ADVERTISEMENT.

THE present edition contains, besides the letters published by authority of JUNIUS himself, others written by the same author, under various signatures, which appeared in the Public Advertiser from April, 1767, to May, 1772, together with his Private Letters, peculiarly curious and interesting, addressed to his printer, the late Mr. H. S. Woodfall, and his confidential correspondence with Mr. Wilkes. These latter papers only reached the proprietor's hands after a considerable part of the work had been printed off, and will account for the unavoidable omission of any notice of them in the Preliminary Essay.

It is in perfect consistency with the plan at first proposed by the author, but which he was compelled in some degree to depart from, as remarked in the Preliminary Essay, that the edition now offered contains, independently of his more finished compositions under the signature of JUNIUS and PHILO JUNIUS, letters under other signatures, bearing nevertheless characteristic and unequivocal marks of proceeding from the same pen; and which, though written perhaps with more haste than the former, exhibit merit enough to accompany them; while they possess no small por

tion of additional value as comments upon points that require elucidation.

The editor, in thus deciding upon materials which lie scattered through what the author terms six "solid folios," will be found seldom to have relied altogether upon his own judgment, but to have availed himself of a variety of minute clues resulting from incidental references, or open acknowledgments in the Private Letters; direct charges of contemporary labourers in the same political vineyard, which were not disavowed by JUNIUS himself, as was his custom whenever "other persons' sins," to adopt his own language, were attributed to him; or from numerous other casual hints both in the acknowledged and more palpable Miscellaneous Letters, of which the reader, it is presumed, will meet with instances enough to satisfy himself as he proceeds.

To the author's explanatory notes, the present editor has added such others through the entire progress of the work, as the intervening lapse of time has seemed to render necessary, and though some of them are longer than he could have wished, yet from the circumstance of their having been written in answer to letters from JUNIUS, he has thought it more desirable that they should appear in the form in which they are now offered, than be pressed into the text of the work, by which means its present size must have been very considerably extended; and the plan, as devised by the author, have been in some instances departed from. Many of these notes, moreover, selected from the Public Advertiser, will be found in themselves extremely curious and valuable, while at the same time they are no where else to be met with. The text has been carefully collated with the journal in which the

letters originally appeared, and very numerous errors which have crept into all the editions, except the genuine one published by Mr. H. S. Woodfall himself, and which have been considerably multiplied in the later impressions, have been carefully corrected or expunged.

The various fac-similes of the hand-writing of JuNIUS, which are executed with peculiar fidelity, have been selected from those parts of his manuscripts which present the greatest diversity of penmanship, though the differences, except in that numbered eight, are so trifling, that a hard or a soft, a good or a bad pen, is altogether sufficient to account for them. The papers which have been copied for specimens of the writing of JUNIUS, will be found in their due order, among the Private Letters. The other fac-similes, as well as the seals, have been delineated with equal accuracy.

The proprietor feels it a duty incumbent upon him, before he closes this ADVERTISEMENT, to make his warmest acknowledgments to several distinguished characters who have inspected the papers in his possession, and who have kindly afforded him much valuable assistance. He begs more especially to offer his sincere thanks to the eminent person who obligingly furnished the specimen of Mr. Burke's hand-writing, which will be found among the other fac-similes.

To the gentleman to whom he stands so much indebted for the very valuable addition of the private correspondence between JUNIUS and Mr. WILKES, and which probably renders the whole of the political writings of the former complete; as also to another gentleman who procured for him the note from Mr. W. G. Hamilton, and who on various occasions has taken

great pains and trouble in pointing out sources of useful information, he begs most particularly to return his unfeigned gratitude.

To his more immediate personal friends for the warm interest they have evinced in the success of his undertaking, he feels far beyond what he is able to express. And he now submits these volumes to the judgment of the political and literary world, with deference and respect, in the hope that his earnest endeavours to present them for the first time with a complete and perfect edition of the Letters, and, as far as may be, the Political Works, of JUNIUS, will not be wholly unsuccessful, and that he shall experience the further satisfaction of finding it acknowledged, that the task has been at least impartially executed.