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OUT, after all, who or what was Junius? this shadow of a name, who thus shot his unerring arrows from an impenetrable concealment, and punished without being perceived? The question is natural; and it has been repeated almost without intermission, from the appearance of his first letter. It is not unnatural, moreover, from the pertinacity with which he has at all times eluded discovery, that the vanity of many political writers of inferior talents should have induced them to lay an indirect claim to his letters, and especially after the danger of responsibility had considerably ceased. Yet while the editor of the present impression does not undertake to communicate the real name of Junius, he pledges himself to prove, from incontrovertible evidence, afforded by the private letters of Junius himself during the period in question, in connexion with other documents, that not one of these pretenders has ever had the smallest right to the distinction which some of them have ardently coveted.

"These private and confidential letters, addressed to the late Mr. Woodfall, are now for the first time made public by his son, who is in possession of the author's autographs; and from the various facts and anecdotes they disclose, not only in relation to this extraordinary character, but to other characters as well, they cannot fail of being highly interesting to the political world. To have published these letters at an earlier period would have been a gross breach of trust and decorum ; the term of trust, however, seems at length to have expired; most of the parties have paid the debt of nature; and should any be yet living, the length of time which has since elapsed has so completely blunted the asperity of the strictures they contain, that they could scarcely object to so remote a publication of them. Junius, in the career of his activity, was the man of the people; and when the former can receive no injury from the disclosure, the latter have certainly a claim to every information that can be communicated concerning them.

"It was on the 28th of April, in the year 1767, that the late Mr. H. S. Woodfall received amidst other letters from a great number of correspondents, for the use of the Public Advertiser, of which he was a proprietor, the first public address of this celebrated writer. He had not then assumed the name, or rather written under the signature of Junius; nor did he always indeed assume a signature of any kind. When he did so, however, his signatures were diversified, an the chief of them were Mnemon and Atticus, Lucius, Junius, and Brutus. Under the first he sarcastically opposed the ministry upon the subject of the Nullum Tempus bill, which involved the celebrated dispute concerning the transfer on the part of the crown of the Duke of Portland's estate of the forest of Inglewood, and the manor and castle of Carlisle, to Sir James Lowther, son-inlaw of Lord Bute, upon the plea that these lands, which formerly belonged to the crown, had not been duly specified in King William's grant of them to the Portland family, and that hence, although they had been in the Portland family for nearly seventy years, they of right belonged to the crown still. The letters signed Atticus and Brutus relate chiefly to the growing disputes with the American colonies and those subscribed Lucius exclusively to the outrageous dismission of Sir Jeffery Amherst from his post of governor of Virginia.

"The name of Mnemon seems to have been nearly taken up at hazard. That of Atticus was unquestionably assumed from the author's own opi pion of the purity of his style, an opinion in which the public universally concurred: and the three re

maining signatures of Lucius, Junius, and Brutus, were obviously deduced from a veneration for the memory of the celebrated Roman patriot, who united these three names in his own.

"There were also a variety of other names occasionally assumed by this fertile political writer, to answer particular purposes, or more completely to conceal himself, and carry forward his extensive design. That of Philo-Junius, he has avowed to the public, in the authorized edition of the Letters of Junius: but besides this they have yet to recognize him under the mask of Poplicola, Domitian, Vindex, and a variety of others.

"The most popular of our author's letters, anterior to those published with the signature of Junius in 1769, were those subscribed Atticus and Lucius: to the former of which the few letters signed Brutus seem to have been little more than auxiliary, and are consequently not polished with an equal degree of attention. These letters, in point of time, preceded those with the signature of Junius by a few weeks: they are certainly written with admirable spirit and perspicuity, and are entitled to all the popularity they acquired:yet they are not perhaps possest of more merit than our author's letters signed Mnemon. They nevertheless deserve a more minute attention from their superior celebrity. The proofs of their having been composed by the writer denominated Junius are incontestible: the manner, the phraseology, the sarcastic, exprobatory style, independently of any other evidence, sufficiently identify them. These therefore are now added, together with such others whose genuineness is equally indisputable, to

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