he, during the year 1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy Secretary-at-War; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland.  Now, Francis passed some years in the Secretary of State’s office.  He was subsequently Chief Clerk of the War Office.  He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his notes.  He resigned his clerkship at the War Office from resentment at the appointment of Mr. Chamier.  It was by Lord Holland that he was first introduced into the public service.  Now, here are five marks, all of which ought to be found in Junius.  They are all five found in Francis.  We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other person whatever.  If this argument does not settle the question, there is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.

The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way.  The style of Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius; nor are we disposed to admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the acknowledged compositions of Francis are very decidedly inferior to the anonymous letters.  The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one which may be urged with at least equal force against every claimant that has ever been mentioned, with the single exception of Burke; and it would be a waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius.  And what conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority?  Every writer must produce his best work; and the interval between his best work and his second best work may be very wide indeed.  Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are more decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of Francis than three or four of Corneille’s tragedies to the rest, than three or four of Ben Jonson’s comedies to the rest, than the Pilgrim’s Progress to the other works of Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the other works of Cervantes.  Nay, it is certain that Junius, whoever he may have been, was a most unequal writer.  To go no further than the letters which bear the signature of Junius; the letter to the king, and the letters to Horne Tooke, have little in common, except the asperity; and asperity was an ingredient seldom wanting either in the writings or in the speeches of Francis.

Indeed one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was Junius is the moral resemblance between the two men.  It is not difficult, from the letters which, under various signatures, are known to have been written by Junius, and from his dealings with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct notion of his character.  He was clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a man whose vices were not of a sordid kind.  But he must also have