a man whose vices were not of the sordid kind. But he must also have been a man in the highest degree arrogant and insolent; a man prone to malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue. "Doest thou well to be angry?" was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do well." This was evidently the temper of Junius; and to this cause we attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces several of his letters. No man is so merciless as he who, under a strong delusion, confounds his antipathies with his duties[1].' Merivale himself speaks of his 'proud, unaccommodating spirit,' while Sir James Stephen adds 'falsehood, treachery, and calumny' to the list of his darker traits. Francis' malignant nature, his keen, versatile intellect, his arrogant self-esteem, his strong prepossessions, his combative instincts, his crafty daring, his wrong-headed zeal for any cause that took his fancy, all these qualities marked him out as a leader in the long and furious struggle into which his party were about to drag the Governor-General of Bengal.
Friendly letters from Hastings awaited each of the Councillors and Judges on their arrival at Madras. To one only of the number, his old school-fellow Sir Elijah Impey, he wrote without reserve, as rejoicing at 'the prospect of seeing so old a friend,' on whose support he might safely reckon in 'the peculiar circumstances' of his new position. On the 19th
- ↑ Merivale's Memoirs of Sir P. Francis, vol. ii.
