BOOKS.

WHO WAS 7u JUS?* A WEEK'S reflection, and a second reading of Mr. Symons's book, have strengthened our conviction that he has proved his case. " Stet nominis umbra " seems to us no longer an appropriate motto for the title-page of Junius, for we believe, as firmly as we can believe anything upon circumstantial evidence, that the sub- stance of that shadow has at last been discovered in the person of William Burke, the cousin and bosom friend of Edmund. The first link in the chain of evidence by which Mr. Symons esta- blishes this conclusion is the weighty fact, that among the Con- temporaries of ",the Burkes," both friends and enemies, the opinion very generally prevailed that the most illustrious of the three was the author of Junius, and that William was not free from suspicion of having a hand in the matter. Then he shows that to the direct charge of complicity in the work neither Wil- liam nor Edmund ever gave a distinct denial, whilst the latter on one occasion escaped from it by a subterfuge so strangely tor- tuous that it is scarcely conceivable he should have had recourse to it had denial been possible. Detection would have been ruinous to the cousins, and on the 10th November 1771, when the wrath against Junius was fiercest, he writes to Woodfall in terror for his life should he be discovered. In that very month, Charles Townshend and Dr. Markham Bishop of Chester, were pressing the suspicions of the town on both the Burkes. Towns- hend wrote a second letter on the subject to Edmund Burke, urging that the latter had "never positively declared in express terms that he was neither directly nor indirectly engaged in the publication of Junius's Letters." It was not "till he had twice consulted his pillow" that Burke could frame an answer to this very plain challenge, and then he put it in this shape : "I now give you my word and honour that I am not the author of Junius, and that I know not the author of that paper, and I do authorize you to say so." "This is explicit enough, and doubtless true enough as to the author- ship ; but what is meant by that paper' when he denies his knowledge of the author ? No one could call the series of letters, then approaching their completion, a paper.' They were not such in any sense of the word. If applicable at all to any Letters of Junius, it must have referred to that one of them only which Townahend happened to have named in his first letter of inquiry, in which he mentions the letter signed Zeno, and calls tt 'that paper.' Burke's disclqimer also applies, therefore, alone to it, and of such one letter, taken singly, he might not have known, of his own knowledge, of the authorship. Indeed, if his cousin William were the author, it al- most certain that one or two of those letters must have been written, de- spatched, and printed, when Burke was at too great a distance to have seen them beforehand. Nor is it at all likely that William would have given or written to Edmund a formal statement of his authorship."

As for Dr. Markham's letter, which Edmund Burke destroyed, its purport is revealed in the elaborate reply of the latter. It-is certain that in the opinion of an old and revered friend, Junius proceeded from the Burkes, and that the result of the correspond- ence was to confirm the bishop in that belief. Certainly it was not likely to be shaken, as regards William Burke, by the defence, if it can be so called, which was made for him by Edmund. It was as follows.

"My Lord, I owe this honest testimony, all I can return, for a friend- ship of which I can never make myself deserving. As to him, my Lord, I am not capable of telling you in what manner he felt your charges. He answers nothing to them ; he only bids me tell you that, never being able to suppose himself in a situation of serious controversy with your Lordship, much less as the culprit in a criminal accusation for a matter of state, brought by you upon his private conversation he knows not what to say. He is at your mercy. He really cannot put ids, pen to paper on this subject, though he has two or three times attempted it.'

