is "natural"---Fox is "chaste"---Fox is to be free from the throes of growth. forcible;" Why yes, in a sense, Fox is Where expansion is hopeless, it is little even "forcible :" but then, to feel that he glory to have escaped distortion. Nor is it was so, you must have heard him; where- any blame that the rich fermentation of as, for forty years he has been silent. We grapes should disturb the transparency of of 1847, that can only read him, hearing their golden fluids. Fox had nothing new Fox described as forcible, are disposed to to tell us, nor did he hold a position amongst recollect Shakspeare's Mr. Feeble amongst men that required or would even have alFalstaff's recruits, who also is described as lowed him to tell anything new. He was forcible, viz. as the "most forcible Fee- helmsman to a party; what he had to do, ble." And, perhaps, a better description though seeming to give orders, was simply could not be devised for Fox himself---so to repeat their orders---"Port your helm," feeble was he in matter, so forcible in man- said the party; "Port it is," replied the ner; so powerful for instant effect, so im- helmsman. But Burke was no steersman; potent for posterity. In the Pythian fury he was the Orpheus that sailed with the of his gestures---in his screaming voice---in Argonauts; he was their seer, seeing more his directness of purpose, Fox would now in his visions than he always understood remind you of some demon steam-engine on himself; he was their watcher through the a railroad, some Fire-king or Salmoneus, hours of night; he was their astrological that had counterfeited, because he could interpreter. Who complains of a prophet not steal, Jove's thunderbolts; hissing, for being a little darker of speech than a bubbling, snorting, fuming; demoniac gas, post-office directory? or of him that reads you think-gas from Acheron must feed the stars for being sometimes perplexed? that dreadful system of convulsions. But But, even as to facts, Schlosser is always pump out the imaginary gas, and, behold! blundering. Post-office directories would be it is ditch-water. Fox, as Mr. Schlosser of no use to him; nor link-boys; nor blazrightly thinks, was all of a piece---simple ing tar-barrels. He wanders in a fog such in his manners, simple in his style, simple as sits upon the banks of Cocytus. He in his thoughts. No waters in him turbid with new crystallizations; everywhere the eye can see to the bottom. No music in him dark with Cassandra meanings. Fox, indeed, disturb decent gentlemen by "allusions to all the sciences, from the integral calculus and metaphysics to navigation !" Fox would have seen you hanged first. Burke, on the other hand, did all that, and other wickedness besides, which fills an 8vo page in Schlosser; and Schlosser crowns his enormities by charging him, the said Burke (p. 99), with "wearisome tediousness. Among my own acquaintances are several old women, who think on this point precisely as Schlosser thinks; and they go further, for they even charge Burke with "tedious wearisomeness." Oh, sorrowful woe, and also woeful sorrow, when an Edmund Burke arises, like a cheeta or hunting leopard coupled in a tiger-chase with a German poodle. To think, in a merciful spirit, of the jungle---barely to contemplate, in a temper of humanity, the incomprehensible cane-thickets, dark and bristly, into which that bloody cheeta will drag that unoffending poodle! fancies that Burke, in his life-time, was popular. Of course, it is so natural to be popular by means of "wearisome tediousness," that Schlosser, above all people, should credit such a tale. Burke has been dead just fifty years, come next autumn. I remember the time from this accidentthat my own nearest relative stepped on a day of October, 1797, into that same suite of rooms at Bath (North Parade) from which, six hours before, the great man had been carried out to die at Beaconsfield. It is, therefore, you see, fifty years. Now, ever since then, his collective works have been growing in bulk by the incorporation of juvenile essays (such as his European Settlements," his "Essay on the Sublime," on "Lord Bolingbroke," &c.,) or (as more recently) by the posthumous publication of his MSS.;* and yet, ever since • "Of his MSS."—And, if all that I have heard be true, much has somebody to answer for, that so little has been yet published. The two executors of Burke were Dr. Lawrence, of Doctors' Commons, a well-known M.P. in forgotten days, and Windham, a man too like Burke in elasticity of mind ever to be spoken of in connexion with forgotten But surely the least philosophic of read-things. Which of them was to blame, I know not. But Mr. R. Sharpe, M.P., twenty-five years ago, ers, who hates philosophy "as toad or asp," well known as River Sharpe, from the arcpavrodovia must yet be aware, that, where new growths of his conversation, used to say, that one or both of are not germinating, it is no sort of praise the executors had offered him (the river) a huge then, in spite of growing age and growing compass, could not, from necessity of nabulk, are more in demand. At this time, ture, abstain from such speculations. For half a century after his last sigh, Burke is a man to reach a remote posterity, it is popular; a thing, let me tell you, Schlos- sometimes necessary that he should throw ser, which never happened before