C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Sir Philip Francis (1740–1818)
Francis, Philip, Sir. An Irish-English public man and writer, the best accredited of the candidates for authorship of the “Junius” letters; born in Dublin, Oct. 22, 1740; died in London, Dec. 23, 1818. As one of the resident India council he engaged in a furious contest with Warren Hastings; was finally vanquished, but achieved a terrible revenge after his return to England, by inciting Hastings’s impeachment and coaching Burke. The ‘Letters’—savage assaults on the heads of the party in power, up to George III. himself—appeared in the Public Advertiser of London from 1768 to 1772. The case for his authorship is effectively put in Macaulay’s Essay on Warren Hastings.