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Lord Byron was of opinion that people abused Horace Walpole for several sinister reasons, of which the first is represented to be that he was a gentleman. Now, I, on the contrary, am of opinion that he was not always a gentleman, as particularly seen in his correspondence with Chatterton. On the other hand, it is but just to recollect that in retaining Chatterton’s MSS. (otherwise an unfeeling act, yet chiefly imputable to indolence), the worst aggravation of the case under the poor boy’s construction, viz., that if Walpole had not known his low rank ‘he would not have dared to treat him in that way,’ though a very natural feeling, was really an unfounded one. Horace Walpole (I call him so, because he was not then Lord Orford) certainly had not been aware that Chatterton was other than a gentleman by birth and station. The natural dignity of the boy, which had not condescended to any degrading applications, misled this practised man of the world. But recurring to Lord Byron’s insinuations as to a systematic design of running Lord Orford down, I beg to say that I am no party to any such design. It is not likely that a furious Conservative like myself, who have the misfortune also to be the most bigoted of Tories, would be so. I disclaim all participation in any clamour against Lord Orford which may have arisen on democratic feeling. Feeling the profoundest pity for the ‘marvellous boy’ of Bristol, and even love, if it be possible to feel love for one who was in his unhonoured grave before I was born, I resent the conduct of Lord Orford, in this one instance, as universally the English public has resented it. But generally, as a writer, I admire Lord Orford in a very high degree. As a letter-writer, and as a brilliant sketcher of social aspects and situations, he is far superior to any French author who could possibly be named as a competitor. And as a writer of personal or anecdotic history, let the reader turn to Voltaire’s ‘Siecle de Louis Quatorze,’ in order to appreciate his extraordinary merit.

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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 under a fiercer Junius! The true reasons why any man fancies that ‘Junius’ is an open question must be these three:

First, that they have never read the proofs arrayed against Sir Philip Francis; this is the general case.

Secondly, that, according to Sancho’s proverb, they want better bread than is made of wheat. They are not content with proofs or absolute demonstrations. They require you, like the witch of Endor, to raise Sir Philip from the grave, that they may cross-examine him.

Thirdly (and this is the fault of the able writer who unmasked Sir Philip), there happened to be the strongest argument that ever picked a Bramah-lock against the unknown writer of ‘Junius’; apply this, and if it fits the wards, oh, Gemini! my dear friend, but you are right–righter–rightest; you have caught ‘Junius’ in a rabbit-snare.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] ‘Six thousand per annum,’ viz., on the authority of his own confession to Pinkerton.

EDITOR’S NOTE.–De Quincey is guilty of a slight lapse of memory in reference to ‘The Castle of Otranto’ and Onuphrio Muralto. It was not in the first sentence of the preface, but on the title-page, that Walpole so plainly attributed the work to another. The original title-page, which, of course, was dropped out when it became known to all the world that Walpole was the author, read thus: ‘The Castle of Otranto: a Story. Translated by William Marshall, Gent. From the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto. London: printed for Thomas Lownds, in Fleet Street. 1765.’