["Who might the other be, his comrade in guilt and in suffering,
Brought to the proof like him, and shrinking like him from the trial?
Nameless the Libeller lived, and shot his arrows in darkness;
Undetected he passed to the grave, and leaving behind him
Noxious works on earth, and the pest of an evil example,
Went to the world beyond, where no offences are hidden.
Masked had he been in his life, and now a visor of iron,
Rivetted round his head, had abolished his features for ever.
Speechless the slanderer stood, and turned his face from the Monarch,
Iron-bound as it was ... so insupportably dreadful
Soon or late to conscious guilt is the eye of the injured."
Vision of Judgement, v. i]
[ [hh] Or in the human cholic——.—[MS. erased.]
[ [hi] Which looked as 'twere a phantom even on earth.—[MS. erased.]
[ [hj] Now it seemed little, now a little bigger.—[MS. erased.]
[ [539] {513}[The Letters of Junius have been attributed to more than fifty authors. Among the more famous are the Duke of Portland, Lord George Sackville, Sir Philip Francis, Edmund Burke, John Dunning, Lord Ashburton, John Home Tooke, Hugh Boyd, George Chalmers, etc. Of Junius, Byron wrote, in his Journal of November 23, 1813, "I don't know what to think. Why should Junius be yet dead?.... the man must be alive, and will never die without the disclosure" (Letters, 1893, ii. 334); but an article (by Brougham) in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxix. p. 94, on The Identity of Junius with a Distinguished Living Character established (see Letters, 1900, iv. 210), seems to have almost persuaded him that "Francis is Junius." (For a résumé of the arguments in favour of the identity of Junius with Francis, see Mr. Leslie Stephen's article in the Dict. of Nat. Biography, art. "Francis." See, too, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, by W. E. H. Lecky, 1887, iii. 233-255. For a series of articles (by W. Fraser Rae) against this theory, see Athenæum, 1888, ii. 192, 258, 319. The question is still being debated. See The Francis Letters, with a note on the Junius Controversy, by C. F. Keary, 1901.)]
[ [hk] A doctor, a man-midwife——.—[MS. erased.]
[ [hl] {514} Till curiosity became a task.—[MS. erased.]
[ [540] [The "Man in the Iron Mask," or, more correctly, the "Man in the Black Velvet Mask," has been identified with Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli, Secretary of State at the Court of Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. Mattioli was convicted of high treason, and at the instance of Louis XIV. was seized by the Maréchal Catinat, May 2, 1679, and confined at Pinerolo. He was deported to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, March 19, 1694, and afterwards transferred to the Bastille, September 18, 1698. He died November 19, 1703. Baron Heiss was the first to solve the mystery. Chambrier, Roux-Fazillac, Delort, G. A. Ellis (see a notice in the Quart. Rev., June, 1826, vol. xxxiv. p. 19), and others take the same view. (See, for confirmation of this theory, an article L'Homme au Masque de Velours Noir, in the Revue Historique, by M. Frantz Funck-Brentano, November, December, 1894, tom. 56, pp. 253-303.)]
[ [541] [See The Rivals, act iv. sc. II]