Great attention was iu 1816 drawn to Sir Philip Francis, by Mr. John Taylor's ingenious publication, entitled 'Junius identified with a distinguished Living Character,' the object of which was to prove that Sir Philip Francis was the author of the celebrated Letters of Junius.' The evidence adduced in this publication was unquestionably very strong, and much additional confirmatory evidence has since come to light. It may indeed be affirmed, that no case half ao strong has yet been made out in favour of any one of the many other conjectures that have been started on the subject of this great literary puzzle. Such well-qualified judges of historical evidence as lords Brougham, Campbell, and Mahon, and Mr. 3Iacaulay, with many other high legal and literary authorities, have declared themselves convinced that Sir Philip Francis wrote 'Junius;' and though Francis himself persisted to the last in rejecting the honour thus attempted to be thrust upon him, when strangers referred to the subject, yet with his intimates he appears in his later years to have displayed no such desire; while the communications of his widow to Lord Camp bell and to Mr. Wade, the editor of Bolau's edition of 'Junius,' show that Francis, while never directly asserting himself to be Junius, certainly wished his wife to believe that he was that 'great unknown;' knew that she did so believe, and took extraordinary means to encourage that belief. His gift to her, after their marriage, it may be added, was a copy of ' Junius,' "and his posthumous present, which his eon found in his bureau, was Junius Identified,' sealed up and addressed to" his widow. In any ordinary case the evidence would seem amply sufficient, but we would advise the reader who may take an interest in the question, before accepting as conclusive tho evidence in favour of the claim of Sir Philip Francis (a claim by him it has in fact become by the publication of the statement of his widow, and the 'New Facts' of Sir Fortunatus Dwarris), to examine carefully the elaborate and singularly acute articles which appeared in tho Athenaeum' in 1850, pp. 939, 969, 993, &c.; and for the whole
question of the authorship of 'Junius,' the entire series of Junius articles (of which the above formed only a portion) which have from time to time appeared in the ' Atheumum ' siuce 1848. The reader would also do well before accepting Francis, or any other name yet suggested as that of the author of'Junius,' to look through the references under 'Junius' in the general index to the first 12 vols. of that useful work 'Notes and Queries.' The acknowledged publications of Sir Philip Francis (all of them pamphlets) amount to twenty-six in number, according to a list appended to the memoir of his life in the 'Annual Obituary.' One of the most curious of them is the last, entitled Historical Questions, exhibited in the Morning Chronicle iu January 1818, enlarged, corrected, and improved,' 8vo, 1818, which origivally appeared in a series of articles in the 'Morning Chronicle.' Sir Philip Fraucia died after a long and paiuful illness, occasioned by disease of the prostate gland, at his house in St. James's Square, 22nd of December 1818. He was twice married, the second time after be had reached the age of seventy, to a Miss Watkins, the daughter of a clergyman. By his first wife he left a son and two daughters.