2»d S. VIII., Sept. 8. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



189 



to reprimand, to scold. But on tlie whole we prefer tan- 

 gueux, as already stated. 



It will perhaps be remarked that in the French " de 

 cant " (something tilted or set on one side) we have in- 

 advertenth' suggested the origin of our own decant, de- 

 canter. To decant is, properly, "to draw off or drain from 

 a vessel iy tHting."2 



JUNIUS AND HENBY FLOOD. 



(2"« S. viii, 101.) 



" Liberavl animam meam : " — my statement 

 credited, its disclosure approved, its motive justi- 

 fied, I have nothing more to desire : though, for 

 the credit's sake of my informant, it would plea- 

 sure me to see Henry Flood's title to the Junian 

 honours duly affirmed. I have neither sympathy 

 with his politics, nor interest in his reputation. 

 Were my informant living, he would say the like 

 for himself: he being dead, I say it for him. But, 

 had he been — what I am sure he was not — zealot 

 enough to invent a fable in aid of any man's fame, 

 he was not fool enough to undo his own work by 

 the appendage of its successional concealment. 



Fully recognising the principle asserted in " N. 

 & Q." — the establishment of a truth — and desiring 

 nothing else, the position of Henry Flood, his 

 genius, and his temper, suggest him to me as a 

 more probable "Junius" than most of his fellow- 

 designates, and quite as much so as any of their 

 rather numerous array. Some among them were 

 bis superiors in station; others equalled him in 

 talent ; and a few might have been quickened 

 with his vehement and vindictive spirit : but the 

 man has not yet been evoked from the grave-dust 

 of nearly a century, in whose living person were 

 combined those threefold essentials of a Junius 

 which met in Henry Flood. And, therefore, when 

 in 1814 he was named to me as that mysterious 

 personage, I wondered, not that he had been over- 

 looked in the conjectural list of the Junii, but 

 that a high place had not been assigned to him 

 among its highest names. 



Against his authorship of Junius, dates and dis- 

 tances interject apiei'7-e d'achoppement which can- 

 not lightly be pushed aside, and may not be 

 jumped over. I leave those who have more time 

 and opportunity for consulting Irish records than 

 are possessed by me to deal with them : for, as 

 another Hibernian celebrity. Sir Boyle Roche, 

 observed, "A man cannot aisily be in two places 

 at once, barrin' he is a bird." So, if H. F., upon 

 his little affair with Mr. Agar, was actually a jail- 

 bird in the Kilkenny cage from September '69 

 to Aprir70, he could not well have been in* Lon- 

 don during that period. But Irish justice ninety 

 years ago was not over-particular — in cases of 

 the Duello especially — with patrician delinquents ; 

 and few judges then on the Bench knew how soon 



Harry Flood's might not be their own turn. It 

 is not impossible, therefore, that bad was accepted, 

 and the gentleman homicide uncaged to ply his 

 beak and talons upon the Junian quarry.* 



Colonel Luttrell had experience enough, personal 

 and parliamentary, of " that d— d fellow, Harry 

 Flood," to identify him with Junius ; and so had 

 poor Jerry Dyson — the "fears" of that good- 

 natured essayist for the loss of Jerry's Irish pen- 

 sion notwithstanding. Electro-biology might not 

 have been understood in November, 1771 ; but 

 assuredly, either Junius's spirit visited Flood in 

 Dublin on the 2oth of that month, or Flood's 

 spirit flashed over to Junius in London on the 

 27th. Let philosophers determine which. Sir 

 Lawrence Parsons's anecdote (he was Lord Rosse's 

 ancestor) claims our more serious attention. H. 

 F.'s "fixed look" at his wife, when he suddenly 

 entered the room and found her ladyship chatter- 

 ing away on the propriety of Junius making his 

 real name known, raises a very distinct inference 

 from those " ambiguous givings-out" and " tricks 

 of custom" which pretenders are so apt to prac- 

 tise. I have heard another of my Tory friends — 

 John Taylor, of The Sun — tell a pleasant instance 

 of Sir Philip Francis in this particular. Sir Boyle 

 Roche's dictum, however, abides unshaken ; and 

 the gods will not annihilate space and time, even 

 to make lovers or critics happy. And now, once 

 mora acknowledging the kindness and confidence 

 extended to me in "N. & Q..," I leave my com- 

 munications — subsidiarily to that truth which we 

 all desire to see established — to their 



Valeat Quantum. 



[The accuracy of our correspondent's sugges- 

 tion, that Flood may not have been imprisoned 

 until his (rial, but out upon bail, is confirmed by 

 the following cutting from an Irish paper which 

 has been discovered since our Note {ante, p. 103.) 

 was written : — 



« Dublin, Sept. 26, 1769. Henry Flood, Esq., who lately 

 accepted a challenge from James Agar of liingwood, Esq!, 

 who fired the first pistol, which was returned by another 

 shot from Mr. Flood, and which killed Mr. Agar, is ad- 

 mitted to bail on a security of 20,000/." 



This appears to us to confirm the argument that 

 Flood could not have been Junius ; for it could 

 scarcely be supposed that he who had killed Agar 

 in a duel on the 26th August, had consequently 

 an indictment for murder impending over him, 

 and was forced to find bail for 20,000/., would at 

 that anxious period have written no less -than 



* This volucrine metaphor was applied to Henry Flood 

 in a reciprocation of those charming amenities which in 

 his daj's delighted the Irish House of Commons, and in 

 which he sometimes got as good as he gave. An angry 

 opponent, with allusion to his features, and, it may be, to 

 some personal mishap, pointed him out as a vulture 

 hanging over his prey, with "a broken beak and a cada- 

 verous aspect." — Tantctne animis ccelestibus. 



