Oct. 20. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



299 



ciendi " to have been alive then as now ; but as 

 sliglit glimpses of the school, or study-life, of our 

 forefathers, I think they are well worth attention. 



J. T. Jeffcock. 



JUNIUS MISCELLANIES. 



Junius, Wood/all, and Wilkes (Vol. xii., p. 166.). 

 — There is, I believe, no evidence extant to show 

 that Mr. H. S. Woodfall knew with certainty who 

 Junius was during the lifetime of the author. 

 That he was made acquainted with the name of 

 his correspondent, and became one of the " cus- 

 todians of the secret " after the death of Junius, 

 there is sufEcient evidence to prove, if it were 

 worth while to collect the facts which lie scat- 

 tered through publications extending over more 

 than three-quarters of a century. The present 

 Mr. Woodfall is, however, the proper person to 

 answer this question. 



The autograph of Mrs. Dayrolle proves that 

 Solomon Dayrolle and his wife were the confede- 

 rates of Junius. On the discovery of the author 

 in 1772, Dayrolle was pardoned, and permitted to 

 hold his appointments at court; but one of the 

 conditions appears to have been that his name 

 should be blotted out of the book of remembrance 

 for ever.* So effectually was this part of the 

 sentence carried out, that it would puzzle many 

 to find the record of DayroUe's death in any of 

 the periodicals of the day, although he had held 

 the appointment of senior gentleman of the bed- 

 chamber to George III., and had been Master of 

 the Revels under that monarch for more than a 

 quarter of a century ! f 



A wag of a writer in the Gazetteer, it is said, 

 was the first who propagated the report that 

 Wilkes was Junius. He asserted that, going over 

 St. George's Fields, he picked up a piece of rough 

 blotted MS., containing part of the last Junius 

 letter — the sweepings thrown out of the King's 

 Bench prison, where Wilkes was then a prisoner. 

 A writer in the Gent. Mag. (vol. lix. p. 786.) re- 

 newed the inquiry, but produced no important 

 fact in support of the hypothesis. It is curious 

 that the correspondence between Junius and 

 Wilkes should at that time have been kept a 

 secret. It looks as if Wilkes had been incor- 

 porated among the " custodians." It is no less cu- 

 rious, that since the publication of G. Woodfall's 

 edition of 1812, the manuscript copies o( Junius' s 

 Letters to Wilkes have disappeared. The originals 

 had been tampered with previously to their being 

 placed in the hands of Mason Good. The most 

 offensive passages against the king had been 



* The calumniators of Chesterfield have endeavoured 

 to carr.v out a like sentence against him ; but as yet they 

 have only partially succeeded. 



t Died March, 178G. 



No. 312.] 



erased by Mr. Sergeant Rough, into whose hands 

 they came from Mr. Hallara, who had obtained 

 them from Mr. Emsley, to whom they were re- 

 turned as the owner by Mr. Hallam. Here 

 farther trace of them appears lost. 



William Champ. 



Junius's Letters to Woodfall. — In Mr. Smith's 

 very ingenious " Essay on the Authorship of 

 Junius," prefixed to the third volume of the 

 Grenville Correspondence, he speaks (p. Ixvii.) of 

 Junius's " earliest private note to Woodfall, dated 

 April 20th," and in a foot-note makes this re- 

 markable statement : 



" Woodfall must have received previous communica- 

 tions from the author, but they have not been preserved. 

 The date of this note is supplied by Dr. Mason Good, the 

 editor of Woodfall's Junius in 1812. The original has no 

 date. It may be worthy of remark, that of the sixty-three 

 private notes from Junius to Woodfall, thirty-one are 

 without any date ; twenty-eight have the day of the week 

 only ; two have the month and the day of the month ; one 

 the month, the daj' of the month, and the day of the 

 Aveek; one with the date of the j^ear only, but in this 

 single instance it is wrong, 1770 being substituted for 

 1771." 



And on quoting Private Letters of July 15, and 

 July 21, Mr. Smith notes that the originals are 

 dated " Saturday" and "Friday night" only. Struck 

 with this grave charge — for no graver charge can 

 be made against an editor than that of tamperinof 

 with documents or falsifying dates — I turned to 

 Woodfall's Junius to see what reason Dr. Mason 

 Good gave for dating this first letter " April 20, 

 1769," when the original has no date. There 

 is not a word upon the subject. But I found, 

 what Mr. Smith probably did not remark, that the 

 whole sixty-three letters are all precisely dated — 

 most of them with f,he day of week, month, and 

 year — although Mr. Smith, who has examined 

 them, says that thirty-one are without any date at all. 



This is certainly very startling, and establishes 

 two facts, which must be borne in mind in all future 

 controversies respecting Junius; viz. — 1. That 

 the edition of 1812 is not to be depended upon as 

 of any authority. 2. That no use can be made of, 

 no argument be deduced from, any of the private 

 letters, until an accurate copy of them has been 

 given to the press. M. G. T. 



The Vellum-bound Junius (Vol. xii., p. 240.). — 

 Enough, in reply to Mb. Rodneh's ingenious 

 circumstantialities, to observe, that his whole story 

 begins and ends in an on dit. T. V. B. 



Bohris "Junius" (Vol. xii., p. 241.). — The 

 whole introductory note to letter 4. in Bohn's 

 edition is " conveyed " from Heron, except the . 

 three last lines which have perplexed X. P. D., 

 and these are original, and, I need not add, for 

 the information of those who know the work, a 

 blunder. The history of the blunder, is this. 



