Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850 - Various - Страница 2

It is fortunate for my reputation that I am still living to vindicate my title to the authorship of my own book, which seems otherwise in danger of being taken from me.

I can assure your correspondent R.J. (Vol. ii., p. 103.) that I was not only "literally the writer," (as he kindly suggests, with a view of saving my credit for having put my name to the book), but in its fullest sense the author of "Junius Identified"; and that I never received the slightest assistance from Mr. Dubois, or any other person, either in collecting or arranging the evidence, or in the composition and correction of the work. After I had completed my undertaking, I wrote to Mr. Dubois to ask if he would allow me to see the handwriting of Sir Philip Francis, that I might compare it with the published fac-similes of the handwriting of Junius; but he refused my request. His letter alone disproved the notion entertained by R.J. and others, that Mr. Dubois was in any degree connected with me, or with the authorship of the work in question.

With regard to the testimony of Lord Campbell, I wrote to his lordship in February, 1848, requesting his acceptance of a copy of Junius Identified, which I thought he might not have seen; and having called his attention to my name at the end of the preface, I begged he would, when opportunity offered, correct his error in having attributed the work to Mr. Dubois. I was satisfied with his lordship's reply, which was to the effect that he was ashamed of his mistake, and would take care to correct it. No new edition of that series of the Lives of the Chancellors, which contains the "Life of Lord Loughborough," has since been published. The present edition is dated 1847.

R.J. says further, that "the late Mr. George Woodfall always spoke of the pamphlet as the work of Dubois;" and that Sir Fortunatus Dwarris states, "the pamphlet is said, I know not with what truth, to have been prepared under the eye of Sir Philip Francis, it may be through the agency of Dubois." If Junius Identified be alluded to in these observations as a pamphlet, it would make me doubt whether R.J., or either of his authorities, ever saw the book. It is an 8vo. vol. The first edition, containing 380 pages, was published in 1816, at 12s. The second edition, which included the supplement, exceeded 400 pages, and was published in 1818, at 14s. The supplement, which contains the plates of handwriting, was sold separately at 3s. 6d., to complete the first edition, but this could not have been the pamphlet alluded to in the preceding extracts. I suspect that when the work is spoken of as a pamphlet, and this if often done, the parties thus describing it have known it only through the medium of the critique in the Edinburgh Review.

Mr. Dubois was the author of the biography of Sir Philip Francis, first printed in the Monthly Mirror for May and June, 1810, and reprinted in Junius Identified, with acknowledgment of the source from which it was taken. To this biography the remarks of Sir Fortunatus Dwarris are strictly applicable, except that it never appeared in the form of a pamphlet.

JOHN TAYLOR.

30. Upper Gower Street, Sept. 7. 1850.