PREFACE. THE historic reader is struck-or should be-with the facts that Lord Chatham is represented as in some degree out of his senses- -full of a certain perversity, secret, evasive, scowling, and implacable during a portion of his career; and that the period of his strange, unexplained lunacy was the very period of the Junian epistles. In the earlier part of the lustrum, 1767-1772, the great baffled minister was doing something under a cloud, and behind a curtain; and Junius, at the same time, in all his fortitudes, girding at the king, lords, and commons of England. A remarkable coincidence; but not sufficiently remarked, we suspect, by those who meditate that Epistolary Sphinx of the last age. The same reader has, probably, felt surprise that the orator, whose genius and audacity could raise the monotonous character of British eloquence to the old Greek level of the Agora and the statesman, who, since the stronger times of the Wolseys and Burleighs, stands up alone to redeem the common run and fatal mediocrity of British statesmanship, should have such an indistinct and meagre biography, and leave some of the best effects of his energetic life to the keeping of tradition; at a period, too, not beyond the memory of some men now living. This veiling of such a bust in the procession of the celebrities, suggests something, in the dispositions of the great man himself and in those of his compeers and countrymen, which does not show itself in a passing glance. Along with these, there are two other striking considerations. The first is, the general appearance of dislike with which the great peers of that time-the Butes, Albemarles, Russels, Rockinghams, and others-allude to Lord Chatham, in their memoirs, or any letters having reference to that angry period; while their sons and successors continue to the present day the old impressions of aversion-an aversion which certainly seems too deeply rooted to have had its rise in the mere political feuds of the day. The next is, the curious anxiety of Lord Mahon-Chatham's descendant-and, along with him, Lord Brougham, Mr. Macaulay, and others, to make the world believe, against the most glaring contrary evidence, that the vehement orator and statesman was a poor hand at a letter, a feeble sycophant of George III., and, for the rest, a man of crotchets and oddities, which no one could rightly understand then, and which no one need try to understand any more. Such considerations-calculated, perhaps, to excite certain doubts, and rouse curiosity-were those which first led, in this case, to the method of Lord Chatham's madness, and the conclusions shown in the following pages. The writer has seen but one attempt to prove that Junius was Lord Chatham: that of Dr. Waterhouse,* of Cam * The Doctor's testimony, though garrulous and rambling, is not with bridge, Massachusetts, who published his book in 1831, and whose manner of treating the subject did his theory more harm than good. He confines himself to what may be called the classic series, rejecting the Miscellaneous Collection, which confused and puzzled him, and making that desperate which was difficult before. The Doctor, entering the arena, on which he was to cope with the most cunning strategist on record, is confounded by the fact that Poplicola begins by a terrible show of attack on-Lord Chatham! He gives up the Miscellaneous Series as something unaccountable, and rambles on his way to the conclusion with half the evidence. In England, Messrs. Swinden and another produced rifaccimentos of the Doctor's argument. But the Chathamites are not the only inquirers who have stood puzzled before the Poplicolas and Correggios. The Franciscans, too, have flung doubts upon them-on some of them, at least-more disposed to give up the letters than give up their theory. The truth is, those searchers, from the beginning, have had an humble opinion of the Junian legerdemain, and thought they could circumvent that Ulysses of the pen with a few hours' felicitous thinking, and a nice balancing of the evidences discoverable in the letters themselves, and the tenor of the few years embraced by their publication. The only man who could be Junius is presented in these pages; his life before and after 1767 being the best proof out a certain merit. He was in his youth a cotemporary of Junius; and, as a medical pupil of Dr. Fothergill, of London, could gather enough from the gossip of the capital to produce the convictions of his after life. He had heard whispers of the truth long before those sectaries, the Franciscans and others, rose to corrupt and darken it with their devices, glosses, and heresies. In this respect, the opinion of Dr. Waterhouse is of higher value than people are disposed to think. of his identity. That is the main argument. Following it out in the synthetic way, the reader is led inevitably to perceive the means of secrecy, and the nature of the strategy. Lord Chatham is curiously abused by Junius in the very opening of the epistolary war; and this suggests the mode of dealing with the whole cunning system of concealment. Suivez le fil de la rivière. Un autre répondit: Non, ne le suivez pas; Pursuing this course of contraries, described by Lafontaine, the investigator finds himself in an untrodden way; and the Miscellaneous Series, rejected by other theorists, leads him, against the current of appearances, in the direction of the truth. It shows Junius opposing and denouncing himself; it shows him also arguing in a similar spirit of ambages against Lord Chatham; and presents a succession of epistolary combats and sparrings, in which we can perceive the Mask doing all in his power to confuse and bewilder those who would be most likely to trace him by his political and personal sentiments. In the eighth chapter of this book, that curious and complicated strategy is pointed out, and many letters not included in Woodfall's collection are identified as those of the secret writer. Among these are two, lying eight or nine years away from the recognized Junian period. All this shows the Mask moving over a wider field, and in a stranger way than most people have suspected, and at the same time suggests that there may be as much of his literature yet unreclaimed as we find between the covers of Woodfall's book. There are, doubtless, many lights of this theme still burning in the crypts of the dead London journals; and the inquirer |