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Elzevir's Head at Temple Bar. He commenced business under the auspices of Pope. His son Henry, who rose to be a Common Councilman and Master of the Stationers' Company, bought of Theophilus Cibber, in 1736-37, one-third of a tenth share of the London _Daily Post_, an organ which gradually grew into the _Public Advertiser_, that daring paper in which the celebrated letters of Junius first appeared. Those letters, scathing and full of Greek fire, brought down Lords and Commons, King's Bench and Old Bailey, on Woodfall, and he was fined and imprisoned. Whether Burke, Barré, Chatham, Horne Tooke, or Sir Philip Francis wrote them, will now probably never be known. The stern writer in the iron mask went down into the grave shrouded in his own mystery, and that grave no inquisitive eyes will ever find.
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I am the sole depository of my secret, he wrote,
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The Junius Woodfall died in 1805. William Woodfall, the younger brother, was born in 1745, and educated at St. Paul's School. He was editor and printer of the _Morning Chronicle_, and in 1790 had his office in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square (Noble).
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Memory Woodfall, as William was generally called, acquired fame by his extraordinary power of reporting from memory the speeches he heard in the House of Commons. His practice during a debate (says his friend Mr. Taylor, of the _Sun_) was to close his eyes and lean with both hands upon his stick. He was so well acquainted with the tone and manner of the several speakers that he seldom changed his attitude but to catch the name of a new member. His memory was as accurate as it was capacious, and, what was almost miraculous, he could retain full recollection of any particular debate for a full fortnight, and after many long nights of speaking. Woodfall used to say he could put a speech away on a corner shelf of his mind for future reference. This is an instance of power of memory scarcely equalled by Fuller, who, it is said, could repeat the names of all the shops down the Strand (at a time every shop had a sign) in regular and correct sequence; and it even surpasses
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Memory Thompson, who used to boast he could remember every shop from Ludgate Hill to the end of Piccadilly. Yet, with all his sensitively retentive memory, Woodfall did not care for slight interruptions during his writing. Dr. Johnson used to write abridged reports of debates for the _Gentleman's Magazine_ from memory, but, then, reports at that time were short and trivial. Woodfall was also a most excellent dramatic critic--slow to censure, yet never sparing just rebuke. At the theatre his extreme attention gave his countenance a look of gloom and severity. Mr. J. Taylor, of the _Sun_, describes Kemble as watching Woodfall in one of those serious moods, and saying to a friend,
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How applicable to that man is the passage in _Hamlet_,--'thoughts black, hands apt.'
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The Rolliad