Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1885 — The Writer of Junius. [ARTICLE]

The Writer of Junius.

It seems strange that a love-letter should supply another link in fixing the authorship of the most scathing invective and the bitterest sarcasm in the language. But there is published at the end of Mr. Cliabot’s book, as the work of another well-known expert, Mr. Netherclift, the sac-simile of an epistle to a lady, in a disguised upright hand of Sir Philip Francis’, that is identical with the disguised upright hand of Junius. It was written at Bath in the winter of 1770 to a Miss Giles, the daughter of one of the officials of the Bank of England, afterward Governor when in the time of Mr. Pitt the bank stopped payment. In those days it was customary at .the assembly rooms for a lady to retain her partner during the whole of the evening, and for several evenings Mr. Francis and Miss Giles danced together. The result of it was a very tolerable copy of verses, delivered to Miss Giles with an anonymous letter, wherein the writer declared that, having found the verses, which were unaddressed, he could not conceive for whom they were meant unless for her. At the time the young lady suspected the author, but said nothing, and it was not till years afterward, when, though the wife of Mr. King, of Taplow, she still kept the papers, that a scrap of Junius’ writing was being handed round the company in which she happened to be. “Why,” exclaimed Mrs. King, when the paper came to her, “I know that writing. The person who wrote that wrote me some verses and a letter.” And on comparison, though the verses were plainly by another hand, the letter was as plainly in the hand of Junius. The verses, Sir Philip’s composition, were afterward proved to have been dictated to his friend Tilghman, who spent the winter of 1770 with him at Bath, in one of whose letters from America part of a verse is jokingly quoted, in proof of Francis’ capacity for poetry of the highest order. That Sir Philip publicly and in the strongest terms denied the authorship is very well known, but by tha- denial one is only reminded of the reply said to have been made under similar circumstances by the author of “Ecce Homo” : “Why, if I had written it, you know I should certainly say I hadn’t.” —The Cornhill Magazine.