* * * * *
"JUNIUS IDENTIFIED."
It is fortunate for my reputation that I am still living to vindicate my
title to the authorship of my own book, which seems otherwise in danger
of being taken from me.
I can assure your correspondent R.J. (Vol. ii., p. 103.) that I was not
only "literally _the writer_," (as he kindly suggests, with a view of
saving my credit for having put my name to the book), but in its fullest
sense _the author of "Junius Identified"_; and that I never received the
slightest assistance from Mr. Dubois, or any other person, either in
collecting or arranging the evidence, or in the composition and
correction of the work. After I had completed my undertaking, I wrote to
Mr. Dubois to ask if he would allow me to see the handwriting of Sir
Philip Francis, that I might compare it with the published
fac-similes of the handwriting of Junius; but he refused my request. His
letter alone disproved the notion entertained by R.J. and others, that
Mr. Dubois was in any degree connected with me, or with the authorship
of the work in question.
With regard to the testimony of Lord Campbell, I wrote to his lordship
in February, 1848, requesting his acceptance of a copy of _Junius
Identified_, which I thought he might not have seen; and having called
his attention to my name at the end of the preface, I begged he would,
when opportunity offered, correct his error in having attributed the
work to Mr. Dubois. I was satisfied with his lordship's reply, which was
to the effect that he was ashamed of his mistake, and would take care to
correct it. No new edition of that series of the _Lives of the
Chancellors_, which contains the "Life of Lord Loughborough," has since
been published. The present edition is dated 1847.
R.J. says further, that "the late Mr. George Woodfall always spoke of
the _pamphlet_ as the work of Dubois;" and that Sir Fortunatus Dwarris
states, "the _pamphlet_ is said, I know not with what truth, to have
been prepared under the eye of Sir Philip Francis, it may be through the
agency of Dubois." If _Junius Identified_ be alluded to in these
observations as a _pamphlet_, it would make me doubt whether R.J., or
either of his authorities, ever saw the book. It is an 8vo. vol. The
first edition, containing 380 pages, was published in 1816, at 12s. The
second edition, which included the supplement, exceeded 400 pages, and
was published in 1818, at 14s. The supplement, which contains the plates
of handwriting, was sold separately at 3s. 6d., to complete the first
edition, but this could not have been the pamphlet alluded to in the
preceding extracts. I suspect that when the work is spoken of as a
pamphlet, and this if often done, the parties thus describing it have
known it only through the medium of the critique in the _Edinburgh
Review_.
Mr. Dubois was the author of the biography of Sir Philip Francis, first
printed in the _Monthly Mirror_ for May and June, 1810, and reprinted in
_Junius Identified_, with acknowledgment of the source from which it was
taken. To this biography the remarks of Sir Fortunatus Dwarris are
strictly applicable, except that it never appeared in the form of a
pamphlet.