knowing, send it: otherwise not.

C

Instead of

C. in the usual place' say only a letter' when you have occasion to write to me again. I shall understand

you

Some apprehension he seems to have suffered, as already observed, from the impertinent curio. sity of Swinney; but his resentment was chiefly roused by that of David Garrick, who appears from his own account, and from intelligence on which he fully relied, to have been pertinacious in his attempts to discover him. For three weeks or a month, he could scarcely ever write to Mr. Woodfall without cautioning him to be specially on his guard against Garrick: and under this impression alone, he once changed his address. He wrote to Garrick a private note of severe castigation through the medium of the printer, which the latter, from an idea that it was unnecessarily acrimonious, resubmitted to his consideration with a view of dissuading him from sending it 3, upon which our author desired him to tell Garrick personally to desist, or he would be amply revenged upon him. "As it is important," says he, "to deter him from meddling, I desire you will tell him I am aware of his practices, and will certainly be revenged if

1 Private Letter, No. 12.

Id. No. 41.

3 Compare Private Letter, No. 41. with No. 43. The letter to Garrick will be found in the former of these.

he does not desist. An appeal to the public from JUNIUS would destroy him '."

It is not impossible to form a plausible guess at the age of JUNIUS, from a passage in one of his Private Letters; an enquiry, which, though otherwise of little or no consequence, is rendered in some measure important, as a test to determine the validity of the claims that have been laid to his writings by different candidates or their friends. The passage referred to occurs in his letter to Woodfall, dated Nov. 27, 1771; "after long experience of the world," says he, "I affirm before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy"." Now when this declaration is coupled with the two facts, that he made it under the repeated promise and intention of speedily disclosing himself to his correspondent', and that the correspondent thus schooled, by a moral axiom gleaned from his own " long experience of the world," was at this very time something more than thirty years of age; it seems absurd to suppose that JUNIUS could be much less than fifty, or that he affected an age he had not actually attained.

There is another point in the history of his life, during his appearance as a public writer, which for the same reason must not be suffered

'Private Letter, No. 43. 2 Id. No. 44. 3 Id. No. 41.

to pass by without observation, although otherwise it might be scarcely entitled to notice; and that is, that during a great part of this time, from January, 1769, to January, 1772, he uniformly resided in London, or its immediate vicinity, and that he never quitted his stated habitation for a longer period than a few weeks. This too, we may collect from his private correspondence, compared with his public labours. No man but he, who with a thorough knowledge of our author's style, undertakes to examine all the numbers of the Public Advertiser for the three years in question, can have any idea of the immense fatigue and trouble he submitted to in composing other letters, under other signatures, in order to support the pre-eminent pretensions and character of JUNIUS, attacked as it was by a multiplicity of writers in favour of administration, to whom, as JUNIUS, he did not chuse to make any reply whatever. Surely JUNIUS himself, when he first undertook the office of public political censor, could by no means foresee the labour with which he was about to encumber himself. And instead of wondering that he should have disappeared at the distance of about five years, we ought much rather to be surprised that he should have persevered through half this period with a spirit at once so indefatigable and invincible. JUNIUS had no time for remote ex

cursions, nor often for relaxation, even in the vicinity of the metropolis itself.

Yet from his Private Letters we could almost collect a journal of his absences, if not an itinerary of his little tours: for he does not appear to have left London at any time without some notice to the printer, either of his intention, or of the fact itself upon his return home; independently of which the frequency and regularity of his correspondence seldom allowed of distant travel. "I have been out of town," says he, in his letter of Nov. 8, 1769, "for three weeks; and though I got your last, could not conveniently answer it'."-On another occasion, "I have been some days in the country, and could not conveniently send for your letter until this night" and again, "I must see proof-sheets of the Dedication and Preface; and these, if at all, I must see before the end of next week 3." In like manner" I want rest most severely, and am going to find it in the country for a few days 4.3

The last political letter that ever issued under the signature of JUNIUS was addressed to lord Camden. It appeared in the Public Advertiser for Jan. 21, 1772, and followed the publication of his long and elaborate address to lord Mans

1

Private Letter, No. 11.

2 Id. No. 7. 4 Id. No. 43.

3 Id. No. 45,

field upon the illegal bailing of Eyre; and was designed to stimulate the noble earl to a renewal of the contest which he had commenced with the chief justice towards the close of the preceding session of parliament. It possesses the peculiarity of being the only encomiastic letter that ever fell from his pen under the signature of JUNIUS. Yet the panegyric bestowed was not for the mere purpose of instigating lord Camden to the attack in question. There is sufficient evidence in his Private Letters that JUNIUS had a very high, as well as a very just opinion of the integrity of this nobleman; and an ardent desire that the estimate he had formed of his integrity should be known to the world at large. In the whole course of his political creed there seems to have been but one point upon which they dif. fered, and that was the doctrine assented to by his Lordship, that the crown possesses a power in case of very urgent necessity, of suspending the operation of an act of the legislature. It is a mere speculative doctrine, and JUNIUS only incidentally alluded to it in a letter upon a very different subject'. The disagreement upon this point seems eagerly to have been caught at, however, by another correspondent in the Public Advertiser, who chose the signature of Scæ

Letter LIX. Vol. II.

p.

344.

VOL. I.

D