No More Learning

Triumphant at last, he ended his life in 1797 as chamberlain of
London and a persona grata with George III. In all his vicissi-
tudes, he had kept in touch with public opinion.
It is not easy to describe the blackguard charm of Wilkes,


## p. 392 (#418) ############################################

392
Political Literature (1755—75)
Notoriously self-interested and dissolute, ugly and squinting, he
enjoyed a popularity by no means confined to the mob. Much
may be ascribed to the singular grace of his manners. Even
Johnson fell a victim to these. But he, also, possessed some very
obvious virtues. He was brave, good-humoured and adroit. He had
a sort of selfish kindliness. He was, moreover, manifestly on the
right side: few people had any love for general warrants or for
the infringement of the liberty of election. And he turned all
these advantages to account.
His paper, The North Briton, may be regarded as the best
example of its kind, the brief periodical pamphlet. It represents
the type at which The Briton and the rest aimed, but which they
could not reach. Like its congeners, it consisted of a weekly
political essay. It was directed entirely to the object of over-
throwing Bute and of reinstating the old group of whig families
in alliance with Pitt. We notice at once in its polemic the scanti-
ness of serious argument. Satire, raillery, scandal and depreciation
in every form are there; but a real tangible indictment does not
readily emerge from its effusions. In part, this peculiarity was
due to the difficulty under which an opposition writer then lay in
securing information and in publishing what information he pos-
sessed. When the preliminaries of peace or the jobbery of Bute's
loan issues gave Wilkes his opportunity, he could be cogent enough.
But a more powerful reason lay in the main object of the paper.
Bute was safe so long as he was not too unpopular: he had the
king's favour and a purchased majority in parliament. Therefore,
he had to be rendered of no value to king and parliament. He was
to be written down and to become the bugbear of the ordinary
voter, while his supporters in the press were to be exposed to
derision and thus deprived of influence. Wilkes and his allies in
The North Briton were well equipped for this task. They were
interesting and vivacious from the first, making the most of the
suspicions excited by Bute. As the heat of battle grew and their
case became stronger, the violence and abusiveness of their expres-
sions increased till it reached the scale of their rivals. Still, even
so, they continued to display an apt brutality wanting in the latter.
In the earlier numbers, too, The Briton and The Auditor fell easy
victims to the malicious wit of Wilkes. Perhaps the best instance
of his fun is the letter which he wrote under a pseudonym to the
unsuspecting Auditor, descanting on the value of Floridan peat,
a mythical product, for mitigating the severity of the climate in
the West Indies. An exposure followed in The North Briton;


## p. 393 (#419) ############################################

Antipathy to the Scots. Churchill
393
and poor Murphy could only refer to his tormentor afterwards
as 'Colonel Cataline. '
But the scheme of The North Briton gave an easy opportunity
for ironic satire. The editor was supposed to be a Scot exulting
over the fortune of his countryman, and very ingenuous in repeating
the complaints of the ousted English. There was nothing exquisite
in this horseplay; but it was not badly done, and it had the advantage
of appealing to strong national prejudice. The antipathy to the
Scots, which was to disappear with startling suddenness during the
American war of independence, had not yet undergone any sensible
diminution. At root, perhaps, it was the dislike of an old-established
firm for able interlopers. Scots were beginning to take a leading
share in the common government, and their nationality was always
unmistakable. Accordingly, old legends of their national character
and a purseproud contempt for their national poverty lived
obstinately on; and The North Briton worked the vein ex-
haustively.
In the composition of his journal and in his whole campaign
against the minister, Wilkes had for his coadjutor a more eminent
man, who, unlike himself, is to be conceived of, not as a pleasant
adventurer, but as a principal literary figure of the time, the poet
and satirist Charles Churchill. The two men were fast friends,
although their lives had flowed in very different streams until they
became acquainted in 1761. Churchill was the son of a clergyman,
who was curate and lecturer of St John's, Westminster, and vicar
of Rainham in Essex. The younger Charles was born in 1731 and
early distinguished himself by his ability at Westminster school.
Thence, he proceeded, in 1748, to St John's college, Cambridgel;
but his residence there was not for long. With characteristic
impulsiveness, when only 18 years of age, he contracted a marriage
in the Fleet with a girl named Martha Scott, and bis university
education had to be discontinued. His kindly father took the
young couple into his house and had his son trained, as best he
might, for holy orders. In 1754, Churchill was ordained deacon
and licensed curate of South Cadbury in Somerset, whence, as
priest, he removed, in 1756, to act as his father's curate at Rainham.
Two years later, the father died, and the son was elected to succeed
him as incumbent of St John's in Westminster, where he increased
his income by teaching in a girls' school.
1 See Admissions to the College of St John the Evangelist, pt. n, ed. Scott, R. F. ,
p. 580.


