The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1852-02-27
THE LETTERS OF JUNlUs.

ACotatCu aVPSaaS w ~ A''~''S
exhaustible. 1t has already exercised the IN
gennity Of more learned men than ever
brought their sagacity to bear upon any enigma
since the days of Gdipus, and II seems 10
have approached not one foot towards soiu-
ton. Not single name has yet been men,
toned that did not appear TO be associated with
SO MANY condolences and probabilities, as to
amount to certainty, at least until some
stronger candidate was brought upon the field.
The claim set up by the North British Review
for Laughln Mclean, appeared to us to be
strongly supported, and we should have yielded
to it our implicit faith, had we not been warned
by past experience not to trust to any appear
ances, however specious. In the meantime,
the enquiry, itself, has been of benefit TO gene
raj literature, as well as to history. 1t has en-
listed great variety of talent, and preserved
from premature oblivion many striking events
that tend to illustrate the time in which the
shadowy form of Junius had its existence.
We have not seen the late volumes of Lord
Mahon's history, which embrace this period,
and contain, it is said, very interesting dis
QUESTION upon the subjectin question. Bya long
train of reasoning, the strength of which we Of
course, cannot estimate, he arrives at the con-
clusion that Sir Philip Francis has been pro-
perly designated as Junius, and, it is said, de-
clares that he could be convicted of the fact
before any impartial jury in Christendom. We
know not what new evidence he may have pro-
duced, yet we are prone to believe that he has
added little to what Taylor had already spread
upon record. The work of this latter, though
exceedingly ingenious, as much so, indeed, as
the reasoning by which Bishop Whateley
proved that no such man as Napoleon Bona
parte ever existed, is very far from being con-
elusive TO our understanding. When coupled
with the frequent positive, and sometimes
fierce denials of Francis himself, we regard it
as a complete failure. 1t has never struck us
that Francis was equal to the task. In
the many passages introduced by Taylor
to prove the resemblance of style between
tween Junius and Francis, we have not been
able to detect the slightest evidence that the
two were one and the same person. Besides,
if Francis were really Junius, he was the most
detestably ungrateful wretch that ever ex-
lctCus tUI oopCfoCS MS pC5i W ltii ma
Lightly which tits impossible to describe, and
which, to them, must have been, TO the last de-
gree, painful. The character of Francis, on
the contrary, was any thing but this. Fierce,
saturnine, unforgiving, he yet never forgot a
favor, or forsook friend. Many years after
his early patron, Wellbore Ellis, had been ga
thered to his fathers, we find him standing up
in the House of Commons to defend his memo
ry, and to acknowledge the deep debt of gra-
titude which he owed him. This very Well
bore Ellis. be it remembered, was one of those
who suffered most severely from the lash of
Julius, which not only excoriated all upon
whom it fell, but left the gashes it had inflicted
ranking with venom which forbade them to
heal in this world
A writer in the last Quarterly Review has
brought forward the name of a new candidate
for the honor of having written the letters of
! Junus. This is no other than the celebrated
Thomas Lord Lyttelton, whose extraordinary
! talents were acknowledged by the whole ma
ition, and the singular circumstances of whose
! premature death, are so well known. Upon
! the whole, though we have learned to distrust
!, all theories upon the subject, we regard this
/ as the strongest case yet made out. That the
genius OF Lyttelton was equal to the task, there
cannot be question: that his malignity was
not surpassed by the rancor which seemed to
exude from every pore of the skin of the real
Junius, we think no man who has read his LETT
:; tiers and speeches will venture to deny. There
! was, moreover, between the two similarity of
: ideas which, as they were both very eccentric
thinkers, it seems almost impossible TO recon-
Gle upon any other theory than that which re-
. cosnises them as one and the same Individual.
The private letters of Lord Lyttelton we're not
published until the year 1880. The private
letters OF Junius to the Printer, Woodfall, were
FIRST laid before the world, in print, in the year
1872. The resemblance between the two, not
only IN manner and in sentiment, but in the
! subjects of which they treat, appears so strik-
ing, that 1t is very difficult TO conceive it TO
have been the result of accident. The inyete-
rate disposition of Junius to gossip, the scam
daious anecdotes which he relates, the co,eries
with which he was familiar, are all displayed
in the private letters of Ly ttelton with so much
=
are apt TO forget that you are not reading the
other. There could have been no imitation on
the part of Lyttelton, for if he were not Ju-
MUS, he had not seen the private letters to
WoodfalI; nor on the part of Junius, for he
finished writing eight years before Lyttelton's
letters were published. There are, moreover,
in the letters of the two, sentiments so very
singular, thar it appears almost impossible
that they could have been entertained by two
different persons. In addition to all this, their
loves appear to have been the same, their ha-
,reds the same, their principles the same,
throughout the career Of both. Junus adored
George Granville; SO. did Lyttelton. Junius
hated the Duke of Bedford; SO did Lyttelton.
Junius was opposed to America, and in fav or OF
creating dictatorship for the crisis in which
he lived; so was Lytteltou, The cbarac,ar;s.