Next will occur to the reader the forgery of 'Junius.' Who did _that_? Oh, villains that have ever doubted since '"Junius" Identified'! Oh, scamps--oh, pitiful scamps! You, reader, perhaps belong to this wretched corps. But, if so, understand that you belong to it under false information. I have heard myriads talk upon this subject. One man said to me, 'My dear friend, I sympathize with your fury. You are right. Righter a man cannot be. Rightest of all men you are.' I was right--righter--rightest! That had happened to few men. But again this flattering man went on, 'Yes, my excellent friend, right you are, and evidently Sir Philip Francis was the man. His backer proved it. The day after his book appeared, if any man had offered me exactly two thousand to one in guineas, that Sir Philip was _not_ the man, by Jupiter! I would have declined the bet. So divine, so exquisite, so Grecian in its perfection, was the demonstration, the _apodeixis_ (or what do you call it in Greek?), that this brilliant Sir Philip--who, by the way, wore _his_ order of the Bath as universally as ever he taxed Sir William Draper with doing--had been the author of "Junius." But here lay the perplexity of the matter. At the least five-and-twenty excellent men proved by posthumous friends that they, every mother's son of them, had also perpetrated "Junius."' 'Then they were liars,' I answered. 'Oh no, my right friend,' he interrupted, 'not liars at all; amiable men, some of whom confessed on their death-beds (three to my certain knowledge) that, alas! they had erred against the law of charity. "_But how?_" said the clergyman. "Why, by that infernal magazine of sneers and all uncharitableness, the 'Letters of Junius.'" "Let me understand you," said the clergyman: "you wrote 'Junius'?" "Alas! I did," replied A. Two years after another clergyman said to another penitent, "And so you wrote 'Junius'?" "Too true, my dear sir. Alas! I did," replied B. One year later a third penitent was going off, and upon the clergyman saying, "Bless me, is it possible? Did _you_ write 'Junius'?" he replied, "Ah, worshipful sir, you touch a painful chord in my remembrances--I now wish I had not. Alas! reverend sir, I did." Now, you see,' went on my friend, 'so many men at the New Drop, as you may say, having with tears and groans taxed themselves with "Junius" as the climax of their offences, one begins to think that perhaps _all_ men wrote "Junius."' Well, so far there was reason. But when my friend contended also that the proofs arrayed in pamphlets proved the whole alphabet to have written 'Junius,' I could not stand his absurdities. Death-bed confessions, I admitted, were strong. But as to these wretched pamphlets, some time or other I will muster them all for a field-day; I will brigade them, as if the general of the district were coming to review them; and then, if I do not mow them down to the last man by opening a treacherous battery of grape-shot, may all my household die