88 JUNIUS 



strengthened our spliere of knowledge ; with me in 

 particular, it helped to invigorate the mind, and to 

 reinstate it in its former fondness for literature. 



I remember about this time a weekly paper was 

 published In London, called the Independent Whi(/. Its 

 name alone w^as indicative of its politics, and in its attacks 

 upon the Government it went much further than any 

 other publication, Cobl)et's Register not excepted. As I 

 often found time to stroll into a bookseller's shop to read 

 the London papers, the proprietor of which was one of 

 the " L. S.," as we were called, j^a?* excellence, I used 

 frequently to see this ^^f^per, and was more than once 

 struck with the great similarity there appeared in the 

 style of its leading articles (if the large type in the first 

 page may be so termed) and the letters of Junius ; and 

 when I read the one that contained so severe an attack on 

 the Duke of Cumberland, and stated that H.M. King 

 George the Third would shortly be called upon to 

 perform the part of a Roman ftither, I was assured of the 

 identit}^ It was generally understood at that time that 

 Sir Philip Francis, then an old man, and living in St. 

 James's Square, was a contributor to the Independent 

 Whiff ; and Mr., subsequently Lord Macaulay, has since 

 endeavoured to prove that he was the author of Junius. 

 In proposing this for discussion at our little society, I 

 could not get any one to listen to my conclusions ; as, in 

 the first place, I w^as not yet sufficiently qualified to judge 

 of style, after comparing one with the other ; and, in the 

 second, they all asserted and agreed that the author of 

 Junius had been dead many years. Although I could 

 not give any further evidence in favour of his identity, I 