It was Dr. Markham's belief, which he retained to the end of his days, that the Burkes were self-convicted of the charge he had brought against them. The weight of his testimony is unques- tionable, for he was a man of penetration and discernment, and of great integrity, and "no one had more intimate means of knowing the opinions, political tendencies, personal antipathies and antecedents of the men he accused, or of testing the probabili- ties of the authorship of Junius." So far as it is possible at the present day to ascertain the pre- cise nature of those opinions, tendencies and antipathies, they corn- cide in the most exact manner with those of Junius. The more minute the search, the more completely does it confirm the con- clusion drawn by contemporaries from the internal evidence of the celebrated letters. The proof lies not alone in the general con- cordance between the political aims and personal relations of Ed- mund Burke and those of Junius but still more in the unfailing accuracy with which this concordance reveals itself in details so numerous and various as quite to exclude the hypothesis of IS for- tuitous agreement. Even the alleged discrepancy between the views of the Junius and Burke on some subjects, such as the American question, will not bear the test of close inquiry, but resolves itself into a remarkable identity of views between Burke and his coadjutor. In like manner the pretended denunciation of Junius by Burke in his celebrated apostrophe in the House of Commons is in reality a splendid panegyric under the semblance of indignant censure. To substantiate the statements which we have made as to the identity of the interests and animosities of the Burkes with those of Junius, we should have to quote the greater part of Mr. S.ymons's Essay. As we cannot do this we con- tent ourselves with indicating the general scope of his argument on this head.

• William Burke the Author of JUnio : an Essay on his Era. By Jelinger Cookson Symons, Barrister-at-law, &c. Published by Smith, Elder, and Co. Mr. Symons shows that time place, and circumstance cohere in all points with the theory that William Burke was Junius, and with no rival theory that has yet been propounded. He examines all the coincidences that have been adduced by Lord Macaulay and others in proof that the author was Sir Philip Francis ; he demonstrates their inconclusiveness and contrasts them with the vastly stronger array of facts on his own side of the 5uestion. Lord Macaulay lays much stress on the means of official informa- tion possessed. by Francis in consequence of his being a clerk in a public office. His o.1. rtunities of this kind were not a tenth part of those which illiam Burke commanded, and of which he is known to have made incessant use to their fullest extent. "He perfectly realised the type of a busy restless man, moving

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about n each grade of society, and especially in political spheres, in restless quest of information and material for the use of his party, and especially for the ear of his cousin." From the latter he received in tarn all the information that separately accrued to him, in addition to much that was collected by Richard Burke and Samuel Dyer ; so that on the whole it is probable that more reached William Burke's ear, and more quickly, than Junius ever told. That he possessed remarkable literary ability, though he was not eminent as a Parliamentary speaker, is testified by Prior and by Horace Walpole, and the latter particularly men- tions that "Lord Hillsborough was acrimoniously pursued [in 1768] by the Younger Burke in many publications." Now Mr. Symons shows by the evidence of Woodfall's editor, corroborated by the recent researches among the Grenville papers' that the onlypublications to which Walpole can be supposed to have thus alluded were the letters of Junius. It is not a little remarkable that a short letter, apparently written by Junius signed with the

initials, " W.B. " is inserted. as a note by Woollfall's editor, at page 291, vol. II. Mr. Peter Burke mentions the following singular fact in his " Life" of his illustrious namesake.

Dyer, was very intimate with Mr. Burke and his family. When Dyer died in 1772, the Letters of Junius ceased ; but what was even more strange, was this fact, related by Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of Dyer's executors. The moment Dyer was dead, Edmund Burke's cousin, William Burke, went to the deceased's lodgings, and there seized and destroyed a le quantity of manuscript. Reynolds happening to come in, found the room covered with the papers, cut up into minutest fragments, there being no fire in the grate. Reynolds expressed some surprise, and Mr. Wil- liam Burke hurriedly explained that " the papers were of great importance to him- self, and of none to anybody else." Mrs. Buthe once admitted that she believed her husband knew the author of the Letters, but that he did not write them.'

"What were these mysterious papers ? Did William Burke employ an umanuensis, and was it Dyer ; or more likely still, did Dyer, being in the secret, employ one for him, and were these papers so anxiously destroyed by William Burke, the remnants of the drafts of these famous letters ? "

The points of difference and similarity between the style of junius and that of Edmund Burke are naturally explained. upon Mr. Symons's theory. The " burkisms " which Sir James Mac- kintosh and many others have detected in the " Letters" are such is might be expected, considering the long habit of literary as- sociation which had subsisted between the cousins; besides it is highly improbable that Edmund abstained from all revision of emendations of William's drafts. On the other hand there ir enough in the sole evidence of style to extinguish all rival pres tensions, and especially those which have been raised on behal- of Francis, to the authorship of Junius, as these contrasted spe- cimens sufficiently demonstrate.

