New Style. "But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled?": this paragraph of Oxen begins with antisemitic contempt and goes on to vituperate Bloom's sexual hypocrisy. It imitates the style of "Junius," the pseudonymous author of scathing letters that appeared in a London political newspaper in the late 1760s and early 70s. The letters were probably written by Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818), an English Whig politician who was born in Dublin and whose letters were published there. Joyce's paragraph suggests extensive familiarity with these letters.

The first letter by "Junius" appeared in Henry Sampson Woodfall's Public Advertiser on 21 November 1768, and many more such letters appeared in the same paper from January 1769 to January 1772. Their great popularity can be gauged by the fact that a dozen or more pirated editions appeared during the years that the paper was printing them, prompting the publication of an authorized Letters of Junius in two volumes in 1772. The letters articulated Whig causes like American independence and advocated for democratic reforms like press freedom, individual rights, and democratic elections. More importantly for Joyce's purposes, they fiercely attacked corruption in the British government and heaped sarcastic scorn on individual corrupt ministers, chief among them Augustus Henry Fitzroy, the 3rd Duke of Grafton.

The Junius-like voice in Oxen starts by seconding the Citizen's view that Jews are loyal only to themselves, not their host nations. The narrator charges Bloom—"this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to civic rites"—with ingratitude, referring to the decision in the middle of the 17th century (first by Oliver Cromwell and then by King Charles II) to allow Jews back into England after their expulsion in 1290. The granting of "civic rights" to Jews, however, was not gracious but grudging. Gifford details the glacial progress: "in 1723, the right to give evidence in courts of justice; in 1753, the right of naturalization; in 1830, the right to membership in civic corporations; in 1833, admission to the profession of advocate; in 1845, to offices of alderman and lord mayor; and in 1858, to Parliament." Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner observe that the 1753 naturalization bill was repealed several months later, "after country-wide agitation." In 1783, they note, the Irish parliament passed a bill allowing "naturalisation of all foreigners except Jews. That bill was finally repealed in 1816, at which time Jews were finally allowed citizenship."

Junius never expressed antisemitic views, but he did indulge Whig hatred of the Scots, who had rapidly infiltrated Westminster power structures after Scotland agreed to join England in a United Kingdom in 1707. Complaining about their influence both at court and in Parliament, Junius advised King George III that "the Scots "have no claim to your favour," and in the Preface to his Letters he wrote, "Without any abstract reasoning upon causes and effects, we shall soon be convinced by experience, that the Scots, transplanted from their own country, are always a distinct and separate body from the people who receive them. In other settlements, they only love themselves; in England, they cordially love themselves, and as cordially hate their neighbours" (xxx). This sentiment perfectly dovetails with the canard about disloyal Jews worming their way into other countries, so it made artistic sense for Joyce to associate the antisemitic trope with the Whig politician's voice. In the final sentence of the paragraph he cunningly acknowledges what he has done by applying Junius's metaphor for Scots to a Jew: Bloom is "at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour."

Between these bookending expressions of antisemitism, the narrator attacks Bloom for feeling superior to the libidinous young men whose raucous conversation is adding to the trials of Mrs. Purefoy. How dare he style himself a defender of women, the prose asks, when "he is, if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer"? By the logic of Oxen, the purpose of marriage is to produce children, and this criticizer of the young men's disrespect for women has disrespected his own wife for more than ten years. "Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of a ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life." That habit, of course, is masturbation.

Joyce's ad hominem attack on his protagonist bears no small resemblance to some of the personal attacks in the Letters. In his study of the sources of Oxen Robert Janusko quotes from a 24 April 1769 letter addressed to the Duke of Grafton, observing that in both the letter and the parody "there is an emphatic attack by the speaker on the unwillingness of his victim to act in accordance with his role, Grafton to maintain order and Bloom to perform and protect his marital duties. Instead, the accuser states, they have gone to the opposite extreme; Grafton supports the unconstitutional efforts of Parliament to prevent a duly elected member from taking his seat and Bloom is guilty of attempted adultery, masturbation, and allowing Boylan to 'debauch' his wife. Both Grafton and Bloom are reminded that they hold their positions only by chance; the one has become acting premier by the illness of Lord Chatham, the other holds his civil rights by 'the concession of a gracious prince'. Finally, of course, neither Junius nor Bloom's adversary are above making use of embarrassing information from private life to expose their targets to the full view and wrath of their readers" (72).