## p. 394 (#420) ############################################

394
Political Literature (1755—75)
Such is the outline of Churchill's earlier life—bald enough,
if stripped of the malicious inventions which gathered round it.
His later career is full of evidence both of his good and of his bad
qualities. Burdened with two children and an extravagant wife, him-
self completely unsuited for his clerical profession and inclined to the
pleasures of the town, in two years he became bankrupt, and owed
the acceptance by his creditors of a composition to the generosity
of his old schoolmaster, Pierson Lloyd. Afterwards, Churchill was to
show his natural honesty and good feeling, not only by a constant
friendship to his benefactor's son, Robert Lloyd, a poet of secondary
rank, but, also, by paying his own debts in full, in disregard of his
bankruptcy. That he was able to do this was due to his own new
profession of poetry. He began, unluckily, with a Hudibrastic poem,
The Bard, in 1760, which could not find a publisher. His second
effort, The Conclave, contained matter against the dean and chapter
of Westminster so libellous that the intending publisher dared not
bring it out. A more interesting subject of satire presented itself
in the contemporary stage, and, in March 1761, there appeared, at
the author's own risk, The Rosciad. Its success was immediate
and extraordinary; Churchill was enabled to pay his debts, to make
an allowance to his wife, from whom he had now been for some
time estranged, and to set up in glaringly unclerical attire as a
man about town. But the penalty, too, for indulging in bitter
criticism-a penalty, perhaps, welcome to the combative poet-
was not long in coming; and, for the rest of his life, he was
involved in an acrid literary warfare. Yet, in these tedious
campaigns he was a constant victor. Few escaped unbruised from
the cudgel of his verse, and, vulnerable though his private life made
him to attack, the toughness of his fibre enabled him to endure.
In consequence of this literary celebrity, Churchill made the
acquaintance of Wilkes, whose friendship was responsible for the
turn his life took in his few remaining years. The last shred of
the poet's respectability was soon lost in the Medmenham orgies;
yet, his political satires, which, unlike those of his friend Wilkes,
do not admit doubt of their sincerity, gave him a permanent place
in English literature. Quite half of The North Briton was written
by him; his keenest satiric poem was The Prophecy of Famine,
which, in January 1763, raised the ridicule of Bute and his country-
men to its greatest height. Thanks to Wilkes's adroitness, Churchill
escaped the meshes of the general warrant, and was afterwards let
alone by government: he had not written No. 45. But he ceased
to reside permanently in London. We hear of him in Wales in


## p. 395 (#421) ############################################

The Rosciad. Night
395
1763, and, later, he lived at Richmond and on Acton common.
The stream of his satires, political and social, continued unabated
throughout. His days, however, were numbered. He died at
Boulogne, on 4 November 1764, while on his way to visit Wilkes
at Paris, and was buried at Dover.
‘Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies. ' This line of his
own was placed on his gravestone, and not inaccurately sums up
the man. The burly poet's faults are too manifest to need insisting
upon. It is pleasanter to remember that, as already stated, he
supported his brother rake, Robert Lloyd, when the unlucky man
was dying beggared in the Fleet. His devotion to Wilkes, like
the rest of him, was unbounded and whole-hearted. Nor is any
mean action recorded of him.
There is no denying that his verse is truculent and loud. What
most distinguishes it from contemporary couplets is its spirit and
strength. He may ramble, he may prose; but he never exhibits
the neat, solemn tripping which tires us in his contemporaries.
The Rosciad, with which he first won reputation, consists chiefly
of a series of severe sketches of the leading actors in 1761. Few,
save Garrick, escape unblamed; but the poet, although censorious,
can hardly be called unfair. His verse maintains a steady level of
force and skill, just within the bounds of poetry, lighted up, now
and then, by such shrewd couplets as: ;
Appearances to save his only care;
So things seem right, no matter what they are;
and, occasionally, phrases of stinging wit intensify the ridicule.
The Rosciad called forth many enemies, and, in reply to an
attack in The Critical Review, Churchill published The Apology,
under the impression that the critique was Smollett's. It cannot
be called an advance on its forerunner, although sufficiently tart
to make Garrick, who was victimised in it, almost supplicate his
critic's friendship. As a poem, it is much surpassed by Churchill's
next composition, Night, which appeared in October 1761. The
versification has become easier, the lines more pliant, without
losing vigour. There is a suggestion of a poetical atmosphere
not to be found in the hard, dry outlines of his earlier work. The
substance is slight; it is merely a defence of late hours and genial
converse over 'the grateful cup. ' Churchill was, in this instance
at all events, too wise to defend excess.
A year's rest given to the prose of The North Briton
seems to have invigorated Churchill for the production of his
6


