Sidenote: 1769--The Letters of Junius]

While all this was going on a new force suddenly made itself felt in
English political life. The King and his ministers found themselves
attacked by a mysterious and dangerous opponent. On March 21, 1769, a
letter was addressed to the _Public Advertiser_, signed "Junius," which
marked the beginning of a new era in political literature. At that
time the _Public Advertiser_ was the most important paper in London.
It had first appeared under that name in 1752, but it was the direct
descendant, through a series of changes of name, of the _Daily Post_,
which Defoe had helped to start in 1719. It had its rivals in the
_Daily Advertiser_, which was founded in 1724, and the _Gazetteer_ and
_New Daily Advertiser_, which was started in 1728. In the course of
time both these journals had sunk to be little more than advertising
sheets. They gave hardly any news, and they had no political
influence. The _Public Advertiser_ was a much more important paper.
It gave abundance of foreign and domestic intelligence, it had original
contributions in prose and verse, and its columns were always open to
letters from correspondents of all kinds on all manner of subjects.

It was not until the first letter signed with the signature of Junius
appeared that the paper assumed a serious political importance. The
writer, whoever he was, who chose that signature had written before in
the columns of the _Public Advertiser_. In 1767 Woodfall, the
publisher, received the first letter from the correspondent who was to
become so famous, and from time to time other letters came signed by
various names taken from classical nomenclature, such as Mnemon,
Atticus, Lucius, Brutus, {129} Domitian, Vindex, and, perhaps,
Poplicola. But it was with the adoption of the name of Junius that the
real importance of the letters began. They came at a crisis; they
spoke for the popular side; they spoke with a bitterness and a ferocity
that had hitherto not been attempted in political journalism. The
great French writer Taine has said that the letters of Junius, at a
time of national irritation and anxiety, fell one by one like drops of
fire on the fevered limbs of the body politic. He goes on to say that
if Junius made his phrases concise, and selected his epithets, it was
not from a love of style, but in order the better to stamp his insult.
Oratorical artifices in his hand became instruments of torture, and
when he f