Ireland are by no means favourable to Mr. Boyd's claims; for the letters of JUNIUS published in August, 1768, under the signatures of Atticus and Lucius, were written during one of them; and from the rapidity with which they seized hold of the events of the moment, and replied to the numerous vindications and apologies of the government-party, must have been written (not at Belfast) but in London, or its immediate vicinity'.

Campbell in his Life of Boyd, p. 22, relates the following anecdote of that gentleman, which occurred during the beforementioned visit to Ireland in the summer of 1768. "One evening while Mr. Flood sat at his own table, after dinner, entertaining a large company, of which Mr. Boyd was one, he received an anonymous note, enclosing a letter on the state of parties, signed Sindercombe. The note contained a request that Mr. Flood would peruse the enclosed letter, and that if it met his approbation he would get it published, which he accordingly did in a paper of the following morning, and the letter produced a very strong sensation on the public mind." Mr. Campbell proceeds to state that "every endeavour was made, without effect, to discover the author: that Mrs. Boyd always thought that Sindercombe was her husband's production, and that many years afterwards she was satisfied that her conjecture was founded in fact." If Mrs. Boyd were correct in her conjecture, as to her husband being the author of the letter under this signature, it would of itself, all but indisputably prove that he was not the writer of the letters of JUNIUS; as on Dec. 26, 1772, nearly twelve months after JUNIUS had ceased to publish under this signature, and many months after he had declined to write under any other, Sindercombe addresses the following card to him:

VOL. I.

K

"For

While his visit to the same country in 1772 was chiefly in consequence of extreme pecuniary distress, which had oppressed him for the preceding eighteen months or two years, and had driven him from the world, through a fear of being arrested; such were the opposite circumstances of JUNIUS, that the latter was refusing, at this very moment, the moiety of the profits resulting from the sale of his own edition of his letters, repeatedly pressed upon him, and to which he was fairly entitled; and offering, from a competent purse, a pecuniary indemnification to Woodfall on account of his prosecution by the crown.

There is, however, a note inserted in JUNIUS's

"For the Public Advertiser.

A CARD.

Dec. 26, 1772.

"SINDERCOMBE laments that JUNIUS is silent at a season that demands his utmost eloquence. Sindercombe has long waited with impatience for the completion of that promise, in which every friend to liberty is so deeply interested. JUNIUS has long since pledged himself that the corrupt administration of lord Townshend in Ireland shall not be lost to the public.' He now calls upon JUNIUS to fulfil that promise."

That is Boyd, the writer of JUNIUS as Campbell contends, calls upon himself to fulfil a promise which he had not the smallest intention to perform, as may be seen by reference to Private Letter, No. 63. Sindercombe is a signature of some peculiarity, and never appeared in the Public Advertiser during the period in which the writer of the letters of JUNIUS was a correspondent in that paper, which the reader will perceive was from April 28, 1767, to May 12, 1772.

own edition of these letters', in relation to lord Irnham, and his baseness to a young and confidential friend, that has been conceived by these same gentlemen as almost decisive in favour of Mr. Boyd's pretensions; the young man here alluded to, having been, as it should seem, one of Mrs. Boyd's guardians; the two families to which the fact relates, from the peculiar motives they possessed for keeping it a secret, not being supposed to have divulged it to any one, and Mrs. Boyd herself having only communicated it in strict confidence to her husband. Yet the reader of the ensuing Private Letters, after witnessing the rapidity with which JUNIUS became informed of Mr. Garrick's intimation to the King, and Swinney's visit to lord G. Sackville, will have no difficulty in conceiving that JUNIUS, though totally unacquainted with Mr. Boyd or his family, might have easily acquired a knowledge of secrets far more securely locked up than the present. In reality, from Mr. Campbell's own relation of this anecdote, it seems rather a matter of wonder that it should have been a secret to any one, than that it should have been known to JUNIUS at the time of his narrating it; for it appears that at least six persons were privy to the transaction almost from its first existence: the debauchee and the

See Vol. II. p. 402 of this work.

prostitute, the injured bridegroom and his two brothers, and Mrs. Boyd as a part of the bridegroom's family'.-Yet, from these three slender

1 In point of fact, the anecdote here referred to, was publicly known and propagated not less than three years earlier than the first edition of the Letters of JUNIUS, in which it is introduced as a note. For it appears in a letter in the Public Advertiser of April 7, 1769, with the signature of Recens, written by this same JUNIUS; from which the note in question is but a mere transcript, and given without altering a word. And yet Mr. Almon, in the preface to his own edition of JUNIUS's letters, in which he has taken care to bestow abundant abuse on the Printer of the Public Advertiser and his brother, because they did not chuse to unfold to him all they were acquainted with on this subject, has not scrupled to assert with his usual confidence, that "this note certainly was not written till after JUNIUS, having finally ceased to write under that signature, collected his letters and published them together, with many additions; which was in the course of 1772." Pref. p. lvi. This, however, is only one specimen of Mr. Almon's general accu. racy in the prosecution of his favourite topic: yet it is useless to add more: the death of the writer has put him beyond all power of reply; nor should even this have been noticed, but to shew how absurd were the pretensions of a man, so vain, so precipitate, and so incautious, to the character of an oracle upon this or any other subject; and how insolent it was in him to charge others with ignorance, incapacity and falsehood, who were possessed of better sources of information, and evinced a more punctilious adherence to truth. The letter itself is as follows: and it is copied for a comparison with the note.

7 April, 1769.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER. MR. WOODFALL, THERE is a certain family in this country, on which nature seems to have entailed an hereditary baseness of disposition.

As

facts,-Boyd's imitation of the style of JUNIUS, Almon's suspicion concerning his hand-writing, and the anecdote of lord Irnham, in conjunc

As far as their history has been known, the son has regularly improved upon the vices of his father, and has taken care to transmit them pure and undiminished into the bosom of his successor. In the senate, their abilities have confined them to those humble, sordid services, in which the scavengers of the ministry are usually employed. But in the memoirs of private treachery, they stand first and unrivalled. The following story will serve to illustrate the character of this respectable family, and to convince the world that the present possessor has as clear a title to the infamy of his ancestors, as he has to their estate. It deserves to be recorded for the curiosity of the fact, and should be given to the public as a warning to every honest member of society.

The present lord Irnham, who is now in the decline of life, lately cultivated the acquaintance of a younger brother of a family, with which he had lived in some degree of intimacy and friendship. The young man had long been the dupe of a most unhappy attachment to a common prostitute. His friends and relations foresaw the consequences of this connexion, and did every thing that depended upon them to save him from ruin. But he had a friend in lord Irnham, whose advice rendered all their endeavours ineffectual. This hoary letcher, not contented with the enjoyment of his friend's mistress, was base enough to take advantage of the passions and folly of a young man, and persuaded him to marry her. He descended even to perform the office of father to the prostitute. He gave her to his friend, who was on the point of leaving the kingdom, and the next night lay with her himself.

Whether the depravity of the human heart can produce any thing more base and detestable than this fact, must be left undetermined, until the son shall arrive at his father's age and experience. RECENS.