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
wish for a rupture, yet condemn the ministry for not doing that, by
which a rupture would naturally have been made.
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