vour of plebeian malignity; I do not say that we shall
leave him nothing; the cause that I defend, scorns the help of
falsehood; but if we leave him only his merit, what will be his praise?

It is not by his liveliness of imagery, his pungency of periods, or his
fertility of allusion, that he detains the cits of London, and the boors
of Middlesex. Of style and sentiment they take no cognizance. They
admire him, for virtues like their own, for contempt of order, and
violence of outrage; for rage of defamation, and audacity of falsehood.
The supporters of the bill of rights feel no niceties of composition,
nor dexterities of sophistry; their faculties are better proportioned to
the bawl of Bellas, or barbarity of Beckford; but they are told, that
Junius is on their side, and they are, therefore, sure that Junius is
infallible. Those who know not whither he would lead them, resolve to
follow him; and those who cannot find his meaning, hope he means
rebellion.

Junius is an unusual phenomenon, on which some have gazed with wonder,
and some with terrour, but wonder and terrour 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
vapours of putrefying democracy, and kindled into flame by the
effervescence of interest, struggling with conviction; which, after
having plunged its followers in a bog, will leave us, inquiring why we
regard it.

Yet, though I cannot think the style of Junius secure from criticism,
though his expressions are often trite, and his periods feeble, I should
never have stationed him where he has placed himself, had I not rated
him by his morals rather than his faculties. What, says Pope, must be
the priest, where a monkey is the god? What must be the drudge of a
party, of which the heads are Wilkes and Crosby, Sawbridge and Townsend?

Junius knows his own meaning, and can, therefore, tell it. He is an
enemy to the ministry; he sees them growing hourly stronger. He knows
that a war, at once unjust and unsuccessful, would have certainly
displaced them, and is, therefore, in his zeal for his country, angry
that war was not unjustly made, and unsuccessfully conducted. But there
are others whose thoughts are less clearly expressed, and whose schemes,
perhaps, are less consequentially digested; who declare that they do not
wis