AEGROTUS then favours us with the anecdote about "old Mr. Cox" the printer, and that Maclean corrected the proofs of _Junius' Letters_ at his printing-office. Of course, persons acquainted with the subject have heard the story before, though not with all the circumstantialities now given. Where, I might ask, is the authority for {412} this story? Who is responsible for it? But the emphatic question which common sense will ask is this: Why should Junius go to Mr. Cox's printing-office to correct his proofs? Where he wrote the letters he might surely have corrected the proofs. Why, after all his trouble, anxiety, and mystification to keep the secret, should he needlessly go to anybody's printing-office to correct the proofs, and thus wantonly risk the consequences?--in fact, go there and betray himself, as we are expected to believe he did? The story is absurd, on the face of it. But what authority has AEGROTUS for asserting that Junius corrected proofs at all? Strong presumptive evidence leads me to believe that he did not: in some instances he could not. In one instance he specially desired to have a proof; but it was, as we now know, for the purpose of forwarding it to Lord Chatham. Junius was also anxious to have proofs of the Dedication and Preface, but it is by no means certain that he had them; the evidence tends to show that they were, at Woodfall's request, and to remove from his own shoulders the threatened responsibility, read by Wilkes: and the collected edition was printed from Wheble's edition, so far as it went, and the remainder from slips cut from the _Public Advertiser_, both corrected by Junius; but we have no reason to believe that Junius ever saw a proof, even of the collected edition,--many reasons that tend strongly to the contrary opinion. Under these circumstances, we are required to believe an anonymous story, which runs counter to all evidence, that we may superadd an absurdity.