Walpole.  I did not purpose to tempt again the patience of mankind.  But the case is very different with regard to my trouble.  My whole fortune is from the bounty of the Crown and from the public:  it would ill become me to spare any pains for the King’s glory, or for the honour and satisfaction of my country; and give me leave to add, my lord, it would be an ungrateful return for the distinction with which your lordship has condescended to honour me if I withheld such trifling aid as mine, when it might in the least tend to adorn your lordship’s administration.  From me, my lord, permit me to say these are not words of course, or of compliment, this is not the language of flattery:  your lordship knows I have no views; perhaps knows that, insignificant as it is, my praise is never detached from my esteem:  and when you have raised, as I trust you will, real monuments of glory, the most contemptible characters in the inscription dedicated by your country, may not be the testimony of, my lord, your lordship’s most obedient humble servant.-Letters, vol. iii.

I have neither time nor space for going much farther into this part of the subject; but there is one circumstance which, in its application to the supposition that Francis was Junius, is too remarkable to be passed over.  Sir Philip Francis supplied Mr. Almon with reports of two speeches of Lord Chatham, in one of which there is this passage, “The Americans had Purchased their liberty at a dear rate, since they had quitted their native country and gone in search of freedom to a desert.”  Junius, about three weeks before, had said, “They left their native land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert;” and it has been inferred from this, that the words in the speech were not Lord Chatham’s, but the reporter’s, and that Sir Philip Francis was Junius.  But it happens that Walpole, in his Royal and Noble Authors, some years earlier than either the letter of Junius or the speech of Lord Chatham, had said of Lord Brooke, that he was on the point “Of seeking liberty in the forests of America.”

5.  If we turn from a recollection of the words to a consideration of the peculiarities of the style of Junius, I think it will be agreed that the most remarkable of all is that species of irony which consists in equivocal compliment.  Walpole also excelled in this; and prided himself upon doing so.  Are we not justified in saying, that of all who, in the eighteenth century, cast their thoughts on public occurrences into the form of letters, Junius and Walpole are the most distinguished! that the works of no other prose writer of their time exhibit a zest for political satire equal to that which is displayed in the Letters of Junius, and in the Memoires and Political Letters of Walpole and that the sarcasm of equivocal praise was the favourite weapon in the armoury of each, though it certainly appears to have been tempered, and sharpened, and polished with additional care for the hand of