APPENDIX D Junius Letters
Reading edition
On Tuesday, May 29, 1834, I dined at Norfolk House; and the conversation turned, after dinner, as it does too often everywhere, on the question who was the author of Junius. However, on this occasion I heard something new and worth remembering.
Lord Albemarle, a man of a good memory and strict veracity, said he had once been present at a conversation (after much wine had been drunk) between Mr. Dudley North and Sir Philip Francis. The former rallied the latter somewhat rudely as the author of Junius, said it was vain to deny it, and that everybody so considered him, and took him to task for various opinions and expressions in the work. Francis grew angry, and with more solemnity than was usual exclaimed, “Do you then mean, sir, seriously to tell me that I am a scoundrel or a liar? I have denied distinctly my being the author, and after that they who believe I am must believe me to be a liar or a scoundrel or both.”
Dudley North then changed his battery; and, disclaiming all serious suspicion of the fact, implied he was unequal to the task, with much more to vex him and put him off his guard. At last he said: “In short, it is idle to talk so much about it: we all, in truth, know how it is—Lloyd[432] wrote the letters and you corrected the press.”
Francis at these words seemed startled; he coloured and answered, as Albemarle thought, with emotions of surprise: “You have made much worse guesses, sir, in your life than that.”
It tallies with my impressions of Francis’s conversations, inasmuch as he always seemed to me to know or imply something about Junius, but to deny strictly his being the author.