## p. 396 (#422) ############################################

396
Political Literature (1755—75)
best satire, The Prophecy of Famine. Its main object was to
decry and ridicule Bute and the Scots, although there is an
undercurrent of deserved mockery at the reigning fashion of
pastoral. Churchill, as he owns, was himself half a Scot? ; but the
circumstance did not mitigate his national and perfectly sincere
prejudice against his northern kinsfolk. The probable reason was
that Bute was Wilkes's enemy, and the warm-hearted poet was
wroth, too, in a fascinated sympathy with his friend. The wit and
humour of the piece are in Churchill's most forcible and amusing
vein. His hand is heavy, it is true; more dreary irony was never
written; and he belabours his theme like a peasant wielding a
flail; but the eighteenth century must have found him all the
more refreshing. Compare him with the prose polemics of his
day, and he is not specially venomous. He only repeats in sinewy
verse the current topics of reproach against the Scots.
The painter Hogarth now crossed Churchill's path. A satiric
print of Wilkes by Hogarth roused the poet's vicarious revenge.
The savage piece of invective, The Epistle to William Hogarth,
was the result, which, if it has not worn so well as Hogarth's
pictures, yet, here and there, strikes a deeper note than is usual
with its author. Take, for instance, the couplet:
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought;
although his own fertility shows no sign of exhausting the soil.
He was beginning, however, in his own metaphor, to vary the crop.
The Duellist, published in January 1764, was written, not in the
stock heroic couplet, but in octosyllabics suggestive of Hudibras.
This was an attack on Samuel Martin, one of Wilkes's ministerial
enemies, with a few satirical excursions like that on Warburton. The
adoption of a new metre was not a success; its straggling move-
ment doubled the risk which Churchill always ran of being tedious,
and the extravagance of his vituperation is no antidote. In com-
pensation, the poem contains some of his finest lines. The curse on
Martin reveals an old and clearsighted pupil in the school of life:
Grant him what here he most requires,
And damn him with his own desires!
while the malicious criticism of Warburton's defence of Scripture
suggests a literary experience which approves itself to the instincts
of human nature:
So long he wrote, and long about it,
That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it.
| The Prophecy of Famine, ll. 221–2.


## p. 397 (#423) ############################################

Gotham.
The Conference. Later Poems 397
Contemporaneously with The Duellist, Churchill was writing,
in the heroic couplet, Gotham, a curious farrago, in the three
books of which a Utopian realm ruled by himself, a long de-
nunciation of the Stewart dynasty and a description of an ideal
king jostle one another. He does not appear at his best in this
attempt at non-satiric poetry. The usual mannerisms of eighteenth-
century poetry, the personifications, the platitudinous moralising,
the hackneyed, meaningless descriptions are all to be found here.
That entire absence of any taste for nature outside Fleet street
which was characteristic of Churchill as fully as it was of Johnson
places him at peculiar disadvantage when he imitates Spenser in
a hasty catalogue of flowers, trees, months and other poetic
properties. Not less did the straightforward vigour of his usual
metre and style disqualify him for the prophet of the ideal. In
short, in spite of Cowper's praise, he was off his track.
Only a few months before Gotham was printed, Churchill had
published a very different poem, The Conference. He was accused
of merely making his profit out of political satire, and he here,
in words of obvious sincerity, repudiates the charge that he was
looking for office or pension. At the same time, he refers to a
better-grounded cause of censure—his seduction of a girl, whose
father is said to have been a stone-cutter of Westminster. Instead
of pleading extenuating circumstances, such as, in this case,
certainly existed, he only confesses his fault and avows his re-
morse. On the other hand, his personal conduct throughout this
miserable affair must be described as callous.
The rest of Churchill's poems are of less interest. The Author
is a slashing attack on Smollett and other ministerial publicists
and agents. The Ghost, in octosyllabics, derives its only interest
from being, in part, his earliest work; it is tedious and rambling
to a degree. We may allow The Candidate, directed against
Lord Sandwich, to have deserved its share of praise for the defeat
of ‘Jemmy Twitcherl' as he was nicknamed, in the election for the
high stewardship of Cambridge university; but its appeal was
merely temporary. There is little to remark on any of the other
poems—The Farewell, Independence and The Journey-produced
by the prolific poet in 1764. They showed an increasing metrical
skill, and maintained his reputation, but they did not add to it.
The Times, which, from its greater fire, might have taken high
1. That Jemmy Twitcher should peach, I own surprises me. ' Sandwich, the com.
pletest rake of the day, had brought Wilkes's obscene Essay on Woman before the House
of Lords in a speech of extraordinary hypocrisy.


