The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9)Various
History
The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9)
Various
Intellectual life -- Periodicals; United States -- Intellectual life -- 19th century -- Periodicals
"Burke had more than the vigour, the information, and the
command of language; but he was incapable of the virulence
and the disloyalty. Horne Tooke had the virulence and the
disloyalty in superabundance; but he wanted the cool sarcasm
and the polished elegance, even if he could have been fairly
supposed to be at once the assailant and the defender.
Wilkes had the information and the wit; but his style was
incorrigibly vulgar, and all its metaphors were for and from
the mob: in addition, he would have rejoiced to declare
himself the writer: his well-known answer to an inquiry on
the subject was, 'Would to Heaven I had!' _Utinam
scripsissem!_ Lord George Germaine has been lately brought
forward as a candidate; and the evidence fully proves that
he possessed the dexterity of style, the powerful and
pungent remark, and even the individual causes of bitterness
and partisanship, which might be supposed to stimulate
Junius: but, in the private correspondence of Junius with
his printer, Woodfall, there are contemptuous allusions to
Lord George's conduct in the field, which at once put an end
to the question of authorship.
"Dunning possessed the style, the satire, and the
partisanship; but Junius makes blunders in his law, of which
Dunning must have been incapable. Gerard Hamilton
(Single-speech) might have written the letters, but he never
possessed the moral courage; and was, besides, so consummate
a coxcomb, that his vanity must have, however involuntarily,
let out the secret. The argument, that he was Junius; from
his notoriously using the same peculiarities of phrase at
the time when all the world was in full chase of the author,
ought of itself to be decisive against him; for nothing can
be clearer, than that the actual writer was determined on
concealment, and that he would never have toyed with his
dangerous secret so much in the manner of a school-girl,
anxious to develop her accomplishments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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