JUNIUS UNVEILED.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I have not yet seen the book reviewed under this title in your issue of October 2nd; but I wonder if the author has taken account of a curious and, so far as I am aware, un- noticed fact which seems to throw considerable light on the problem with which he deals. The fact I refer to is that the names Francis and Junius were associated with one another more than two centuries before the appearance of the famous letters. A well-known French Protestant theologian, Francois de Jon—in Latin, Franciscus Junius—was born in 1545, and died in 1602. His son, who also bore the name Franciscus Junius, was born in 1589, and died in 1678. He came to England in 1620, and was librarian to the Earl of Arundel for thirty years. He was a distinguished Anglo-Saxon and Gothic scholar, and his "Etymologicum Anglicanum " was extensively used by Johnson in the preparation of his Dictionary. There is a reference to him in Boswell's "Life of Johnson" (G•obe Edition, p. 61). My point is this,—is it possible that Leis double collocation of the two names can have been a mere coincidence ? Is it not rather to be explained by the supposition that Philip Francis, being in search of a pseudonym, took that which was lying ready to his hand in the name of the old scholar, Francis Junius P-1 am, Sir, &c.,
J. C.
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