appointments, must we not conclude that he is infinitely more so in
greater matters? Nay, when W----s [Footnote: Wilkes.] came over, is it
not notorious that the late Lord Mayor went to His Grace on that
evening, proposing a scheme which, by securing this fire-brand, might
have put an end to all the troubles he has caused? But His Grace did not
see him;--no, he was a man of too much honor;--he had _promised_
that evening to attend Nancy Parsons to Ranelagh, and he would not
disappoint her, but made three thousand people witnesses of his
punctuality."

There is another Letter, which happens to be dated (1770), addressed to
"Novus,"--some writer in Woodfall's Public Advertiser,--and appearing to
be one of a series to the same correspondent. From the few political
allusions introduced in this letter, (which is occupied chiefly in an
attack upon the literary style of "Novus,") we can collect that the
object of Sheridan was to defend the new ministry of Lord North, who
had, in the beginning of that year, succeeded the Duke of Grafton.
Junius was just then in the height of his power and reputation; and as,
in English literature, one great voice always produces a multitude of
echoes, it was thought at that time indispensable to every letter-writer
in a newspaper, to be a close copyist of the style of Junius: of course,
our young political tyro followed this "mould of form" as well as the
rest. Thus, in addressing his correspondent:--"That gloomy seriousness
in your style,--that seeming consciousness of superiority, together with
the consideration of the infinite pains it must have cost you to have
been so elaborately wrong,--will not suffer me to attribute such
numerous errors to any thing but real ignorance, joined with most
consummate vanity." The following is a specimen of his acuteness in
criticising the absurd style of his adversary:--"You leave it rather
dubious whether you were most pleased with the glorious opposition to