370 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 289. 



JUNIUS S LETTERS, SUPPOSED AUTHORS OF. 



(Vol. xi., p. 302.) 



George the Third — Dr. Wilmot. — 



" Ma'am Seires condemns all aspirers to pot 

 That prate of a Junius, since Uncle Wilmot 

 Ranks scribe of each letter she dares pledge her word. 

 As sure as not one came from King George the Third." * 



Mr. Suett. — 



Junius with his Vizor up, by CEdipus Oronoko : 

 Oxford, 1819, 8vo. pp. 54. A clumsy display of 

 wit and learnino; ; the former consisting of stale 

 anecdotes and ill-put jokes ; the latter of looked- 

 for quotations. To justify his catchpenny-title, 

 about a dozen pages at the end are given to the 

 author's interview with a dying stranger, who con- 

 fessed himself to be Suett the comedian, and the 

 author oi Junius. 



Mr. Bickerton. — 



" What wonder, too, if thou shouldst claim a seat 

 In this bright conclave of the wise and great ; 

 Too gay for pomp, too lively for a don. 

 At thee they laugh, unhappy Bickerton ! f 

 Yet thou, methinks, couldst laugh in turn to see 

 How ill their mien and character agree ; 

 Strip but the stately step and sapient brow. 

 They stand as helpless and as mad as thou ! " 



" Counsellor " Bickerton, as he was commonly 

 styled, was a conspicuous person at Oxford, aUout 

 thirty-five years ago. He was half-crazy, or 

 eccentric, and sometimes went into court and took 

 his seat among the barristers, wearing a dubious 

 wig and a M. A.'s gown. He did not take any 

 part in the proceedings of the court, not having a 

 client, and as his manners were good and his in- 

 firmity known, his right to the long robe was not 

 questioned. He was permitted to live in Hert- 



* I cannot refrain from annexing a ludicrous anecdote 

 to which the above line refers, and which is stated to i 

 have come from the lips of the noted Mrs. Clarke. It is 

 said that during the visit of a certain roj'al personage to 

 this lady, he requested to know whether or not she had 

 perused Junius, adding that a great mystery hung over the 

 real composer of those elegantly-written epistles. Mrs. C. 

 in reply stated, that she had perused them with delight, 

 but that the author was not known to any one. The 

 great personage then made answer, ' You are mistaken. I 

 know the writer, and will let you into the secret ; ' when 

 with a very grave face Mary Anne was given to under- 

 stand that the unknown author of Junius's Letters was 

 no other than his own august father, which information 

 the lady was enjoined to keep a dead secret from all the 

 world." — Scribbleomania, or Tfie Printer's DevWs Poly- 

 chronicon, p. 308., London, 1815, 8vo., pp. 341. 



t "Mr. Bickerton is an original character, which in 

 most cases is sufficient to cast upon a man the imputation 

 of insanity. I once, in the summer, heard him inveigh 

 with great indignation against the epithet here joined 

 with his name. ' How,' he said, ' can any one be unhappy 

 who breathes the air of heaven on a morning like this ? ' 

 There is more philosophy in this single exclamation than 

 in all the gloomy denunciations of modern poetry." — Tlie 

 Oxford Spy,^. 24., Oxford, 1818, 8vo., pp. 192. 



ford College, then deserted ; and it was said that 

 he kept a horse, which was sometimes seen looking 

 out of a window on the second floor. This, I pre- 

 sume, is a myth. Perhaps some Oxford man of 

 that time knows more about him, and can tell 

 what he was and when he died ? In that case I 

 think a Note would be acceptable. I never heard 

 him mentioned as Junius. 



Writing upon Junius, I take the opportunity of 

 introducing a new claim to the authorship. The 

 following is from a letter of a Calcutta correspon- 

 dent in the Delhi Gazette, March 6, 1855 : 



" You must have seen in the Calcutta newspapers a 

 controversy, or at least a series of articles, about a docu- 

 ment that is to unveil the real author of Junius's Letters, 

 and reveal in Calcutta a secret which has perplexed the 

 reading world of England for the last seventy or eightj"- 

 years. It turns out that this document is in the hands of 

 a man named 'Jones,' who, as I understand, states that 

 he is lineally descended from some person who was em- 

 ployed in Lord Chatham's household, and into whose pos- 

 session the paper came, with several others now on their 

 way out from England to authenticate the main instru- 

 ment. Just imagine the powerful, mysterious, sarcastic, 

 and trenchant Junius being at last stripped naked and 

 turned out on the world in his real personality, by — 

 Jones! " 



H. B. C. 



U. U. Club. 



MATHEMATICAL BIBMOGRAPHT. 



(Vol. X., pp. 190, 191.) 



The memory of Herigone should be held in 

 respect on account of his merits, not only as a 

 mathematician and a compiler (his " Course " was 

 the second ever published ; see De Morgan, 

 Arithmetical Books, pp. 42, 4-3.), but as a historian. 



Montucla, in the preface to (both editions of) 

 his Histoire, adverts to the historians, his prede- 

 cessors. But he makes no mention of the his- 

 torical labours of Herigone, which were amongst 

 the earliest, if not the very earliest, of those never 

 published in any other than a printed form. Pro- 

 fessor De Morgan has not included the works of 

 Plerigone in his References (see the Companion to 

 the Almanac for 1 843), nor is there any allusion 

 to their historical portion in his Arithmetical 

 Books (see p. 40.). I therefore subjoin the follow- 

 ing bibliographic notice, in a form substantially 

 the same as that prescribed by Professor De 

 Morgan. 



Paris, sixteen-forty-four. Herigone, Pierre, 

 'Cursus Mathematici Tomus sextus et ultiraus, 

 sine Supplementum, Continens Geometricas aequa- 

 tionum cubicarum, atque afFectarum Effectiones.* 

 Octavo. 



Although this volume (with the exception of 

 the Supplementum Algehrm) is not polyglott, the 

 Latin title just given precedes the French : 



' Tome sixiesme et dernier, ou Supplement du Cours 

 Mathematique, contenant les Effections Geometriques des 



