What is artificial and stilted in this style did not offend the would-be classic taste of the 18th century, and does not now conceal the fact that the laboriously arranged words, and artfully counterbalanced clauses, convey a venomous hate and scorn.
The pre-established harmony between Junius and his readers accounts for the rapidity of his success, and for the importance attributed to him by Burke and Johnson, far better writers than himself. Before 1772 there appeared at least twelve unauthorized republications of his letters, made by speculative printers. In that year he revised the collection named "_Junius: Stat nominis umbra_," with a dedication to the English people and a preface. Other independent editions followed in quick succession. In 1801 one was published with annotations by Robert Heron. In 1806 another appeared with notes by John Almon. The first new edition of real importance was issued by the Woodfall family in 1812. It contained the correspondence of Junius with H. S. Woodfall, a selection of the miscellaneous letters attributed to Junius, facsimiles of his handwriting, and notes by Dr Mason Good. Curiosity as to the mystery of the authorship began to replace political and literary interest in the writings. Junius himself had been early aware of the advantage he secured by concealment. "The mystery of Junius increases his importance" is his confession in a letter to Wilkes dated the 18th of September 1771. The calculation was a sound one. For two generations after the appearance of the letter of the 21st of January 1769, speculations as to the authorship of Junius were rife, and discussion had hardly ceased in 1910. Joseph Parkes, author with Herman Merivale of the _Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis_ (1867), gives a list of more than forty persons who had been supposed to be Junius. They are: Edmund Burke, Lord George Sackville, Lord Chatham, Colonel Barré, Hugh Macaulay Boyd, Dr Butler, John Wilkes, Lord Chesterfield, Henry Flood, William Burke, Gibbon, W. E. Hamilton, Charles Lloyd, Charles Lee (general in the American War of Independence), John Roberts, George Grenville, James Grenville, Lord Temple, Duke of Portland, William Greatrakes, Richard Glover, Sir William Jones, James Hollis, Laughlin Maclean, Philip Rosenhagen, Horne Tooke, John Kent, Henry Grattan, Daniel Wray, Horace Walpole, Alexander Wedderburn (Lord Loughborough), Dunning (Lord Ashburton), Lieut.-General Sir R. Rich, Dr Philip Francis, a "junto" or committee of writers who used a common name, De Lolme, Mrs Catherine Macaulay (1733-91), Sir Philip Francis, Lord Littleton, Wolfram Cornwall and Gov. Thomas Pownall. In the great majority of cases the attribution is based on nothing more than a vague guess. Edmund Burke denied that he could have written the letters of Junius if he would, or would have written them if he could. Grattan pointed out that he was young when they appeared. More plausible claims, such as those made for Lord Temple and Lord George Sackville, could not stand the test of examination. Indeed after 1816 the question was not so much "Who wrote Junius?" as "Was Junius Sir Philip Francis, or some undiscoverable man?" In that year John Taylor was led by a careful study of Woodfall's edition of 1812 to publish _The identity of Junius with a distinguished living character established_, in which he claimed the letters for Sir Philip Francis. He had at first been inclined to attribute them to Sir Philip's father, Dr Francis, the author of translations of Horace and Demosthenes. Taylor applied to Sir Philip, who did not die till 1818, for leave to publish, and received from him answers which to an unwary person might appear to constitute denials of the authorship, but were in fact evasions.