REVIEWS — JUNIUS DISCGTEEED. 59 



of such obstacles to success our Canadian author has produced an 

 interesting contribution to the miscellany of "Junius" literature, 

 which has hitherto met with undue neglect. His great error lies in 

 the conversion of the may be into the must be, which characterises so 

 much of the logic employed in this favourite controversy. 



Junius, occupying such a social rank or official position as furnished 

 to him information of the most vital importance in relation to public 

 men and measures in the eventful political era from 17G7 to 1772, 

 writes his series of carefully elaborated pseudonymous letters for the 

 Public Advertiser, with the certainty that every sentence was watched 

 by those whom he assailed with such acute vigour and bitterness, and 

 that, as he says, in writing to Woodfall : " I must be more cautious 

 than ever. I am sure I should not survive a discovery three days ; 

 or if I did they would attaint me by bill." What more certain, 

 therefore, than that he purposely misled, in many instances, by his 

 allusions. This he himself unhesitatingly takes credit for defying his 

 antagonists to trace him through his various disguises, or to discrimi- 

 nate between the real and assumed characteristics of one, whose own 

 words make so appropriate a motto to this inquiry after the substance 

 of the illusory umbra calling itself Junius : " there never existed a man 

 but himself who answered to so complicated a description." Taunting 

 one of his assumed detectors, he says : " But Home asserts that he 

 has traced me through a variety of signatures. To make the discovery 

 of any importance to his purpose, he should have proved either that 

 the fictitious character of Junius has not been consistently supported, 

 or that the author has maintained different principles under different 

 signatures." "What then is the value of the unknown quantity : 

 truth, mixed up, for the very purpose of deception, with all this 

 fiction ? Till that is determined how shall we ever know whether we 

 are taking our portraiture from the substance or the shadow ; from 

 the living original, or from the masked and disguised decoy, purposely 

 stuffed out and set up to deceive ? Nevertheless, because Junius 

 uses such phrases, as : "every ignorant boy thinks himself fit to be a 

 minister ;" therefore he could not be less than fifty ! Because he says 

 to Sir W. Draper, a Cambridge man : " You might have learnt at 

 the University that a false conclusion is an error," inc., therefore 

 "Junius was educated at Cambridge !" And because, when familiarly 

 making use of terms of law, he adds : ' ; do not injure me so much as 

 to suspect I am a lawyer, I had as lief be a Scotchman ;" therefore 

 he was no lawyer ! Would not this logic be quite as good, under all 

 the circumstances, if it affirmed the very opposite conclusion ? Cer- 



