"To the public this may appear a romantic story, but they may depend on the authenticity of it, which is supported by many other facts. "It is well known that one of the parcels of Junius was marked with the seal of Edmund Burke; and upon Burke being challenged as to the fact, he declared that it was either a forgery, or that his friend Fitzgerald was the author of Junius; for he recollected breakfasting with Fitzgerald the morning the parcel was delivered, and that Fitzgerald asked his seal to put upon a letter, by apologizing that he could not find his own. "It is also well known that the Letters of Junius were traced first to Lincoln's-inn-fields, and next to Chancerylane, in which two places Gilbert Stuart at different times resided. 66 AN OLD MAGISTRATE." It is needless to observe that this letter is entitled to little attention,-it is an anonymous communication, and unsupported either by external or internal evidence; it is also open to the objection, that it makes four persons possessed of the secret; now, that four persons, such as the letter describes, should keep such a secret inviolate, in spite of all the temptations to betray it, which vanity and interest would present, is highly improbable. Stuart was in narrow, Boyd in embarrassed circumstances, and neither remarkable for circumspection. The writer was acquainted with the family of Mr. Fitzgerald, who is mentioned in the transcription, and with several of his friends. He took a leading part in the riot at Drury-lane, which enforced, against the unwilling manager, the admission into the theatre, after the close of the third act, at half price. This exposed Mr. Fitzgerald to ridicule, but he was allowed to be a man of learning and elegant pursuits. He resided at Hampstead; one of his most intimate friends was a Mr. Madan, a gentleman who resided in the same place; a profound classical scholar, and yet remembered by many with respect. This gentleman, in 1776, mentioned to the Reminiscent, that he always suspected his friend Fitzgerald was the author of Junius's Letters, and thought him more than equal to the composition of them. But such circumstances are light as air, and even this mention of them may be thought to require an apology. NOTE II. referred to in page 177. EXTRACT from Letters, with which Doctor Parr has honoured the Reminiscent:-On the high polish of Virgil's diction--the Character of Archbishop Cranmer-and Polemic Moderation in religious Disputes. "AS to your own book, I read the two first volumes attentively. I was very much instructed by them: I was, in general, pleased with their spirit; but, upon one point, you have dropped from your dignified eminence of liberality. You have been pointedly acrimonious, and, in my judgment, have been glaringly unjust to the memory of CRANMER. It was impossible for me not to contrast your elaborate and most peremptory strictures upon him, with the conciseness, which you preserved, when you spoke of two well known Roman Catholics, who were his contemporaries.* I do not mean to say that Cranmer was faultless, or quite consistent. I have not seen the human being, who, under similar circumstances, would not sometimes have failed. I do not lay much stress upon self-preservation, when Cranmer was in danger of his life from a capricious tyrant. Cranmer ought to have cared little about life and death but in yielding to the tyrant, he was enabled to carry on that scheme of reformation, which perhaps you regret, and in which I triumph.--I lately turned to Lingard; and, upon the whole, I am much less dissatisfied with him than with yourself, so far as Cranmer is concerned; and I quite agree with Lingard, that, after : *Gardiner and Bonner;-the Reminiscent believes that the first was highly blameable, the second perfectly detestable, if one half reported of them be true. Wolsey had lost his ascendancy over the mind of Harry, his passions were more violent, and his crimes were more outrageous. Mr. Butler, I read with distrust the mutual reproaches of Romanists and Protestants, as they are called; and you may be assured that, in conversing with English divines, I often resist their attacks upon the church of Rome; even in events, which have long ago passed away.