## p. 398 (#424) ############################################

398 Political Literature (1755—75)
place among his works, was, unfortunately, both hideous in subject
and extravagantly exaggerated in execution.
We find, in fact, that Churchill's talent remained almost
stationary during the four years of his poetic industry. Crab-
apples, according to Johnson, he produced from the first; and such
his fruits remained to the end. He never shows the greater quali-
ties of either of his two chief English predecessors in satire-either
those of Pope whom he underrated, or those of Dryden whom he
admired. His wit, though strong, is never exquisite. His characters
are vividly and trenchantly described; but they do not live to our
imagination. His good sense cannot be said to rise to wisdom;
and he is deficient in constructive skill. The Prophecy of Famine
is, after all, an ill-proportioned mixture of satiric epistle and
satiric eclogue; while his other satires have little unity except
what is provided by the main object of their attack. Although
he justly ridicules some of the current phrases of contemporary
lesser poetry, he cannot be said himself to rise superior to
eighteenth-century conventions. His incessant personifications,
'Gay Description,' 'Dull Propriety,' are, in the end, wearisome;
and many of his humorous couplets, constructed after the fashion
of the time, rather seem like epigrams than are such. His real
forte consisted in a steady pommelling of his adversary; with all
his fierceness and prejudice, acidity and spite were foreign to his
nature.
As a metrist, Churchill can claim some originality. He
uses the heroic couplet of the day with fresh freedom and
effectivity. At first, in The Rosciad, he can hardly be said to
form his paired lines into periods. Then, in The Epistle to
William Hogarth, the last line of his paragraph has a closing
sound and really ends a period. Perhaps, it was his long involved
sentences, compiled of many clauses, which led him, in later pieces,
to a further change. From time to time, he uses enjambement,
and even, by means of it, breaks up his couplets ? .
Churchill so overtops his rivals in political verse that they
scarcely seem worth mentioning. Mason, his frequent butt as
a writer of pastorals—'Let them with Mason bleat and bray
and coo'-shrouded himself in political satire under the name
Malcolm Macgregor? Falconer, a naval officer, attacked Pitt
.
a
from the court point of view. But both of these, and even
1 Cf. , for the effect gained by this occasional variation, Independence, ll. 199–206.
? As to Mason, cf. ante, chap. VI. 3 As to Falconer, cf. ante, chap. VII.


## p. 399 (#425) ############################################

Political Prose Pamphlets. Candor 399
Chatterton in his Consuliad', merely illustrate their inferiority
to Churchill.
Prose was far more effective than verse in the political con-
troversies which followed Bute's resignation. The weekly essay,
in its old form, died out gradually ; but the flood of pamphlets
continued. They were in a more serious vein than formerly.
Measures rather than men were in dispute, not so much because
the public taste had changed, as because the more prominent
politicians, with the exception of Pitt, presented few points of
interest. The ability of many of these numerous pamphlets is
undeniable. Some leading statesmen had a share in them. We
find such men as George Grenville, an ex-prime minister, and
Charles Townshend, leader of the House of Commons, defending
or attacking current policy in this fashion. Others were written
by authors of literary eminence. Edmund Burke published a
celebrated tract in defence of the first Rockingham ministry? ;
Horace Walpole was stirred to address the public concerning the
dismissal of general Conway in 1764; latest of all, Johnson took
part as a champion of the government during the agitation about
the Middlesex election, and in opposition to the accusations
of Junius. Perhaps, however, the more effective among these
pamphlets were due to political understrappers. Charles Lloyd,
Grenville's secretary, wrote a series in support of his patron's
policy, including a clever reply to Burke. Thomas Whateley, ,
secretary to the treasury, defended the same minister's finance.
These and their fellows worked with more or less knowledge of
the ground, and, if their special pleading be conspicuous, they also
dispensed much sound information.
Two pamphlets, which appeared in 1764, and dealt with the
constitutional questions raised by the prosecution of Wilkes,
stand well above their fellows in ability and influence. The first
appeared, originally, as A Letter to The Public Advertiser, and was
signed 'Candor. ' It was an attack on Lord Mansfield for his charge
to the jury in the Wilkes case and on the practice of general
warrants. With a mocking irony, now pleasant, now scathing, the
author works up his case, suiting the pretended moderation of his
language to the real moderation of his reasoning. The same
writer, we cannot doubt, under the new pseudonym 'The Father
of Candor,' put a practical conclusion to the legal controversy in
his Letter concerning Libels, Warrants, etc.
, published in the same
1 Cf. ante, chap. x.
? A Short Account of a Short Administration, 1766. (See bibliography. )


