Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his
notes. He resigned his clerkship at the war office from resentment at
the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first
introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of
which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis.
We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other
person whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is
an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.

The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The style of
Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius; nor are we
disposed to admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the
acknowledged compositions of Francis are very decidedly inferior to the
anonymous letters. The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one
which may be urged with at least equal force against every claimant
that has ever been mentioned, with the single exception of Burke; and it
would be a waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius. And what
conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority? Every writer
must produce his best work; and the interval between his best work and
his second best work may be very wide indeed. Nobody will say that the
best letters of Junius are more decidedly superior to the acknowledged
works of Francis than three or four of Corneille's tragedies to the
rest, than three or four of Ben Jonson's comedies to the rest, than the
Pilgrim's Progress to the other works of Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the
other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is certain that Junius, whoever he may
have been, was a most unequal writer. To go no further than the letters
which bear the signature of Junius--the letter to the king, and the
letters to Horne Tooke, have little in common, except the asperity; and
asperity was an ingredient seldom wanting either in the writings or in
the speeches of Francis.

Indeed one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was
Junius is the moral resemblance between the two men. It is not
difficult, from the letters which, under various signatures, are known
to have been written by Junius, and from his dealings with Woodfall and
others, to form a tolerably correct notion of his character. He was
clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a man
whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he must also have been a ma