The attention paid to these philippics, and the celebrity they had so considerably acquired, stimulated the author to new and additional exertions and having in the beginning of the ensuing year completed another with more than usual elaboration and polish, which he seems to have intended as a kind of introductory address to the nation at large, he sent it forth under the name of JUNIUS, (a name he had hitherto assumed but once,) to the office of the Public Adver, tiser, in which journal it appeared on Saturday, January 21, 1769. The popularity expected by the author from this performance was more than accomplished; and what in some measure added to his fame, was a reply (for the Public Advertiser was equally open to all parties) from a real character of no small celebrity both as a scholar and as a man of rank, sir Wm. Draper; principally because the attack upon his Majesty's ministers had extended itself to lord Granby, at that time commander in chief, for whom sir William professed the most cordial esteem and friendship.

Sir Wm. Draper appears to have been a worthy, and, on the whole, an independent man; and lord Granby was perhaps the most honest and immaculate of his majesty's ministers. JuNIUS did not begin the dispute with the former, and seems, from a regard for his character, to have continued it unwillingly: "My answer,"

No

says he to him in his last letter', upon a second assault, and altogether without reason, "shall be short; for I write to you with reluctance, and I hope we shall now conclude our correspondence for ever!" At the latter he had only glanced incidentally, (for upon the whole he approved his conduct',) and seems rather to have done so on account of the company he consorted with, than from any gross misdeeds of his own. thing could therefore have been more improvident or impolitic than this attack of sir Wm. Draper: if volunteered in favour of the ministry, it is impossible for a defence to have been worse planned;-for by confining the vindication to the individual that was least accused, it tacitly admits that the charges advanced against all the rest were well founded; while, if volunteered in favour of lord Granby alone, it might easily have been anticipated by the writer that his visionary opponent would be hereby challenged to bring forward peccadillos which would otherwise never be heard of, and that he would not fail, at the same time, to scrutinize the character of sir William himself, and to ascribe this act of precipitate zeal to an interested

I Letter xxv. Vol. II. p. 5.

2

See his opinion of lord Granby given under the name of Lucius, in the Miscellaneous Letters, Vol. III. p. 107; as also in the note at the close of JUNIUS, post, p. 445.

desire of additional promotion in the army. It was too much for sir William to expect that JUNIUS would be hurried into an intemperate disclosure of his real name by a swaggering offer to measure swords with him; while the following rebuke was but a just retaliation for his challenge.

"Had you been originally and without provocation attacked by an anonymous writer, you would have some right to demand his name. But in this cause you are a volunteer. You engaged in it with the unpremeditated gallantry of a soldier. You were content to set your name in opposition to a man who would probably continue in concealment. You understood the terms upon which we were to correspond, and gave at least a tacit assent to them. After voluntarily attacking me under the character of JUNIUS, what possible right have you to know me under any other? Will you forgive me if I insinuate to you, that you foresaw some honour in the apparent spirit of coming forward in person, and that you were not quite indifferent to the display of your literary qualifications ?"

In reality JUNIUS, though a severe satyrist, was not in his general temper a malevolent writer, nor an ungenerous man. No one has ever been more ready to admit the brilliant talents of sir William Blackstone than himself, or

to apply to his Commentaries for legal information, while reprobating his conduct in the unconstitutional expulsion of Mr. Wilkes from the house of commons. "If I were personally your enemy," says he in his letter to him upon this subject," I should dwell with a malignant pleasure upon those great and useful qualifications which you certainly possess, and by which you once acquired, though they could not preserve to you the respect and esteem of your country. I should enumerate the honours you have lost, and the virtues you have disgraced: but having no private resentments to gratify, I think it sufficient to have given my opinion of your public conduct, leaving the punishment it deserves to your closet and to yourself."

The rescue of general Gansel, by means of a party of guards, from the hands of the Sheriff's officers after they had arrested him for debt, was an outrage upon the law which well demanded castigation; and the attempt to quash this transaction on the part of the minister, instead of delivering the culprits over to the punishment they had merited, was an outrage of at least equal atrocity, and demanded equal reprobation. The severity with which the minister was repeatedly attacked by JUNIUS on this subject is still well known to many: but the reason is not yet known to any one perhaps, why the latter

suddenly dropped this subject, after having positively declared in his letter of November 15, 1769, Vol. II. p. 51, "if the gentlemen, whose conduct is in question, are not brought to a trial, the duke of Grafton shall hear from me again." From his Private Letters to Mr. Woodfall, we shall now learn that he was solely actuated in his forbearance by motives of humanity : "The only thing," says he in a note alluding to this transaction, "that hinders my pushing the subject of my last letter, is really the fear of ruining that poor devil Gansel, and those other blockheads '."

In like manner having been betrayed by the . first rumours of the day into what he afterwards found to have been too atrocious an opinion, and expressed himself with too indignant a warmth upon the conduct of Mr. Vaughan in his well known attempt to purchase of the duke of Grafton the reversion of a patent place in Jamaica, he hastened to make him both publicly and privately all the reparation in his power. "I think myself obliged," says he in a letter to the duke of Grafton, "to do this justice to an injured man, because I was deceived by the appearances thrown out by your Grace, and have frequently spoken of his conduct with indignation. If he really be, what I think him, honest, though mistaken, he will be happy in recovering his repu

See Private Letter, No. 11.