ring circumstances is in the highest degree probable. I think there appears in Junius something of a personal enmity to the Duke of Grafton, quite distinct from any consideration of his political character. I remember when I first read these letters that it occurred to me as probable that the author was connected with some woman who had been ill-treated by the duke. Mr. Dyer, if Sir John Hawkins is to be trusted, was sufficiently likely to have been connected with such a woman; and at some future time perhaps this circumstance may be discovered, and furnish an additional proof to the many here collected on this subject.
Sir J. Reynolds painted the portrait of Mr. Dyer, which is now in Mr. Burke’s possession. There is a mezzotinto from it, which has been copied for the Lives of the Poets by mistake, as if it were the portrait of John Dyer, author of a poem called the Fleece.[1]
- ↑ In the numberless discussions about Junius, many of the surmises here thrown out by Malone will be familiar to the reader, though their source is now first made public. They had stolen forth unappropriated; but the majority were made known to me for the second edition of the Life of Burke, vol. i. pp. 186–198. A strong impression then prevailed in the family of Burke that he was more or less concerned in the authorship, and I thought it proper to state in detail all that they knew bearing upon the subject. More recent circumstances have dispelled this impression—none more perhaps than by the recently printed letters addressed by Junius to Mr. Grenville, noticed in my fifth edition of Burke’s Life. These clearly evince that the writer could not be Burke. Neither would he probably countenance anything bearing so severely upon the Duke of Grafton, who while a minister exhibited kindly feeling, and recommended him strongly to office under Lord Chatham, “as the readiest man upon all points in the House.” In the alleged avowal of knowledge of the author by Burke to Sir Joshua, there is probably some misapprehension. All the partics save Dyer were alive (1791) when Malone wrote his notes; and he does not expressly say that Reynolds made him any such communication. Who it was made to, if ever made, does not appear. Malone enjoyed his
