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JON
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JON

Covent Garden in 1753. It was successful, and gained him the friendship of Cibber, then the laureate, who is even said to have wished to make him his successor. But a vain, infirm, and capricious temper alienated his friends and marred his fortunes. Prosperity, too, brought improvidence, and Jones soon found himself as poor as when he commenced authorship. For a time he struggled on through a life of reverses and suffering, which came to a close in April, 1770, when he died in utter destitution in a garret in Bedford coffee-house, where the charity of the owner afforded him a shelter. He left an unfinished tragedy, "The Cave of Idra," and a few poems.—J. F. W.

JONES, Inigo, one of the most famous of English architects, was the son of a clothworker in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's, London, where he was born in 1572. His father, a Roman catholic, is believed to have given the child the Spanish form of his own name (Ignatius), out of respect to some connection in Spain. Of Inigo's education nothing very distinct is known. It has been said that he was brought up as a joiner; but the report appears to have originated from Ben Jonson satirizing the great architect as "In-and-in-Medley, the joiner of Islington." Others have asserted that he was sent to Italy at the expense of the earls of Pembroke and Arundel. Jones' own statement (Dedication to "Stonehenge Restored") is simply that, "being naturally inclined in his younger years to study the arts of design, he passed into foreign parts to converse with the great masters thereof in Italy;" that he applied himself to "search out the ruins" of the ancient buildings still remaining; and that on returning to his native country he applied his mind "more particularly to the study of architecture." His studies in Italy attracted so much notice, that he was about 1604 invited to Denmark, and appointed architect to the king. Buildings are named both in Italy and Denmark as having been designed by Inigo Jones, but, it is pretty certain, without sufficient reason. His connection with the Danish court, however, probably introduced him to that of England, as on his return to this country in 1605 he was appointed architect to the queen (Anne of Denmark) and to Prince Henry, and employed in designing the costly scenery and machinery of the court masques. The buildings designed by Jones when he first came to England differed in little from those at that time in vogue, which are in the most debased phase of the Elizabethan style. But the death of Prince Henry permitted Jones again to visit Italy, and he now set himself earnestly to study the more refined style of renaissance architecture, known as the Palladian. How long he remained in Italy is not clear; but on his return to England (before 1616) he was made surveyor to the king, and was soon busily occupied in the erection of important buildings. It was the ambition of James to have a palace that should surpass every other in Europe, and Inigo was directed to design one. His plan was quickly supplied. It consisted of a stately structure comprising seven courts, and having frontages towards St. James' Park and the Thames of eight hundred and seventy-four feet each, and towards Westminster Abbey and Charing Cross respectively of eleven hundred and fifty-two feet, and covering an area, therefore, larger than that of the new palace at Westminster; the whole being in the richest Italian style, and plentifully adorned with statues, vases, &c. James had not, indeed, provided the necessary funds, but Jones had so arranged his design that the parts might be built in succession, and the banqueting-house, a small portion only of the Charing Cross end, was accordingly erected (1619-21). Farther, it is unnecessary to add, it never proceeded; neither James nor his successor found money to add more. What it would have been if completed may be seen in Jones' designs, which were published in 1727, &c., by the architect Kent. In the banqueting-house, Whitehall, Jones was the means of introducing to his countrymen an example of a true Palladian structure. Bold, chaste, and stately in design, it was regarded with unbounded admiration by contemporaries, was looked up to as a model by succeeding generations of architects and patrons, and even to the present day holds its place firmly in the general estimation. This building it is especially which gives to Inigo Jones his right to the title often assigned to him of the English Palladio, and the Father of modern English architecture. On completing Whitehall, Jones was employed in repairing old St. Paul's cathedral, to which, among other incongruities, he affixed a large and lofty Corinthian portico, the first of its kind erected in England and one of the