"From the Right Hon. Edmund Burke to Mr. Burns.
"Burns,—Get something for dinner by four o'clock to-morrow, and tell Simmons to have a fire lighted in my bed-room early in the day."
"E. B."
The Right Hon. Edmund Burke, one of the most distinguished of our British worthies, was born at Limerick on New Year's Day, 1730; he was educated by a Quaker, got into Parliament in 1765, and died at Beaconsfield, July 8, 1797. Burns I imagine to have been a servant of his, but I have no particular reason for believing it, beyond the evidence of the letter before us. The direction to get dinner ready, comes evidently in the way of a command; and the unadorned style of address quite justifies my suspicions. Simmons is unquestionably a domestic servant, and a female. In the registry of marriages in Beaconsfield church, I find an entry of a marriage between Thomas Hopkins and Mary Anne Simmons, spinster; which Mary Anne I take to be the individual referred to by Burke. The date of that marriage is June 15, 1792. Now, although this letter is without date, it is fair to infer from the reference to "making a fire in his bed-room," that it was written much earlier in the year than the month of June; so that even if we were able to fix the date of the letter in the same year, it is quite within the range of possibility that the marriage did not take place till several months after the servant was spoken of, by her maiden name of Simmons. I took occasion to visit Beaconsfield twice, concerning this little doubt, and I think it but justice to make my acknowledgments to Mr. Thomas Fagg, the deputy-sexton of the parish, for his urbane attention to me, and the readiness with which he afforded me all the information of which he was possessed.—Ed.
No. V.
"From Sir Philip Francis to Mr. Perkins.
"My dear Sir,—The weather is so hot, and town so dull, that I intend flying from all its ills and inconveniences to-morrow; I shall be happy, therefore, to join your pleasant party.—Yours,
"P. F."
This very curious letter is not more valuable on account of the matter it contains, than as conducing to throw additional light upon the mystery of Junius—it would occupy too much space in a note to enter into a disquisition concerning the various conflicting opinions upon this subject, but as far as a comparison of hand-writing with some portions of the MS. of Junius's Letters, which I had an opportunity of seeing, and a strong similarity of style in the writing, go, I have no hesitation in settling the authorship upon Sir Philip—there is such vigorous imagination displayed in the description, in nine words, of the state of the weather and the metropolis, and such a masculine resolution evinced in the declared determination to "fly from all its ills and inconveniences" the very next day, that one cannot but pause to admire the firmness which could plan such a measure, and the taste which could give such a determination in such language. The cautious concealment of the place to which the supposed party of pleasure was to go, is another evidence of the force of habit—I have reason to believe it to have been Twickenham, or as Pope spells it, Twitnam, but I have no particular datum whereon to found this suspicion, except, indeed, that I think it quite as probable to have been Twickenham, or Twitnam, as any other of the agreeable villages round London.—Ed.
No. VI.