In his manner and habits, he was an elegant epicurean, yet it was evident to all his intimates that he feared,

66 Aliquos manes et subterranea regna."

HOR.

In his real politics, he was an aristocrat, and would much rather have been a favoured courtier at Versailles, than the most commanding orator in St. Stephen's chapel. His distressses threw him into politics; he assumed the character of a staunch whig, and his consistency must be admitted by all.

He thought highly of the talents and firmness of the late king, and was persuaded that a ministry protected by him could not, without some singular blunder, or some event singularly unlucky, be shaken by any opposition: he predicted that the coalition between lord North and Mr. Fox would produce a total disbelief of public virtue, and create a third party, equally hostile to ministers and the opposition-aristocracy. He said, that the distinction whlch has been supposed to exist between the friends of the king and the friends of the minister, originated in the councils of lord Bath, when he went over to the ministry, on his dereliction of the popular party.

In one of the conversations, which Mr. Fox permitted the writer of these pages to hold with him, that great man expressed the same opinion. He said that no one could conceive the extent and effect of the influence of the crown, who had not had opportunities of observing its direct or indirect operation on every state and condition of life.-" While Mr. "Pitt," he said, " was in office, you all attributed, in some

degree at least, his overwhelming majorities, to his talents "and eloquence: these, I am as willing, as any other man can be, to admit; but you now have Mr. Addington, and the "majorities do not decrease."-Might it not have been observed to Mr. Fox, that he himself had in some measure been the cause of these majorities? Had there been no coalition, no India bill, nothing in short in the politics of Mr. Fox, which had prejudiced, it may be unjustly,-a very large portion of the people of England against him, might not he and the illustrious band, which surrounded him, have been able, we will not say to make the minister surrender at discretion, but

to lessen considerably his majorities, and thus reduce him to terms? Perhaps the real nature and effect of this influence so often mentioned, and so seldom justly appreciated, will not be known, till we behold an opposition formed of men not only of eminent talents and high honour, but possessing the full confidence and attachment of the body of the people.

A profound treatise on the subject of influence is wanted. That some influence in the crown is necessary must be admitted without it, the inertness of some, and the waywardness of others, would paralyse all the operations even of good and able ministers. To ascertain that exact amount of influence, which would give activity and effect to the measures of government, without enabling the crown to act long in opposition to the just wishes of the people, would as certainly be as useful, as it is an arduous inquiry.

Mr. Wilkes abounded in anecdote and wit: and this was so constantly at his command, that wagers have been gained, that from the time he quitted his house near Story's Gate, till he reached Guildhall, no one would address him, who should leave him without a smile, or a hearty laugh. Notwithstanding their feuds, lord Sandwich and he were partial to each other. On one occasion, the writer of these pages, not having been quite punctual in time to an appointment, which lord Sandwich had made for him, it was, (not good-naturedly), mentioned to his lordship, that the writer dined with Mr. Wilkes :-" Well "then," said lord Sandwich," the fascination of Wilkes has "made me break appointments so often, that it is but fair "he should make a person once break his appointment "with me."

Mr. Wilkes had written the history of his life; and earnestly requested the writer to be his executor, under a condition of printing it entire and unaltered. With this view he indulged the writer with the perusal of it: the writer declined the charge: he has been informed that, on the death of Mr. Wilkes, the cover of the book was found with all the leaves of it cut

out. The public has no reason to regret its loss.

One of the amusements of Mr. Wilkes and the writer was an attempt to discover the author of Junius's Letters. With this view, we perused all of them with great attention,

examined many of the originals, collected and sifted all the anecdotes we could learn, and weighed all the opinions and conjectures which we could hear of. The result is generally stated in the letter, to which the writer has alluded, and which he will now transcribe.

"Dear Sir,

"THE Conversations I had with Mr. Wilkes, on the subject of Junius's Letters, took place from 1776 to about 1784, during which time I lived with him in great intimacy; he even entrusted me with the manuscript memoirs of his life. In his public or political parties I never mixed, but I lived much with him in private; there he appeared to the greatest advantage; he was highly respected and loved by those who lived with him on that footing, and I think, with great pleasure, that I was one of them.