" roams. . " 'The reputation of these papers is an honourable pledge for my attachment to the people.' • " 'If an honest, and, I may truly affirm, a laborious zeal for the public service, has given me any weight in your esteem, let me exhort and conjure you, never to suffer an invasion of your political con- stitution, however minute,' &c. ' " On this side, then, which ever way you turn your eyes, you see nothing but perplexity and distress. You may de- termine to support the very Ministry who have reduced your affairs to this deplor- able situation,' he.

" I am weary of attacking a set of brutes, whose writings are too d ullto fur- nish me even with the materials of con- tention, and whose measures are too gross and direct to be the subject of ar- gument, or to require illustration.' " "This feeble twaddle of Francis is put forth by /dr. Taylor, the author of "Junius Identified," as a picked specimen of the similarity between Junius and Francis.

"In the whole of Junius, there is not such a misjoinder of adjectives as ' determined ' and inveterate,' the second rendering the first wholly need- less. Such an unwieldy awkward sentence as that which follows, would surely disgrace a boy in the second form at a good grammar school. Mark also the use of the past tense, have been,' instead of be,' in the clause be- ginning this Government.' Imagine Junius, moreover, terminating a long sentence where its point and brilliance always culminate, with such wretch- ed slip-slop as a distressing situation to which it is reduced by a series of other measures adopted and pursued in opposition to our sentiments.' One of the proofs on which this claimant for Francis relies, consists in Francis haying used the words, but I have done with controversy, and I shall give the Board no further trouble on this question, nor perhaps, on any other." "And this he thinks strikingly similar with the conclusion in Junius's private Letter ! I am weary,' &c. The words deplorable situation,' and distressing situation,' are similar also : Francis haying read them over and over again, has not improbably borrowed this, and much more from Junius : but the borrowings remind one sadly of 2Esop's daw. Comment on such si- milarities ilarities as these, by way of proof, s quite needless.

"The best sentence Francis is known to have ever written, is ungram- matical. It is this-

" ' The loss of a single life in a popular tumult, excites individual tenderness, and pity. No tears are shed for nations. When the provinces are scourged to the bone by a mercenary aud merciless military power, and every drop of its blood and substance extorted from it by the edicts of a royal council, the case seems very tolerable to those who are not involved in it.'

" FRANCIS.

" I believe no man living will se- riously attribute to me the character of a determined and inveterate adversary of the British nation. It is well known to every man in India, that if Mr. Wheler's advice and mine, for these three years past had been regarded, or, if our unre- mitted efforts had availed anything, this Government would not have been in the distressing situation to which it is re- duced by a series of other measures, adopted and pursued in opposition to our sentiments. But I have done with con- troversy. I shall give the Board no further trouble on this question, nor per- haps on any other.' (From Minute of Sir P. Francis, on India.)" "What is the antecedent to the word its ? ' Grammatically, 'the mili- tary power'; but it does not mean that, but the blood and tre.aisure of the provinces. Junius never made these blunders. See also the ponderous pla- titudes in the sequel— 'When thousands after thousands are dragooned out of their country for the sake of their religion, [what does he mean by persecuting a religion for the sake of it ?] or sent to row in the galleys for selling salt against law,—when the liberty of every individual is at the mercy of every prostitute, pimp, or parasite, that has ac- cess to the hand of power, or to any of its basest substitutes,—my mind, I own, is not at once prepared to be satisfied with gentle palliatives for such disorders. Why? Because, you say, that it is not natural that it should.'

"Francis had frequent recourse to the puerile trick of alliteratives, a weakness to which Junius rarely, if ever, descended. But what shall we say of the vapid tameness and weakness of the end of each sentence ? Fran- cis seems to exhaust his small stook of strength at the beginning, and fall helplessly into conclusions both lame and impotent. Observe the remark- able converse in Junius. It is a characteristic of his style to give the ut- most force to the climax. You never gather a notion of the wonderful power of his sentences till you arrive at the last words."