to a wri- his voice over to them in a vast arch—it ter steeped to his lips in personal politics. must sweep a parabola-which, therefore, What a tilth of intellectual lava must that rises high above the heads of those next to man have interfused amongst the refuse and him, and is heard by the bystanders but scoria of such mouldering party rubbish, to indistinctly, like bees swarming in the force up a new verdure and laughing har-upper air before they settle on the spot fit vests, annually increasing for new genera- for hiving. tions! Popular he is now, but popular he See, therefore, the immeasurableness of was not in his own generation. And how misconception. Of all public men, that could Schlosser have the face to say that he stand confessedly in the first rank as to was? Did he never hear the notorious an- splendor of intellect, Burke was the least ecdote, that at one period Burke obtained popular at the time when our blind friend the sobriquet of "dinner-bell?" And why? Schlosser assumes him to have run off with Not as one who invited men to a banquet the lion's share of popularity. Fox, on by his gorgeous eloquence, but one that the other hand, as the leader of opposition, gave a signal to shoals in the House of was at that time a household term of love Commons, for seeking refuge in a literal or reproach, from one end of the island to dinner from the oppression of his philoso- the other. To the very children playing in phy. This was, perhaps, in part a scoff of the streets, Pitt and Fox, throughout his opponents. Yet there must have been some foundation for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's career, Goldsmith had independently said, that this great orator * I went on refining, Burke's generation, were pretty nearly as And thought of convincing, whilst they thought of misrepresent, dining." I blame neither party. It ought not to be travelling trunk, perhaps an Imperial or a Salisbury "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer " for that intellectual potentate, Edmund Burke, the man whose true mode of power has never yet been truly investigated; whilst Charles Fox is known only as an echo is known, and for any real effect of intellect upon this generation, for anything but "the whistling of a name, "the Fox of 1780--1807 sleeps where the carols of the larks are sleeping, that gladdened the springtides of those years-sleeps with the roses that glorified the beauty of their summers.' A man in Fox's situation is sure, whilst living, to draw after him trains of sycophants; and it is the evil necessity of newspapers the most independent, that they must swell the mob of sycophants. The public compels them to exaggerate the true proportions of such people as we see every hour in our own day. Those who, for the moment, modify, or may modify the national condition, become preposterous idols in the eyes of the gaping public; but with the sad necessity of being too utterly trodden under foot after they are shelved, unless they live in men's memory by something better than speeches in Parliament. Having the usual fate, Fox was complimented, whilst living, on his knowledge of Homeric Greek, which was a jest: he knew neither more nor less of Homer, than, fortunately, most English gentlemen of his rank; quite enough that is to read the "Iliad" with unaffected pleasure, far too JUNIUS. code never pardoned in villains of low degree. with the government, whom he had alarm- Schlosser talks of Junius, who is to him, as to many people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, Hermes Trismegistus, or the medieval Prester John. Not only are most people unable to solve the enigma, but they have no idea of what it is that they are to solve. I have to inform Schlos-of the otium cum dignitate, he negotiated ser that there are three separate questions about Junius, of which he has evidently no distinct knowledge, and cannot, therefore, have many chances to spare for settling them. The three questions are these:-A. Who was Junius? B. What was it that armed Junius with a power so unaccountable at this day over the public mind? C. Why, having actually exercised this power, and gained under his masque far more than he ever hoped to gain, did this Junius not come forward in his own person, when all the legal danger had long passed away, to claim a distinction that for him (among the vainest of men) must have been more precious than his heart's blood? The two questions, B and C, I have examined in pasta member of council to Bengal, you see times, and I will not here repeat my explanations further than to say, with respect to the last, that the reason for the author not claiming his own property was this, because he dared not; because it would have been infamy for him to avow himself as Junius; because it would have revealed a crime and published a crime in his own earlier life, for which many a man is transported in our days, and for less than which many a man has been in past days hanged, broken on the wheel, burned, gibbeted, or impaled. To say that he watched and listened at his master's key-holes, is nothing. It was not key-holes only that he made free with, but keys; he tampered with his master's seals; he committed larcenies; not, like a brave man, risking his life on the highway, but petty larcenies larcenies in a dwellinghouse-larcenies under the