of sublime, overawing, political talents, and of splendid good fortune in his ministry, such as Lord. Chatham, but the meaner mind, the more selfish spirit, the more luckless fortune, of Lord Bute, that was chosen to accomplish this great change in the plan of the British government. The fourth had its existence, no doubt, in the agency which operated on public opinion, through the press, and in the various enunciations of that opinion, thus influenced, which were conveyed to the world by the same channel. But, had only the populace and low traders in political scribbling, at this time, spoken through the press; the effect could not have been very important. It, was because the great political leaders, both directly and indirectly, interested themselves to contend, as well through the press, as in Parliament, and found the former the shorter passage to the ear of the people, that political writing acquired, at this time, so much power to do, whether good or evil.

those

those who are any way distinguished by their good qualities and eminent virtues; when they find no notice taken of, or reply given to, these slanderous tongues and pens, their conclusion is, that both the ministers and the nation have been fairly described; and they act accordingly. I think it therefore the duty of every good citizen to stand forth, and en-` deavour to undeceive the public, when the vilest arts are made use of to defame and blacken the brightest characters among us. An eminent author affirms it to be almost as criminal to hear a worthy man traduced, without attempting his justification, as to be the author of the calumny against him. For my own part, I think it a sort of misprision of treason against society. No man, therefore, who knows Lord Granby, can possibly hear so good and great a character most vilely abused, without a warm and just indignation against this JUNIUS, this high-priest of envy, malice, and all uncharitableness,

JUNIUS, this high priest of envý, &c.] Here is a figure, the use of which bespeaks the academic. It is correct, expressive, not unsuitably applied. But it is borrowed from the Scriptures, with a formality and labour, which shew that the writer, in using it, forgot his argument, for the sake of an ornament, derived nót from invention, but from mere memory. Nor was he the first to use it in this manner. It had been so employed an hundred times before, by divines in their sermons, and by school-boys in their themes. Its use in this place is, to interrupt the free course of thought and reasoning; while the author seems to say, in it,--" Mark, gentle reader, "how well I have read my Bible, and my History of the Heathen

Gods; with what skill I can borrow a figure, how aptly intro"duce, how distinctly and correctly display it !"

who

who has endeavoured to sacrifice our beloved commander in chief at the altars of his horrid deities. Nor is the injury done to his lordship alone, but to the whole nation, which may too soon feel the contempt, and consequently the attacks, of our late enemies, if they can be induced to believe that the person, on whom the safety of these kingdoms so much depends, is unequal to his high station, and destitute of those qualities which form a good general. One would have thought that his lordship's service in the cause of his country, from the battle of Culloden to his most glorious conclusion of the late war, might have intitled him to common respect and decency at least; but this uncandid, indecent writer, has gone so far as to turn one of the most amiable men of the age into a stupid, unfeeling, and senseless being; possessed, indeed, of a personal courage, but void of those essential qualities which distinguish the commander from the common soldier.

1

A VERY long, uninterrupted, impartial, I will add, a most disinterested friendship with Lord

A very long, uninterrupted, &c.] This character of Lord Granby is, undeniably, well drawn, even with a pencil scarcely less happy, than that of JUNIUS himself appears in those few instances in which JUNIUS has tried panegyric. In one or two places, howSir WILLIAM DRAPER has used expressions, of which the shrewd penetration of JUNIUS was ready to take advantage against him; as the reader will perceive, on comparing this Letter with the following one.

ever,