Macaulay
adds to these: "One of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis
was Junius is the _moral_ resemblance between the two men."
It is interesting to notice that the ministry engaged Dr. Johnson to
answer the _forty-second_ letter, in which the king is especially
arraigned. Johnson's answer, published in 1771, is entitled _Thoughts on
the Late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands_. Of Junius he says:
"He cries havoc without reserve, and endeavors to let slip the dogs of
foreign and civil war, ignorant whither they are going, and careless what
maybe their prey." "It is not hard to be sarcastic in a mask; while he
walks like Jack the giant-killer, in a coat of darkness, he may do much
mischief with little strength." "Junius is an unusual phenomenon, on which
some have gazed with wonder and some with terror; but wonder and terror
are transitory passions. He will soon be more closely viewed, or more
attentively examined, and what folly has taken for a comet, that from its
flaming hair shook pestilence and war, inquiry will find to be only a
meteor formed by the vapors of putrefying democracy, and kindled into
flame by the effervescence of interest struggling with conviction, which,
after having plunged its followers into a bog, will leave us inquiring why
we regarded it.
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