opportunities of a confidential situation--crimes which formerly, in the days of Junius, our bloody little to revise the text of any three lines, without making himself ridiculous. The excessive slenderness of his general literature, English and French, may be seen in the letters published by his Secretary, Trotter. But his fragment of a History, published by Lord Holland, at two guineas, currently sold for two shillings (not two pence, or else I have been defrauded of 1s. 10d.), most of all proclaims the tenuity of his knowledge. He looks upon Malcolm Laing as a huge oracle; and having read even less than Hume, a thing not very easy, with great naiveté cannot guess where Hume pick ed up his facts. clearly that we could not possibly hang him the man who built a great prosperity on | long since disposed of. In fact, it is not too the basis of a great knavery." I complain strong a thing to say--and Chief Justice heavily of Mr. Taylor, the very able un- Dallas did say something like it-that if masquer of Junius, for blinking the whole Mr. Taylor is not right, if Sir Philip Franquestions B and C. He it is that has set- cis is not Junius, then was no man ever yet tled the question A, so that it will never hanged on sufficient evidence. Even conbe re-opened by a man of sense. A man fession is no absolute proof. Even confesswho doubts, after really reading Mr. Tay-ing to a crime, the man may be mad. lor's work, is not only a blockhead, but an Well, but at least seeing is believing: if irreclaimable blockhead. It is true that the court sees a man commit an assault, several men, among them Lord Brougham, will not that suffice? Not at all: ocular whom Schlosser (though hating him, and delusions on the largest scale are common. kicking him) cites, still profess scepticism. What's a court? Lawyers have no better But the reason is evident: they have not eyes than other people. Their physics are read the book, they have only heard of it. often out of repair, and whole cities have They are unacquainted with the strongest been known to see things that could have arguments, and even with the nature of the no existence. Now, all other evidence is evidence.* Lord Brougham, indeed, is held to be short of this blank seeing or generally reputed to have reviewed Mr. Tay- blank confessing. But I am not at all sure of lor's book. That may be it is probable that. Circumstantial evidence, that mulenough what I am denying is not at all tiplies indefinitely its points of internexus that Lord Brougham reviewed Mr. Taylor, with known admitted facts, is more impresbut that Lord Brougham read Mr. Taylor. sive than direct testimony. If you detect And there is not much wonder in that, when a fellow with a large sheet of lead that by we see professed writers on the subject-many (to wit 70) salient angles, that by bulky writers-writers of Answers and Refutations, dispensing with the whole of Mr. T.'s book, single paragraphs of which would have forced them to cancel their own. The possibility of scepticism, after really reading Mr. T.'s book, would be the strongest exemplification upon record of Sancho's proverbial reproach, that a man "wanted better bread than was made of wheat-" would be the old case renewed from the scholastic grumblers "that some men do not know when they are answered." They have got their quietus, and they still continue to "maunder " on with objections * Even in Dr. Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several peculiarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have overlooked them. The same thing may be seen in the notes to Dr. Francis's translation of Horace. These points, though not independently of much importance, become far more so in combination with others. The reply made to me once by a publisher of some eminence upon this question, was the best fitted to lower Mr. Taylor's investigation with a stranger to the long history of the dispute. "I feel," he said, "the impregnability of the case made out by Mr. Taylor. But the misfortune is, that I have seen so many previous impregnable cases made out for other claimants." Aye, that would be unfortunate. But the misfortune for this repartee was, that I, for whose use it was intended, not being in the predicament of a stranger to the dispute, having seen every page of the pleadings, knew all (except Mr. Taylor's) to be false in their statements; after which their arguments signified nothing. tedious (to wit 30) reëntrant angles, fits into and owns its sisterly relationship to all that is left of the lead upon your roof-this tight fit will weigh more with a jury than even if my lord chief justice should jump into the witness-box, swearing that, with judicial eyes, he saw the vagabond cutting the lead whilst he himself sat at breakfast; or even than if the vagabond should protest before this honorable court that he did cut the lead in order that he (the said vagabond) might have hot rolls and coffee as well as my lord the witness. If Mr. Taylor's body of evidence does not hold water, then is there no evidence extant upon any question, judicial or not judicial, that will. But I blame Mr. Taylor heavily for throwing away the whole argument applicable to B and C; not as any debt that rested particularly upon him to public justice; but as a debt to the integrity of his own book. That book is now a fragment; admirable