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Junius and Sir Arthur Gordon.

BY 'CAMUS.'

ONE of the most complicated and at times one of the most interesting problems with which the human mind can grapple, is that which is involved in deciding on the real value of some supposed piece of evidence. To weigh antecedent improbabilities, to sift rumours, to strike the balance between conflicting statements, and allow for the bias of feeling or undercurrent of prejudice, constitute a difficult achievement, and of which successful examples are rare.

Cases of disputed authorship belong to this category. The work in question may be a picture, a poem, a pamphlet. A doubt arises as to who was its author. If we possess no infallible guide to its origin, hold no attestation from accredited witnesses, can come upon no documentary proofs, the mind may be strongly swayed, but would be at fault in attempting to embrace any strict conclusion. However forcible the argument in this or that direction may at first sight appear, it will probably be found fallacious. Our surest rivet may prove no better than a slip-knot: the slip-knot will give, and the entire chain run out, link after link, leaving us to contemplate a futile instance of labour lost. The deepest and safest convictions are those which have been derived from internal evidence.

Somewhat more than thirty years ago public attention was drawn strongly to the vexata quæstio of the authorship of 'Junius's Letters,' and a hope was entertained that some decision might at length be arrived at, as far, at least, as the claims attaching to one name were concerned. We refer to the late Sir Philip Francis.

The investigations which followed were interesting, but they proved barren of any result at the time. Two generations had passed away since the first appearance of the celebrated Letters, each in its turn dying and making no sign. It was hiatus valde deflendus. "Junius" had almost pledged himself to the English nation, that if he lived they should hear from him again. But they never did hear from him after his last-dated letter, that to Lord Mansfield, of the 21st of January, 1772.

The Irenarch' pamphlet, no doubt the production of "Junius," and printed some two years later, seems never to have been published. Seventy years had elapsed since the close of the complete series, and no one seemed much the wiser as to the identity of the reckless and eloquent pamphleteer. Even his rank and grade in society were still

unascertained. Who could say whether that bribeless pen had belonged to a tribune of the people, or had been wielded by a senator who wore coronet and ermine and sat by right among the peers of the realm? One thing was certain. "Junius" had now gone to his rest; and a countless troop, many of them congenial spirits, had marched on the same road.

Sir Philip Francis had deceased in 1818, and his only son, Mr. Francis, died in 1837. The quaint, heterogeneous, and not very valuable library had been sold on the premises in St. James's Square under the auspices of the veteran Evans; but no Junian revelations had accrued from its dispersion. Mr. Joseph Parkes was in the habit, long after, of assuring his friends, that though some rare or curious editions of the Letters fetched fancy prices, nothing of any importance had transpired, save in what might be gleaned by a competent judge (he meant himself) from the contents of some ninety volumes of tracts on political subjects. Sir Philip's immediate heir had, to use a trite but expressive phrase, kept all dark. Obtaining, after the lapse of many years, by an arrangement made with Lady Francis, the surrender of her life interest in the mansion and its contents, Mr. Francis himself never dwelt in it, neither would he let it on lease. The house remained, with whatever treasures or secrets it contained, as hermetically sealed from prying glances of the outer world as if it had been an Etruscan tomb.

It is unfortunate, in the interests of antiquarian literature, when a mask, worn persistently during a long life-time, is retained even in the closing scene, and forms part of the cerements which wrap the body in its silent grave. We seem to lose, in brave and honoured association, far more than we can be said to gain in the weird halo of mystery. Who really cares, after a while, for anonymous productions? Is not the feeling engendered by "You shall never know me," soon or late, one of slight and offence? It is all very well to talk of the intrinsic merit and charm of the work itself. We like to be sure of the workman. Is not the 'Divina Commedia' of Dante more wonderful and precious in our eyes when we think of the suffering, wandering, broken-hearted man who wove the unearthly threefold vision? 'Paradise Lost,' 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' are priceless heirlooms of England for generations yet unborn; but many a heart would faint, and many a cheek grow pale, could serious doubt be thrown on the authorships of John Milton, John Bunyan, and Daniel Defoe. The Faery Queen' is Edmund Spenser's Faëry Queen.' Even the immortal 'Plays and Comedies' would fade into a learned myth, or seem "like some gay creature of the element," if we once let go of William Shakespeare.

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Besides, as the real and tangible recede from view, the intangible advances spectre-like on our field of vision. The rights of the proprietor

have fallen into abeyance, and the speculator forges his unwholesome scheme, and after a time lays claim to the territory which looks like "No man's land."

So it proved in this instance, as far as the Junian volume was concerned. The names of a host of claimants were pushed forward from time to time; and the struggle to seize and appropriate the vacant chaplet waxed as hot among their numerous partisans, as the recorded efforts of charmers of the other sex to force upon their aching and reluctant feet a certain obdurate "glass slipper," of which we have most of us read in our juvenile days.

But the scent had grown cold, and the busiest lucubrators could not puzzle it out. Moss-grown critics and commentators had covered the ground with fallen leaves of a past generation, and their hardier successors seemed bent on sifting the whole subject in a sieve of vanity. Nearly thirty years more had gone by, when a taxing-master in Chancery came forward to turn the public mind once again into its latest channel of inquiry.

Mr. Joseph Parkes owned a notable collection of Junian books and manuscripts, including at that time the original Letters to Woodfall. His own groove in the controversy had long been irrevocably fixed. Some might say that it was "narrow gauge;" but Parkes did not think so, and at all events he was above the meddlesome impertinence of proselytising.

