“What we read from your pen, we remember before.”
WHO WROTE “JUNIUS’S LETTERS”?
This question has not yet been satisfactorily answered. In 1812, Dr. Mason Good, in an essay he wrote on the question, passed in review all the persons who had then been suspected of writing these celebrated letters. They are, Charles Lloyd and John Roberts, originally treasury clerks; Samuel Dyer, a learned man, and a friend of Burke and Johnson; William Gerard Hamilton, familiarly known as “Single-speech Hamilton;” Mr. Burke; Dr. Butler, late Bishop of Hereford; the Rev. Philip Rosenhagen; Major-General Lee, who went over to the Americans, and took an active part in their contest with the mother-country; John Wilkes; Hugh Macaulay Boyd; John Dunning, Lord Ashburton; Henry Flood; and Lord George Sackville.
Since this date, in 1813, John Roche published an Inquiry, in which he persuaded himself that Burke was the author. In the same year there appeared three other publications on Junius: these were, the Attempt of the Rev. J. B. Blakeway, to trace them to John Horne Tooke; next were the “Facts” of Thomas Girdlestone, M.D., to prove that General Lee was the author; and, thirdly, a work put forth by Mrs. Olivia Wilmot Serres, in the following confident terms:—“Life of the Author of Junius’s Letters,—the Rev. J. Wilmot, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford;” and, like most bold attempts, this work attracted some notice and discussion.
In 1815, the Letters were attributed to Richard Glover, the poet of Leonidas; and this improbable idea was followed by another, assigning the authorship of the Letters to the Duke of Portland, in 1816. In the same year appeared “Arguments and Facts,” to show that John Louis de Lolme, author of the famous Essay on the Constitution of England, was the writer of these anonymous epistles. In 1816, too, appeared Mr. John Taylor’s “Junius Identified,” advocating the claims of Sir Philip Francis so successfully that the question was generally considered to be settled. Mr. Taylor’s opinion was supported by Edward Dubois, Esq., formerly the confidential friend and private secretary of Sir Philip, who, in common with Lady Francis, constantly entertained the conviction that his deceased patron was identical with Junius.
In 1817, George Chalmers, F.S.A., advocated the pretensions of Hugh Macaulay Boyd to the authorship of Junius. In 1825, Mr. George Coventry maintained with great ability that Lord George Sackville was Junius; and two writers in America adopted this theory.
Thus was the whole question re-opened; and, in 1828, Mr. E. H. Barker, of Thetford, refuted the claims of Lord George Sackville and Sir Philip Francis, and advocated those of Charles Lloyd, private secretary to the Hon. George Grenville.[3]
In 1841, Mr. N. W. Simons, of the British Museum, refuted the supposition that Sir Philip Francis was directly or indirectly concerned in the writing; and, in the same year, appeared M. Jaques’s review of the controversy, in which he arrived at the conclusion that Lord George Sackville composed the Letters, and that Sir Philip Francis was his amanuensis, thus combining the theory of Mr. Taylor with that of Mr. Coventry.