The number of Junius's words and phrases that found their way into Oxen is staggering. At the risk of becoming tedious, this note will conclude with a partial accounting of such borrowings that can be discerned in this one parodic paragraph, quoting first from Joyce's prose and then from the 1772 edition of the Letters. Readers given to checking citations will notice that nearly all quotations come from the first volume, suggesting that Joyce may have spent time only with this one.

Many of the borrowings come from politics, or from legal and societal issues related to the exercise of political power. Joyce's mention of "civic rights" in the first sentence reflects the letter-writer's enduring and principled preoccupation with the individual human "rights" of a people, including "civil rights," "political rights," and "religious rights." The mention of Bloom's political "patron" and a "prince" recalls the frequent use of these terms in the Letters, and the phrase "gracious prince" appears to have been prompted by a particular sentence: "Let us suppose a gracious, well-intentioned prince, made sensible at last of the great duty he owes to his people" (1.217-18). Similarly, styling Bloom "the lord paramount of our internal polity" alludes to one particular sentence in the letters: "The extraordinary step you took to make Sir James Lowther Lord Paramount of Cumberland, has ruined his interest in that country forever" (1.55).

The legal-sounding phrase "a tenant at will" (implying someone who derives his benefits only from the will of a lord, not by lease) comes from another specific sentence: "Are these glorious privileges the birthright of the people, or are we only tenants at the will of the ministry?" (1.201). Saying that Bloom has drawn attention to questions of sexuality "as it was indeed highly his interest not to have done" echoes another particular sentence: "It is indeed highly your interest to maintain the present house of commons" (1.210). Many other such words connected to questions of social and political relationship appear in the Letters: the "loyalty" that Bloom might be expected to display, the "benefits" that he has received, his long refusal to give Molly her "legitimate prerogative," the "doctrines" that engross him, and the "morals" that he regards as proper for young men of a certain social stratum.

Junius's lexicon also extends to naming the moral attitudes held by decent, rightthinking people. When the narrator protests, "Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady," he reflects both the determination of Junius to discuss serious matters "with candour and decency" (1.2) and his courtesy toward women: "I will not lead her into public, as you have done, nor will I insult the memory of departed beauty. Her sex, which alone made her amiable in your eyes, makes her respectable in mine" (1.71). The narrator's determination not "to cast the most distant reflections" upon Molly's virtue employs a now-obsolete sense of that word: "The remainder of your reflections upon Mr. Grenville's conduct destroy themselves" (1.114). As for Bloom, his "peevish asperity" to a rancher at the cattleyard (the word denotes harshness of tone or manner) affords a counter-example to the positive self-referential use of the word in the Letters: "By the asperity of Junius's style, I cannot indeed call him a flatterer" (1.38).

Bloom's sexual irregularities draw forth a number of expressions used by Junius. What the narrator says of his adulterous liaisons—"The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected"—had been said already of a British minister: "the prime minister of Great Britain, in a rural retirement, and in the arms of faded beauty, had lost all memory of his Sovereign, his country and himself" (1.63). The "oppobrium" of Bloom's masturbatory self-love, and his failure to stop Boylan from leaving Molly "debauched," recall other men who have mistreated their wives: "the opprobrium of marrying a near relation of one who had debauched his wife" (1.83). Hanging out with "a generation of unfledged profligates," and presuming to impart to them the sexual wisdom of age, is not the behavior of a virtuous man: "Though deceived perhaps in his youth, he would not, through the course of a long life, have invariably chosen his friends from among the most profligate of mankind" (1.154-55). By neglecting the duties of his marriage bed Bloom has become "his own dupe," unlike the author of the Letters: "what opinion would you have conceived of my discretion, if I had suffered myself to be the dupe of so shallow an artifice?" (1.169).

Finally, it can be observed that Joyce's narrator mimics the rhetorical effects of Junius's prose by adopting some of his distinctive verbal patterns. The rhetorical question, "Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received?" recalls a similar sentence in the Letters: "Have you quite forgotten that this man was once your Grace's friend?" (1.54). The charge, "let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him" imitates Junius's marvelously balanced pronouncement: "His arguments consist better with the title he has assumed, than with the principles he professes" (1.84). And an apostrophe to Molly—"Unhappy woman, she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative"—echoes not just Junius's frequent use of the word "unhappy" but his exclamatory placement of that adjective at the head of one sentence: "Unhappy man! what party will receive the common deserter of all parties?" (2.5).

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