## p. 400 (#426) ############################################

400
Political Literature (1755—75)
year. This masterly pamphlet attracted general admiration, and
its cool and lucid reasoning, varied by an occasional ironic humour,
did not meet with any reply. Walpole called it the only tract that
ever made me understand law. The author remains undiscovered.
The publisher, Almon, who must have known the secret, declared
that ‘a learned and respectable Master in Chancery' had a hand
in it? . Candor's handwriting has been pronounced that of Sir
Philip Francis ? ; but, clearly, in view of Almon's evidence, he can
only have been part author; and the placid, suave humour of the
pamphlets reads most unlike him, and, we may add, most unlike
Junius.
Candor's first letter had originally appeared in The Public
Advertiser, and there formed one of a whole class of political
compositions, which, in the next few years, were to take the fore-
most place in controversy. Their existence was due to the shrewd
enterprise of the printer Henry Sampson Woodfall, who had
edited The Public Advertiser since 1758. In addition to trust-
worthy news of events at home and abroad, Woodfall opened his
columns to correspondence, the greater part of which was political.
He was scrupulously impartial in his choice from his letter-bag.
Merit and immunity from the law of libel were the only conditions
exacted. Soon, he had several journals, such as The Gazetteer,
competing with his for correspondents; but The Public Adver-
tiser's larger circulation, and the inclusion in it of letters from
all sides in politics, enabled it easily to distance the rival prints
in the quality and quantity of these volunteer contributions.
George III himself was a regular subscriber; it gave him useful
clues to public opinion. The political letters are of all kinds-
denunciatory, humorous, defensive, solemn, matter-of-fact, rhetori-
cal and ribald. Their authors, too, were most varied, and are now
exceedingly hard to identify. Every now and then a statesman
who had been attacked would vindicate himself under a pseudonym;
more frequently, some hanger-on would write on his behalf, with
many professions of being an impartial onlooker. There were
independent contributors; and small groups of minor politicians
1 Anecdotes of Eminent Persons, vol. 1, pp. 79, 80. Almon's words obviously imply
that the master in chancery was still living in 1797. He wrote again, in 1770, both
anonymously and under the name Phileleutherus Anglicanus (Grenville Correspond-
ence, vol. fi, pp. clxxvi sqq. , where the resemblance in manner to the Candor pamphlets
is made obvious by extracts).
2 Parkes, Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, vol. 1, pp. 74–81 and 99—101. A fac-
simile of Candor's handwriting is given in vol. II, plate 5.


## p. 401 (#427) ############################################

Letters in The Public Advertiser 401
si
BB
would carry on a continuous correspondence for years. But neither
single authors nor groups can be easily traced through their com-
positions. As is natural, their style seldom helps us to identify
them. They wrote the current controversial prose, and, after 1770,
their prose is tinged with a Junian dye. The pseudonyms throw
little light on the matter. There was no monopoly in any one of
them, and the same author would vary his pseudonyms as much as
possible, chiefly with intent to avoid discovery and the decrease
of credit which his communications might undergo if he were
known, but, also, to provide sham opponents as a foil to his argu-
ments and to create an illusion of wide public support for his views.
A good instance of the letter-writers was James Scott, a
preacher of repute. In 1766, he contributed a series of letters
to The Public Advertiser, signed 'Anti-Sejanus. ' They were
written in the interests of Lord Sandwich, and assailed, with much
vehemence, the supposed secret intrigues of Bute. Scott used
many other pseudonyms, and wrote so well that his later letters,
which show Junius's influence in their style, were republished
separately. From a private letter written by him to Woodfall",
we learn that he, too, was a member of a group who worked
together. Another writer we can identify was John Horne, later
known as John Horne Tooke and as the author of The Diversions
of Purley. He began to send in correspondence to the news-
papers about 1764; but his celebrity only began when he
became an enthusiastic partisan of Wilkes in 1768. Under the
pseudonym ‘Another Freeholder of Surrey,' he made a damaging
attack on George Onslow', and, on being challenged, allowed
the publication of his name. The legal prosecution which fol-
lowed the acknowledgment of his identity, in the end, came to
nothing, and Horne was able to continue his career as Wilkes's
chief lieutenant. But the cool unscrupulousness with which
Wilkes used the agitation as a mere instrument for paying off his
own debts and gratifying his own ambitions disgusted even so
warm a supporter as Horne. A quarrel broke out between them
in 1771 concerning the disposal of the funds raised to pay Wilkes's
debts by the society, The Supporters of the Bill of Rights, to which
both belonged. Letter after letter from the two former friends
des
MTD
i
Cat
fort
6
1 Parkes, Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, vol. 1, pp. 130—1. Parkes, as usual with
him in the case of the abler letters previous to 1769, attributes · Anti-Sejanus' to
Sir P. Francis. 'Anti-Sejanus' should probably be distinguished from ‘Anti-Sejanus
junior,' in 1767, who is likely to be Junius.
a Celebrated as the single member of the House of Commons who said that No. 45
was not a libel. '
E. L X.
CH. XVII.
26