as regards A; but (by omitting B and C) not sweeping the whole area of the problem. There yet remains, therefore, the dissatisfaction which is always likely to arise-not from the smallest allegatio falsi, but from the large suppressio veri. B, which, on any other solution than the one I have proposed, is perfectly unintelligible, now becomes plain enough. To imagine a heavy, coarse, hard-working. government, seriously affected by such a bauble as they would consider performances on the tight | In that character only could Timoleon berope of style, is mere midsummer madness. come formidable to a Cabinet Minister; "Hold your absurd tongue," would any of and in some such character must our friend, the ministers have said to a friend descant- Junius Brutus, have made himself alarming ing on Junius as a powerful artist of style-to Government. From the moment that В "do you dream, dotard, that this baby's is properly explained, it throws light upon rattle is the thing that keeps us from sleep- C. The Government was alarmed-not at ing? Our eyes are fixed on something else: such moonshine as patriotism, or at a soapthat fellow, whoever he is, knows what he bubble of rhetoric-but because treachery ought not to know; he has had his hand in was lurking amongst their own households; some of our pockets: he's a good locksmith, and, if the thing went on, the consequences is that Junius; and before he reaches Ty- might be appalling. But this domestic burn, who knows what amount of mischief treachery, which accounts for B, accounts he may do to self and partners?" The at the same time for C. The very same rumor that ministers were themselves alarm- treachery that frightened its objects at the ed (which was the naked truth) travelled time by the consequences it might breed, downwards; but the why did not travel; would frighten its author afterwards from and the innumerable blockheads of lower claiming its literary honors by the rememcircles, not understanding the real cause of brances it might awaken. The mysterious fear, sought a false one in the supposed disclosure of official secrets, which had once thunderbolts of the rhetoric. Operahouse roused so much consternation within a thunderbolts they were: and strange it is, limited circle, and (like the French affair that grave men should fancy newspapers, of the diamond necklace) had sunk into teeming (as they have always done) with neglect only when all clue seemed lost for Publicolas, with Catos, with Algernon Syd- perfectly unravelling it, would revive in all neys, able by such trivial small shot to gain its interest when a discovery came before a moment's attention from the potentates of the public, viz. a claim on the part of Downing Street. Those who have des- Francis to have written the famous letters, patches to write, councils to attend, and which must at the same time point a strong votes of the Commons to manage, think light upon the truc origin of the treachelittle of Junius Brutus. A Junius Brutus, rous disclosures. Some astonishment had that dares not sign by his own honest name, always existed as to Francis-how he rose is presumably skulking from his creditors. so suddenly into rank and station; some A Timoleon, who hints at assassination in a astonishment always existed as to Junius, newspaper, one may take it for granted, is how he should so suddenly have fallen a manufacturer of begging letters. And it asleep as a writer in the journals. The is a conceivable case that a £20 note, en- coincidence of this sudden and unaccountclosed to Timoleon's address, through the able silence with the sudden and unaccountnewspaper office, might go far to soothe that able Indian appointment of Francis; the great patriot's feelings, and even to turn extraordinary familiarity of Junius, which aside his avenging dagger. These sort of had not altogether escaped notice, with the people were not the sort to frighten a Bri- secrets of one particular office, viz. the tish Ministry. One laughs at the probable War Office; the sudden recollection, sure conversation between an old hunting squire to flash upon all who remembered Francis, coming up to comfort the First Lord of the if again he should become revived into susTreasury, on the rumor that he was panic-picion, that he had held a situation of trust struck. "What, surely, my dear old in that particular War Office; all these little friend, you're not afraid of Timoleon?" recollections would begin to take up their First Lord." Yes, I am." C. Gent. places in a connected story: this and that, "What, afraid of an anonymous fellow in laid together, would become clear as daythe papers ?" F. L.-"Yes, dreadfully." light; and to the keen eyes of still survivC. Gent.-"Why, I always understood ing enemies-Horne Tooke, "little Chathat these people were a sort of shams-mier," Ellis, the Fitzroy, Russell, and living in Grub Street-or where was it that Murray houses-the whole progress and Pope used to tell us they lived? Surely catastrophe of the scoundrelism, the perfidy you're not afraid of Timoleon, because some people think he's a patriot ?" F. L. -"No, not at all; but I am afraid because some people think he's a housebreaker!" and the profits of the perfidy, would soon become as intelligible as any tale of midnight burglary from without, in concert with a wicked butler within, that was ever sifted |