Authorship, however, he coveted; and from this laborious, genial, and most communicative man, people ere long learned, or seemed to learn, more than they had ever known concerning "Junius" and concerning Francis. Mr. Parkes had come to regard the twain as inseparable, if not boon companions. His respect for the public forbade him to assert that the shadow had become substance, and that "Junius" and Francis were one and the same; but it was like Dante companying with Virgil, and at times it even seemed doubtful which he most admired, the ombra or the man. If anything, he leaned toward "Quæ fecimus," and held that if he were not "Junius" then "Junius" had reason for regret.

It was soon known that a Life or Memoir of the late Sir Philip Francis was in process of compilation. The grandsons could not or would not undertake it; but the task had been deputed to Parkes, and the two brothers had volunteered such aid and information as it might be in their power to contribute. There were, perhaps, family reasons among the Francises for this arrangement.

The time-honoured member of the Reform Club was well content. He really loved hard work in the literary line, and this "Junius" question he never wearied of handling. It had, in fact, been the idolised hobby and lucubration of two-thirds of his life. The man himself was a singular mixture of overweening confidence with occasional

VOL. XXXIX.

touches of modesty. He one day asked an intimate friend if he could favour him with any hint concerning his forthcoming literary work. The reply naturally was, "Let me hear part of a proof-sheet, if you do not object." The sheet was produced, and Parkes read aloud a paragraph. In return, he was cautioned as to style, and was besought not to be afraid of old Dilke (of the Athenæum), who had vowed war to the knife against the Franciscan theory. His reply was characteristic, "He could not alter his style, but hoped that the English public would be content with substantive information."

Several summers and winters sped away, but the Memoir lingered. In answer to inquiries made from time to time, the same chimes rang on. It would come out at Easter, at Christmas, &c. One sad day, the above-named friend saw the notice of his decease in the Times obituary. Not long after this, Mr. Merivale completed and brought out the Memoir, Messrs. Longman being the publishers.

As an agreeable, but rambling book, this joint production was perused here and there with lively interest; but it never obtained any extensive circulation. Nor can this be wondered at. It was natural that its pages should be searched, principally in the hope of finding something decisive, if only in the avowal of the biographer's conviction, concerning the Junian reputation of Francis. But here, the public were disappointed. Mr. Parkes had evidently not had time to bring his reserves into the field; and Mr. Merivale, for some reason or other, seemed incapable as yet of forming any fixed opinion on the subject. The general impression left, after wading through two volumes in royal 8vo., was, that Merivale had been hurried, and that Parkes, though a fervent preacher of his own creed, had certainly not the gift of making converts.

The book, however, such as it was, brought Mr. Hayward, QC., into the field, who published rather a stirring pamphlet, with the title of More about Junius,' which he presently afterward suppressed.

A handsome volume in imperial quarto, by the Hon. Edward Twisleton, followed, after a brief interval, from the press of Mr. Murray.

This work, which is an elaborate combination of patient investigation with subtle reasoning, enlivened by narrative and play of fancy, did not enter on the question of the authorship of the Letters, but was devoted to proving that, whoever was their author, they were "handwritten" by Sir Philip Francis; Mr. Twisleton preferring good Saxon English to the Anglicised Latin word. If this praiseworthy volume has a fault, or rather an error in judgment, we should say that it lies in his overdoing the cumulative argument. Such blemish, if blemish it be, was no doubt due to the author having resolved that he would produce an exhaustive treatise on the subject. But any good

angel at his elbow might have whispered, "Beware of giving the public too large a dose from prescriptions by Messrs. Netherclift and Chabot." The expert may be welcome in the witness-box at first, but after a while the audience are apt to grow weary of his demonstrations and his dogmatism. An old-fashioned distich tells us that

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Waiving this objection, unfortunately a practical one with ninetenths of our reading public, Mr. Twisleton's book is a veritable marvel. The lucid arrangement of the text, the beauty of the plates and specimens, are beyond criticism. And if it should now be conceded that Francis hand wrote the letters, there would remain but one point more to decide, viz., " Was he acting as scribe, clerk, amanuensis to another; or was he inditing, in that finely disguised character, his own compositions ?"

This letter from the Hon. Sir Arthur Gordon to Sir John Shaw Lefevre was published by permission in the Times of the first of February in this year. It is however, in point of fact, the fuller and more explicit avowal of a statement already cited in the columns of that Journal some six months earlier than the date of the present letter, that is, on May 22nd, 1871. The former statement appeared almost simultaneously with Mr. Twisleton's book, being a kind of critique upon it by the writer of the Times article; and the present letter contains a brief message from Sir Arthur to Mr. Twisleton, written after perusing his work. It is an interesting letter, penned in perspicuous language, and from the point-blank tone of its assertions, more to the purpose perhaps than any on dit of the last twenty years.

We propose now to consider its value as evidence on one or two principal points, which it handles at some length. The first of these is Mr. Pitt's opinion or belief, here recorded. The other is the mention afterwards made of Francis in connection with the Junian controversy; wherein Sir Arthur favours us with an anecdote so ludicrously racy, that it has encouraged the writer of this Times article to take a discursive flight over the heads of both Pitt and Gordon, citing more "good stories" of the knight, and finally dragging forward the name of Earl Temple, and apostrophising a "right and left" shot delivered by Lady Grenville.

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Mr. Pitt, we are informed, told Lord Aberdeen (the father of Sir Arthur)"that he knew the name of the author of the Letters of Junius,' and that the name was not Francis." And this, Sir Arthur adds, he had heard his father say, "not once, but very often."

There seems to be no valid reason for discrediting the general accuracy of this recollection of Sir Arthur Gordon's. We may at once

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