## p. 402 (#428) ############################################

402
Political Literature (1755—75)
appeared in The Public Advertiser. Horne, who, perhaps, had
the better case, allowed himself to be drawn off into long petty
recriminations on Wilkes's private life. Indiscreet expressions of
his own were brought up against him, and the popularity of
Wilkes, in any case, made the attempt to undermine him impossible.
Yet ‘parson Horne' had his triumph, too. The redoubtable
Junius entered the controversy on Wilkes's side; Horne retorted
vigorously, and proved the most successful critic of the greater
libeller's productions. In truth, Junius's letters owed much of
their success to his victims' inability to rebut his insinuations by
giving the real facts in transactions which were necessarily secret.
Horne's record was clear; he had no dignity to lose; he could pin
Junius down by a demand for proof. Yet, even allowing for these
advantages, his skill in dissecting his adversary's statements and
his courage in defying the most formidable libeller of the day are
much to his credit as a pamphleteer. Before long, Junius was
glad to beat a retreat.
It was in the autumn of 1768 that the political letters of the
unknown writer who, later, took the pseudonym of Junius, gained
the public ear. But we know from his own statement that,
for two years before that date, he had been busy in furtive,
assassinating polemic; and it is possible that a careful search of
newspaper files would result in the discovery of some of his earlier
performances of 1766 and 1767. The time when he appears to
have begun letter-writing tallies well with the objects pursued by
him during the period of his known writings. He was an old-
fashioned whig, and a warm, almost an impassioned, adherent of
the former prime minister, George Grenville. Thus, the accession
to power, in July 1766, of the elder Pitt, now Lord Chatham, with
his satellite, the duke of Grafton, after a breach with Lord Temple,
Grenville's brother, and their adherents, most likely, gave the
impulse to Junius's activity. It was not, however, till October 1768
that he became clearly distinguishable from other writers in The
Public Advertiser. By that time, Chatham's nervous prostration
had rendered him incapable of transacting business, and the duke
of Grafton was acting as prime minister in an administration
which had become mainly tory. For some reason or other,
Junius nursed a vindictive and unassuageable hatred against the
duke, which it seems difficult to attribute only to the rancour of
a partisan. The weakness of the loosely constructed ministry,
too, would tempt their adversary to complete their rout by a
1 Grenville Correspondence, vol. iv, p. 380.
1


## p. 403 (#429) ############################################

The Letters of Junius
403
storm of journalistic shot and shell. So, Junius, sometimes under
his most constant and, perhaps, original signature 'C. , some-
times under other disguises, continued to add to the fury and
cruel dexterity of his attacks. "The Grand Council' ridiculed the
ministers’ Irish policy and their methods of business. A legal job
which was attempted at the duke of Portland's expense furnished
another opportunity. Nor was Junius content with these public
efforts to discredit his foes. In January 1768, he sent Chatham
an unsigned letter, full of flatteries for the sick man and of sug-
gestions of disloyalty on the part of his colleagues. For the time
being, however, Chatham continued to lend his name to the
distracted ministry, which staggered on from one mistake to
another. Those on which Junius, under his various aliases, seized
for animadversion were small matters; but they were damaging,
and his full knowledge of them, secret as they sometimes were,
gave weight to his arguments. His ability seemed to rise with
the occasion: the 'prentice hand which may have penned 'Pop-
licola's' attacks on Chatham in 1767 had become a master of
cutting irony and merciless insinuation, when, as 'Lucius,' he, in
1768, flayed Lord Hillsborough. The time was ripe for his ap-
pearance as something better than a skirmisher under fleeting
pseudonyms, and the series of the letters of Junius proper began
in January 1769. They never, however, lost the stamp of their
origin. To the last, Junius is a light-armed auxiliary, first of the
Grenville connection, then, on George Grenville’s death in 1770,
of the opponents of the king's tory-minded ministry under Lord
North. He darts from one point of vantage to another. Now
one, now another, minister is his victim, either when guilty or
when unable to defend himself efficiently. Ringing invective, a
deadly catalogue of innuendoes, barbed epigrams closing a scornful
period, a mastery of verbal fencing and, here and there, a fund
of political good sense, all were used by the libeller, and
contributed to make him the terror of his victims. The choice
and the succession of the subjects of his letters were by no
means haphazard. His first letter was an indictment of the
more prominent members of the administration. It created a
diversion which made the letter-writer's fortune, for Sir William
Draper, conqueror of Manilla, rushed into print to defend an old
friend, Lord Granby. Thoroughly trounced, ridiculed, humiliated
and slandered, he drew general attention to his adversary, who
then proceeded to the execution of his main design. In six
letters, under his customary signature or the obvious alternative
26-2


