this story ? Who is responsible for it ? But the 

 emphatic question which common sense will ask is 

 this : Why should Junius go to Mr. Cox's printing- 

 office to correct his proofs? Where he wrote the 

 letters he might surely have corrected the proofs. 

 Why, alter all his trouble, anxiety, and m\stifica- 

 tion to keej) the secret, should he needlessly go to 

 anybody's printing-office to correct the jjroofs, and 

 thus wantonly risk the consequences ? — in fact, go 

 there and betray himself, as we are expected to 

 believe he did ? The story is absurd, on the face 

 of it. But what authority has iEcROTUS for assert- 

 ing that Junius corrected proofs at all ? Strong 

 presumptive evidence leads me to believe that he 

 did not : in some instances he could not. In one 

 instance he specially desired to have a proof; but 

 it was, as we now know, for the puipose of for- 

 warding it to Lord Chatham. Junius was also 

 anxious to have proofs of tlie Dedication and Pre- 

 face, but it is by no means certain that he had 

 them ; the evidence tends to show that they were, 

 at Woodfall's request, and to remove from his own 

 shoulders the threatened responsibility, read by 

 Wilkes : and the collected edition was printed from 

 Wheble's e<lition, so far as it went, and the re- 

 mainder from slips cut from the PiiUic Advertiser, 

 both corrected by Junius ; but we have no reason 

 to believe that Junius ever saw a proof, even of the 

 collected edition, — many reasons that tend strongly 

 to the contrary opinion. Under these circum- 

 stances, we are required to believe an anonymous 

 story, which runs counter to all evidence, that we 

 inav superadd an absurdity. 



Mr. Pickering further referred to Mr. Raphael 

 West, as one who " could tell much on the sub- 

 ject." Here iT<^GROTBS enlarges cm the original, and 

 tells us what this " much " consisted of. The 

 story, professedly told by Benjamin West, about 

 Maclean and Junius, on which Sir David Biew- 

 ster founded his theory, may be found in Gall's 

 Life of West. But Gait himself, in his subsequent 

 autobiography, admits that the story told by West 

 " does not relate the actual circumstances of the 

 case correctly ; " that is to say. Gait had found 

 out, in the interval, thai it was open to contra- 

 diction and disproof, and it has since been dis- 

 proved in the AlheiKBiim. So much for a story 

 discredited by the narrator himself. Of these facts 

 jEgrotus is entirely ignorant, and therefore pro- 

 ceeds by the following extraordinary circum- 

 stantialities to uphold it. "The late President 

 of the Royal Academy knew Maclean ; and his 

 son, the late Raphael West, told the writer of these 

 remarks [^-Egrotus himself] that when a young 

 man he had seen him [Maclean] in the evening at 

 his father's house in Newman Street, and once 

 heard him repeat a passage in one of the letters 

 which was not then published;" and iEGRoxus 

 adds, " a more correct and veracious man than 

 Mr. R. West could not be." So be it. Still it is 



strange that the President, who was said to have 

 told his anecdote expressly to show that Maclean 

 was Junius, never thought to confirm it by the 

 conclusive proof of having read the letters be- 

 fore they were published! Further, — and we leave 

 the question of extreme accuracy and veraciousness 

 to be settled by .iEgrotus, — the President West 

 was born in 1738 ; he embarked from America for 

 Italy in 1759; on his return he visited England in 

 1763, and such was the patronage with which he 

 was welcomed, that his friends recommended him 

 to take up his residence in London. This he was 

 willing to do, provided a young American lady to 

 whom he was attiiched would come to England. 

 Slie consented ; his father accompanied her, and 

 they were married on the 2nd of September, 1765, 

 at St. Martin's Church. Now Maclean embarked 

 for India in Decemlier, 1773, or January, 1774, 

 and was lost at sea, when " the young man," Mas- 

 ter Raphael, could not have been more than seven 

 years of age, — nay, to speak by the card, as 

 Master Raphael heard one of Junius' letters read 

 before it was published, and as the last was pub- 

 lished in January, 1772, it follows, assuming that 

 he was the eldest child, born in nine months to the 

 hour, and that it was the very last letter that he 

 heard read, he may have been five years and seven 

 months old — a very " young man" indeed ; or 

 rather, all circumstances considered, as precocious 

 a youth as he who found out the vellum-bound 

 copy years before it was known to be in existence. 

 I regret to have occupied so much of your space. 

 But S])eculation on this subject is just now the 

 fashion. " Notes and Queries " is likely here- 

 after to become an auth'irily, and if these circum- 

 stantial statements are admitted into its columns, 

 they must be as circumstantially disproved. 



M.J. 



2RcpTiCiS ta JJjJtiior &.ueriei. 



The Ten Commandments ("Vol. iii., p. 166.). — 

 The controversy on the division of the Ten Com- 

 mandments between the Romanists and Lutherans 

 on the one side, and the Reformers or Calvinists 

 on the other, has been discussed in the following 

 works: — 1. Goth (Cardinalis), Vera Ecclesia, 

 S,-c., Venet., 1750 (Art. xvi. §7.); 2. Chamieri 

 Pnnstratia (tom i. I. xxi. c. viii.) ; 3. Riveti Opera 

 (tom. i. (i. 1227., and tom. iii. Apologeticus pro vera 

 Pace Ecclesiastica contra H. Grotii Votum.) ; 

 4. Bohlii Vera divisio Decalogi ex infalUbili prin- 

 cipio accentiiatioids ; 5. Hackspanii Nolw Philo- 

 logies in varia loca S. Scripturce ; 6. Pfeifferi 

 Opera (Cent. i. Loc. 96.) ; 7. Ussher's Anstver to 

 a Jesiufs Challenge {of Images^, and his Serm. itt 

 Westminster before the House of Commons, out of 

 Deuteronomy, chap.iv. ver. 15, 16., and Romans, 

 chap. i. ver. 23. ; 8. Stillingfleet's Controversies with 

 Godden, Author of " Catholics no Idolators" and 



