Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/137

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JUNIUS.
91

LETTER XIV.


ADDRESSED TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.


22. June. 1769.

SIR,

THE name of Old Noll is destined to be the ruin of the house of Stuart. There is an ominous fatality in it, which even the spurious descendants of the family cannot escape. Oliver Cromwell had the merit of conducting Charles the First to the block. Your correspondent, Old Noll, appears to have the same design upon the Duke of Grafton. His arguments consist better with the title he has assumed, than with the principles he professes: for though he pretends to be an advocate for the Duke, he takes care to give us the best reason why his patron should regularly follow the fate of his presumptive ancestor.—Through the whole course of the Duke of Grafton's life, I see a strange endeavour to unite contradictions, which cannot be reconciled. He marries to be divorced;—he keeps a mistress, to remind him of conjugal endearments, and