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404
Political Literature (1755—75)
Philo-Junius, he assailed the duke of Grafton's career as man and
minister. Meanwhile, the agitation provoked by Wilkes's repeated
expulsion from the commions, and his repeated election for Middle-
sex, was growing furious; and, in July 1769, Junius, following the
lead of George Grenville, took up the demagogue's cause. For
two months, in some of his most skilful compositions, he urged the
constituency's right to elect Wilkes. Then, as the theme wore out,
he chose a new victim. Grafton's administration depended on his
alliance with the duke of Bedford, one of the most unpopular men
in England. Junius turned on his foe's ally with a malignity
only second to that which he displayed against Grafton himself.
A triumphant tone begins to characterise the letters, for it was
obvious that the Grafton ministry was tottering to its fall; and
Junius decided on a bolder step. His information was of the best,
and he was convinced that the king had no intention of changing
his ministerial policy, even if Grafton resigned. The king, then,
must be terrorised into submitting to a new consolidated whig
administration. The capital and, I hope, final piece,' as it was called
by Junius, who was conscious of his own influence with the public
though he much overrated it, was an address to the king which
contained a fierce indictment of George III's public action since
his accession. It was an attempt to raise popular excitement to
a pitch which would compel George to yield. But the libeller
placed too much trust in his power over the ruling oligarchy and
gave too little credit to the dauntless courage and resolution of
the king. Lord North took up the vacant post of prime minister;
and his talent and winning personality, assisted by the all-pre-
vailing corruption and by the very violence of the opposition in
which Junius took part, carried the day. It was the House of
Commons which kept Lord North in power, and to its conquest the
angry opposition turned. Junius now appears as one of the fore-
most controversialists on Wilkes's election, and as champion of the
nascent radical party forming under Wilkes's leadership in the
city of London. Other matters, also, were subjects of his letters,
such as the dispute with Spain concerning the Falkland islands,
and the judicial decisions of Lord Mansfield; but they are all
subordinate to his main end. Ever and anon, too, he returns, now
with little public justification, to the wreaking of his inexplicable
hatred on the duke of Grafton, 'the pillow upon which I am
determined to rest all my resentments. But the game was up.
Clearly, neither king nor commons could be coerced by an outside
agitation, which, after all, was of no great extent. The quarrel of


## p. 405 (#431) ############################################

Personal Character of the Letters 405
Wilkes and Horne wrecked the opposition in the city. Junius
saw his scale kick the beam, and it was only the too true report
conveyed by Garrick to the court, in November 1771, that he
would write no more, which induced him to pen his final attack
on Lord Mansfield, with which the collected letters close.
Junius vanishes with the publication of the collected edition of
his letters. It was far from complete. Not only are the letters
previous to 1769 omitted, but many of inferior quality or of
transient interest, written during the continuance of the great
series, usually under other pseudonyms, are absent. And, more
remarkable still, there are certain letters of 1772, after the Junian
series had closed, which he very anxiously desired not to be known
as his, and which passed unidentified for years. Under fresh
pseudonyms, such as ‘Veteran,' he poured forth furious abuse on
Lord Barrington, secretary at war. The cause, in itself, was
strangely slight. It was only the appointment of a new deputy
secretary, formerly a broker, Anthony Chamier, and the resigna-
tions of the preceding deputy, Christopher D'Oyly, and of the first
clerk, Philip Francis. But, trifling as the occasion might be, it was
sufficient to make the cold and haughty Junius mouth with rage. .
Junius follows the habit of his fellow-correspondents in dealing
very little with strictly political subjects. Personal recrimination
is the chief aim of his letters, and it would hardly be fair to con-
trast them with those of a different class of authors, such as Burke,
or even with the product of the acute legal mind of Candor. Yet,
when he treats of political principles he does so with shrewdness
and insight. He understood the plain-going whig doctrine he
preached, and expounded it, on occasion, with matchless clearness.
What could be better as a statement than the sentences in the
dedication of the collected letters which point out that the liberty
of the press is the guarantee of political freedom and emphasise
the responsibility of parliament? And the same strong common
sense marks an apophthegm like that on the duke of Grafton-
Injuries may be atoned for and forgiven; but insults admit of no compen-
sation. They degrade the mind in its own esteem, and force it to recover its
level by revenge.
Yet these sentences betray in their sinister close the cast of
Junius's mind. There is an evil taint in his strength, which could
not find satisfaction in impartial reasoning on political questions.
This partisanship merges at once into personal hatred, and his
rancour against his chief victim, Grafton, can hardly be accounted