-There is much to be forgiven in all parties. And how could it be otherwise in such a state of things?" "I thank you for sending me the proposed TRANSPOSITION IN VIRGIL ;* and I am yet more convinced of its propriety. It continues the invocations, which are now strangely interrupted; and it is followed, as it ought to be, by the preceptive. You are very right in supposing that Virgil carried the Roman language to its fullest extent; and that, by going a little farther, he might have gone too far. That language would not have supplied him with sufficient variety for epic composition, if he had confined himself to the poetical language formed by his predecessors. Upon this point, we can judge very well by the fragments of Ennius, and by the heroics of Catullus; and yet more, by the ornamental parts of Lucretius. Doubtless, there are passages, which even the contemporaries of Virgil must have found somewhat dissimilar to vernacular idiom. The only resource Virgil had was in Grecism. But here, we must distinguish he, in more than a thousand places, takes his matter from Greek poets of various ages; and more especially from the Homeric poems. He had before him the poets of the Alexandrian school, and I have had occasion to observe to scholars, that, in the structure and cadence of his verse, he resembles the writers of Alexandria, even more than the older writer of the Odyssey and Iliad.—True. But pray observe, that, while he imitates the thoughts and almost words of : * See ante, p. 176;-Two transpositions are there suggested by the Reminiscent. Dr. Parr's observation in this place refers to the first:-In a subsequent letter, he disapproves the second. Greek poets, he does not adopt any Greek idioms: He employs those idioms when, according to his own taste, he could employ them well; and I am quite certain that, when the Eneid came out, it was considered by his contemporaries as a learned poem; and that, according to their different tastes, the novelty of his Grecising phraseology pleased or displeased. Moreover, he indulged largely in the hiatus, as did the Greeks.-The peculiarities, to which I advert, appeared to him, and appear to me, beauties. Now and then they put a learner upon the stretch. But, the last impression is always favourable. He has one peculiar and transcendental excellence. In many of his lines, and some even of his shorter sentences, the words are plain and familiar; and yet, by the power of synthesis, they are graceful to the imagination, and harmonious to the ear.* With this property of the poems, I should connect another of high merit. You will find it in his transitions from the elaborate and grand language to a more familiar tone. Luckily for us, we can compare Virgil with Lucan, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Claudian. Every one of them, more or less, imitates Virgil: But they seldom or never imitate him, when he stretches his phraseology beyond the common and well known structure of the Latin tongue. Silius Italicus formed his very sentences and his rhythm on the model of Virgil; but, even in Silius Italicus, we meet not with the qualities which I am now considering. You are right in supposing, that Horace does not abound with those seeming deviations from Latinity, or the soaring above it, which I ascribe to Virgil. I have studied the Ağ and Zuvers of Horace attentively, and I am charmed with them. But you must not forget that even Horace now and then deliberately, and in conformity to the licentiousness of lyric poetry, had recourse to Grecism. I give you two instances, -desine mollium Tandem querelarum. Does not Milton often do the same? "Again, "Uxor invicti Jovis esse nescis." "Assuredly, Horace felt that his own language was far, far, far inferior to the Greek, in the boldness and variety of lyric diction; and under that impression he wrote his ode about Pindar, as a writer who could not be equalled, and talks of the nova verba rolling in dithyrambics, and the numeri lege soluti." "Let us turn to other and weightier matters. The lines in Juvenal are most impressive.* But no reader of history; no observer of human events; no searcher into the anecdotes of courts, will venture to deny that they are applicable to men of all ages, to ministers, and generals, and kings and ecclesiastics.-Do me the justice to remember that I anticipated your remark about Cranmer, and stated explicitly, that, amidst his arduous duties, life and death were considerations quite unworthy; and at the same time I contended, that in many of his compliances, he was guided by another sense of duty in promoting the great cause of the Reformation. Mr. Butler, it is quite impossible for you or myself to suppose, that, with such a monarch as Henry VIII. and in such a disturbed condition of things, civil and ecclesiastical, human wisdom and human virtue could in all cases have enabled any human being to preserve his innocence. I adopted Mr. Lingard's just observations upon the advantage which arose from the salubrious influence of cardinal *The Reminiscent had respectfully asked doctor Parr whether the noble picture presented by Juvenal, of unshaken constancy under the severest trials, in the celebrated verses, -Ambiguæ si quando vocabere testis, could be justly applied to Cranmer ? † Did not sir Thomas Moore preserve his innocence? JUVENAL. |