"Far from giving the least hint that he was the author of Junius's Letters, he always explicitly disclaimed it, and treated it as a ridiculous supposition. No one acquainted with his style can suspect, for a moment, that he was the author of them; the merit of his style was simplicity; he had both gaiety and strength, but to the rancorous sarcasms, the lofty contempt, with which Junius's Letters abound, no one was a greater stranger than Mr. Wilkes. To this may be added, the very slighting manner in which Junius expresses himself of Mr. Wilkes. I am willing to admit, that if Mr. Wilkes had written Junius's Letters, he would have treated Mr. Wilkes uncivilly, for the sake of disguising himself. But sneer, and particularly that kind of sneer, which Mr. Wilkes occasionally receives from Junius, you may be assured, Mr. Wilkes could never have used in speaking of himself. With respect, therefore, to his having said to your friend that," at his ascension, the author of Junius would "be known," I am confident he never used those words, or any words like them. You mention to me your having heard that Junius's Letters were printed off before they were deli vered to the printer. This was not the fact; if it had been true, it would have put Mr. Wilkes's authorship wholly out of the question, as he had no convenience whatever for

printing. I once procured a copy to be made for him of some very private papers, and he then greatly lamented to me his want of a private press.

"Our conversations on Junius's Letters began from a whimsical circumstance. Business having carried me to Ireland in 1776, I wrote to Mr. Wilkes from Holyhead; on my return, he informed me that my letter had been stopped at the post-office, from the similarity of the hand-writing to that of Junius. This made me wish to see the original of Junius's Letters, and he produced them to me. We more than once `examined them together, with great attention. All of them, except the letter to the king, are, if I remember rightly, in the same hand-writing. It is like that which well-educated ladies wrote about the beginning of the century; a large open hand, regular, approaching to the Italian. Mr. Wilkes had a card of invitation to dinner from old lady Temple, written in her own hand; on comparing it with Junius's Letters, we thought there was some resemblance between them. The letter to the King was in a hand-writing perfectly different; a very regular, staid hand; no difference between the fair stroke and the body of the letters; when I see you I will show you some writing very similar to it. As to my own hand-writing, it has not now the slightest resemblance to it, nor do I think it ever had any.

"The letters, generally, if not always, were sent in an envelope, (which was then by no means so general as it now is,) and in the folding up, and the direction of the letter, wẹ thought we could see marks of the writer's habit of folding and directing official letters. The lines were very even ; very few blots, erasures, or marks of hurry. Mr. Wilkes received many letters from Junius, which never were pub lished; one, in particular, on the subject of improving the representation of the people. Their opinions were different. I remember Junius's letter began by his saying, he was 'treated as a pagan idol, with much incense, but with no 'attention to his oracles.'

"We thought his high-wrought panegyric of lord Chatham was ironical.

"Mr. Wilkes scouted the notion of Mr. Burke's being the

author of the letters. His suspicions fell on Dr. B. bishop of H. but I don't recollect more than two reasons assigned by him for suspecting his lordship; one, that he had published a sermon, before Junius's Letters appeared, the style of which was very like that of the letters; another after the letters appeared, in a style wholly unlike. These sermons, I think, I have seen, and that they did not appear to me to warrant Mr. Wilkes's observations. The other reason was, that the references in the letters to the Bible were not to the received translation, but to the Vulgate, which, he said, the bishop always used, and which, (by the way,) Mr. Wilkes greatly admired. He described the bishop to be a saturnine, observing, profound, and silent man, such an one as, a priori, we should suppose Junius. But it was a mere suspicion, and we frequently amused ourselves with endeavouring to find a more likely person.

"Arguing synthetically, we determined that Junius must be a resident in London, or its environs, from the immediate answers which he generally gave his adversaries; that he was not an author by profession, from the visible improvement which, from time to time, was discernible in his style; that he was a man of high rank, from the tone of equality which he seemed to use quite naturally in his addresses to persons of rank, and in his expressions respecting them; that he was not a profound lawyer, from the gross inaccuracy of some of his legal expressions; that he had a personal animosity against the king, the duke of Bedford, and lord Mansfield, from the bitterness of his expressions respecting them; that he had lived with military men, from the propriety of his language on military subjects; and that he was a great reader of novels, from his frequent allusions to them. The general idea, that the letters were the composition of more than one person, we always rejected. The story that single-speech Hamilton informed one of his friends, that the Junius of the morning contained such and such passages, and that, till the subsequent day, no such Junius made his appearance, we thought sufficiently authenticated; and we also thought it satisfactorily accounted for, by the supposition that Woodfall had shown the letter to Mr. Hamilton on the preceding day,