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406
Political Literature (1755—75)
6
for on merely political grounds. His object is to wound and ruin,
not only to overthrow. Scandal, true or false, is the weapon of
his choice. The great boar of the forest,' as Burke called him,
loved the poison in which he dipped his tusks, and took a cruel
pleasure in the torture he inflicted. Secure in his anonymity, no
insult or counter-thrust could reach him. With frigid glee, he
retorts upon accusations, which, of necessity, were vague and wide,
by plausible insinuations against his opponents. “To him that
knows his company,' said Dr Johnson, it is not hard to be
sarcastic in a mask. And Junius, thus gripped with the obvious
realities of his position, found no reply to this sarcasm.
But, however much he owed to his concealment and to his re-
markable knowledge of the vulnerable points of his quarry (and,
be it added, to the cunning with which he selected for his attack
men who could not produce their defence), Junius holds a high
position on his own literary merits. He was the most perfect
wielder of slanderous polemic that had ever arisen in English
political controversy. Not lack of rivals, but eminent ability,
made him supreme in that ignoble competition. In invective which
is uninformed by any generosity of feeling he stands unequalled.
His sentences, brief, pithy and pungent, exhibit a delicate equi-
librium in their structure. Short as they are, their rhythm goes
to form the march of a period, and the cat-like grace of their
evolution ends in the sudden, maiming wit of a malign epigram.
Direct invective, lucid irony, dry sarcasm mingle with one another
in the smooth-ranked phrases. A passage on George III and
Grafton will show to what excellence Junius can rise:
There is surely something singularly benevolent in the character of our
sovereign. From the moment he ascended the throne there is no crime of
which human nature is capable (and I call upon the recorder] to witness it)
that has not appeared venial in his sight. With any other prince, the
shameful desertion of him in the midst of that distress, which you alone had
created, in the very crisis of danger, when he fancied he saw the throne
already surrounded by men of virtue and abilities, would have outweighed
the memory of your former services. But his Majesty is full of justice, and
understands the doctrine of compensations; he remembers with gratitude
how soon you had accommodated your morals to the necessities of his service;
how cheerfully you had abandoned the engagements of private friendship,
and renounced the most solemn professions to the public. The sacrifice of
Lord Chatham was not lost upon him. Even the cowardice and perfidy of
deserting him may have done you no disservice in his esteem. The instance
was painful, but the principle might please.
Junius possessed to perfection the art of climax.
1 Jas. Eyre, later chief justice, in whose court there bad lately been condemned
for murder two or three persons, who received the royal pardon.


## p. 407 (#433) ############################################

The Mystery of Junius 407
The anonymity which he marvellously preserved enabled
Junius to maintain that affectation of superiority which dis-
tinguished him. Never before were mere scandals and libellous
diatribes presented with such an air of haughty integrity and
stern contempt for the baseness of jacks-in-office. We have to
make an effort in order to remember that this lofty gentleman,
above the temptation of a common bribe,' is really engaged in
the baser methods of controversy, and cuts a poor figure beside
Johnson and Burke. But, from his impersonal vantage ground,
he could deliver his judgments with more authority and more
freely display the deliberate artifice of his style. Its general
construction will appear from the passage on Grafton which has
been quoted above. But he also uses a more shrouded form of
innuendo than he there employs. He was very ingenious in com-
posing a sentence, or even a whole period, of double meaning, and
in making his real intent peculiarly clear withal. Perfect lucidity,
indeed, is one of his chief literary qualities. In his most artificial
rhetoric, his meaning is obvious to any reader. His wit, too, is of
high quality, in spite of his laboured antitheses. It has outlived
the obsolete fashion of its dress. It far transcends any trick of
words; as often as not, it depends on a heartless sense of comedy.
'I should,' he wrote to the unhappy Sir William Draper, ‘justly be
suspected of acting upon motives of more than common enmity to
Lord Granby, if I continued to give you fresh materials or occasion
for writing in his defence. ' He needs, we feel, defence himself.
The best apology, perhaps, that can be offered for him is that he
was carrying on an evil tradition and has to be condemned chiefly
because of his excellence in a common mode.
Something, too, of his celebrity is due to the mystery he
successfully maintained. The wildest guesses as to his identity
were made in his own day and after. It was thought at first that
only Burke could write so well, and most of the eminent con-
temporaries of Junius have, at one time or another, been charged
with the authorship of the letters. Fresh light was cast on the
problem by the publication, in 1812, of his private letters to Wood-
fall, with specimens of his handwriting, and subsequent research has
at least laid down some of the conditions which must be satisfied if
his identity is to be proved. Among them, we may take it that a
coincidence of the real life of the author with the hints regarding
himself thrown out in the letters is not to be expected. It was part
of Junius's plan to avoid giving any real clue, and he was anxious
to be thought personally important. But there are more certain


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Political Literature (1755—75)
data to go upon.