At the same time, the hermit of HOLYPORT has done the most essential service to this inquiry by his extract from Mr. Collier, as the question is thereby inclosed within exceedingly narrow limits.  But if the ballad do not refer to Henry VIII., to whom can it be referred with greater probability?  It is too much to assume that all the poetry, wit, and talent of the Tudor times were confined to the partizans of the Tudor cause, religious or political.  We know, indeed, the contrary.  But for his communication, too, the singular coincidence of two such characteristic words of the song in the “Poley Frog” (in the same number of the “Notes and queries”) might have given rise to another conjecture:  but the date excludes its further consideration.

I may add, that since this has been mooted, an Irish gentleman has told me that the song was familiar enough in Dublin; and he repeated some stanzas of it, which were considerably different from the version of W.A.G., and the chorus the same as in the common English version.  I hope presently to receive a complete copy of it:  which, by the bye, like everything grotesquely humorous in Ireland, was attributed to the author of Gulliver’s Travels.

T.S.D.

* * * * *

“JUNIUS IDENTIFIED.”

It is fortunate for my reputation that I am still living to vindicate my title to the authorship of my own book, which seems otherwise in danger of being taken from me.

I can assure your correspondent R.J. (Vol. ii., p. 103.) that I was not only “literally the writer,” (as he kindly suggests, with a view of saving my credit for having put my name to the book), but in its fullest sense the author of “Junius Identified"; and that I never received the slightest assistance from Mr. Dubois, or any other person, either in collecting or arranging the evidence, or in the composition and correction of the work.  After I had completed my undertaking, I wrote to Mr. Dubois to ask if he would allow me to see the handwriting of Sir Philip Francis, that I might {259} compare it with the published fac-similes of the handwriting of Junius; but he refused my request.  His letter alone disproved the notion entertained by R.J. and others, that Mr. Dubois was in any degree connected with me, or with the authorship of the work in question.

With regard to the testimony of Lord Campbell, I wrote to his lordship in February, 1848, requesting his acceptance of a copy of Junius Identified, which I thought he might not have seen; and having called his attention to my name at the end of the preface, I begged he would, when opportunity offered, correct his error in having attributed the work to Mr. Dubois.  I was satisfied with his lordship’s reply, which was to the effect that he was ashamed of his mistake, and would take care to correct it.  No new edition of that series of the Lives of the Chancellors, which contains the “Life of Lord Loughborough,” has since been published.  The present edition is dated 1847.