largest that had been built in recent times. Other London buildings erected by him were part of old Somerset house, Ashburton house, Lindsay house, the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden—"the handsomest barn in Europe"—and many more. He also laid out Lincoln's inn (the first of the London "squares") and built the piazza, Covent Garden. The Queen's house, Greenwich Park, was built by him; and the northern portion of Greenwich hospital was erected from his designs (but not till after his death) by his pupil, Webb. Of the many country mansions erected from his designs, it will suffice to mention Coleshill, Berkshire; Amesbury, Wilts; Lord Chancellor Henley's, the Grange, Hants. Wilton house, near Salisbury, usually ascribed to him, appears to have been really erected in 1648 by Webb, but at Jones' recommendation, and probably with his assistance in the design. The garden front of St. John's college, Oxford, built at the cost of his friend and patron, Archbishop Laud, illustrates his eye for picturesque effect. Heriot's hospital, Edinburgh, and two or three other buildings in Scotland, are also attributed to him. We have mentioned above that he was employed on first coming to England in preparing the masques then in so much favour at court. During the remainder of the reign of James, and till 1640, in that of Charles I., Jones continued to be so occupied, and he seems to have imparted to those costly trifles no little variety and splendour of effect. For some years Ben Jonson was engaged with him as devisor of the poetic part of the entertainment. But the architect was vain and the poet irritable, and their differences resulted in an irreconcilable quarrel. The immediate cause of the breach is said to have been the placing of the poet's name first on the title-page of a masque which was published. Be that as it may, Jonson lashed the unlucky architect in some merciless verses, and when the other gave vent to his anger, pilloried him as a leading character in his Tale of a Tub, as well as in his Bartholomew Fair. Jones was deeply mortified, and he was not of a placable temperament. The king was offended, for Jones was a favourite, and Jonson was made to feel that his enemies were the mighty of the land. There can be little doubt that the quarrel with Jones greatly embittered the last years of the great dramatist's life. But Jones's later days were also marked with adversity. His salary was ill-paid, and ceased altogether when the king's troubles culminated. He was summoned before the parliament in 1649, for having removed the parish church of St. Gregory in order to enhance his improvements at St. Paul's, and ordered to make restitution. Later he was fined £545 as a "malignant;" and he had the unhappiness of seeing his royal master led out to execution through a window of his own banqueting-house, Whitehall. He died, worn out with grief and disappointment, in June, 1653. Walpole says that Jones hesitated for a while between painting and architecture, and that a landscape still at Chiswick showed that he had attained some skill in the former art. He also appears to have tagged verses; but the specimen of them prefixed to Coryat's Crudities makes us rejoice that the rest are lost. Nor was his archæology much more successful than his poetry. King James when at Wilton in 1620 saw Stonehenge; and wishing the mystery of its foundation to be elucidated, he assigned the task to his architect. In due time Jones made his report, and after his death it was given to the world by his nephew, Webb, under the title of "Stonehenge Restored," folio, 1655. His conclusion was, that the mysterious circle was a temple of Cœlus, and erected by the Romans during their occupation of Britain! Of the genius of Inigo Jones as an architect there can be no question; nor can there be any as to his vast influence on the course of the art in this country. As to the quality of his genius and the effect of his influence, opinions differ very widely.—J. T—e.

JONES, Jeremiah, a learned English dissenting minister, was born in 1693, and received his education for the ministry at the celebrated academy of his uncle, Samuel Jones. At the end of his course of study he became minister of a congregation assembling at Forest Green, Avening, in Gloucestershire, and established himself at Nailsworth in that neighbourhood, where he kept an academy. His preaching was of a superior order, and attracted to him the support of persons of considerable station. He had manifested as a student a peculiar liking and aptitude for critical studies; and still applying himself with ardour to his favourite pursuits, he published in 1719 "A Vindication of the former part of St. Matthew's Gospel from Mr. Whiston's charge of Dislocations, or an attempt to prove that our present Greek copies of that gospel are in the same order wherein they were