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 a hole picked in a great man's coat, lest the triumphant crow, with which these opponents invariably trumpet their supposed victory, seduce you into premature acquiescence. By-and-by, when cooler and steadier, you may be inclined to conjecture that Macaulay's piercing instinct was right after all, and that the facts evoked against him are in reality either doubtful or immaterial to the argument.

It was, as I have said, this fondness and aptitude for following up with accuracy converging lines of evidence, which gave Macaulay so great an interest in the Junian controversy, and made him so ready to allude to it incidentally both in writing and conversation. He contributed, himself, two, at least, of the most remarkable collateral proofs which tend to fix the authorship on Francis—the curious error of the English War-office clerk about the rules of Irish pensions, in the correspondence with Sir William Draper—the personal hostility of the Francis family towards the Luttrells, which accounts for the savage treatment by Junius of such obscure offenders. And now, having used the great historian's name, somewhat unfairly, by way of shoeing-horn, to draw on a fresh chapter on the old controversy, let me place before you another singular instance of this class of collateral proofs, which, I believe, has not been made public before, but which greatly excited the curiosity of Macaulay, and which he would have followed out—if ever he had taken up the question again—with all the force of his inductive mind.

In one of the early letters of Woodfall's collection, under the signature "Bifrons" (April 23, 1768: vol. ii. p. 175, of Bohn's Edition), the writer, after accusing the Duke of Grafton of being a 'casuist,' proceeds as follows:—

"I am not deeply read in authors of that professed title: but I remember seeing Busenbaum, Suares, Molina, and a score of other Jesuitical books, burnt at Paris, for their sound casuistry, by the hand of the common hangman."

I shall assume at once that Bifrons was the same writer as Junius. The general reasons for the assumption are familiar to those versed in the controversy. And even were those general grounds of identity less strong than they are, every one would allow that to prove that Francis was Bifrons, would go a long way towards proving him Junius.

A passage so pregnant with suggestion has of course provoked abundant comment: but all of the loosest description. No one seems to have taken the pains to follow out for himself a hint pointing to conclusions of so much importance, both negative and affirmative.

Mr. W. H. Smith, the recent editor of the Grenville Papers, thus presses it into the service of his theory, attributing the authorship of Junius to Lord Temple:

"The ceremony here alluded to probably took place in or about the year 1732, when the disputes between the King of France and his parliaments, relative to the Jesuits, had arrived at the highest point of acrimony. Several burnings of obnoxious and prohibited books and writings are described by cotemporary authorities at this time; and as Lord Temple,