Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/223

Rh of a gloomy Monk, and a man of politeness and good-humour. I am called "a solitary Monk," in order to confirm the notion given of me in Mr. Wilkes's anonymous paragraphs, that I never laugh: And the terms of politeness and good-humour on which I am said to have lived heretofore with the young lady, are intended to confirm other paragraphs of Mr. Wilkes, in which he is supposed to have offended me by refusing his daughter. Ridiculous! Yet I cannot deny but that Junius has proved me unmanly and ungenerous, as clearly as he has shown me corrupt and vindictive: and I will tell him more; I have paid the present Ministry as many visits and compliments as ever I paid to the young lady, and shall all my life treat them with the same politeness and good-humour.

Junius "begs me to believe, that he measures the integrity of men by their conduct, not by their professions." Sure this Junius must imagine his readers as void of understanding as he is of modesty! Where shall we find the standard of his integrity? By what are we to measure the conduct of this lurking assassin?—And he says this to me,