Fullerian professor of physiology in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and subsequently received the appointment of examiner in comparative anatomy and physiology in the London university. He is also the author of the "Natural History of Animals," and of various contributions to the Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, &c. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1844.—W. B—d.
JONES, Sir William, a judge, was born in Castellmarch, Carnarvonshire, in 1566. At fourteen he was placed at St. Edmund's hall, Oxford, and five years later was admitted of Lincoln's inn. In 1617 he became sergeant-at-law, was shortly after knighted, and made chief-justice of Ireland, a post which he held for three years. In 1622 he was made a justice of the common pleas, whence he was removed to the king's bench in 1625, and continued to sit in that court till his death in 1640. His reports of cases in the king's bench, common pleas, exchequer, &c., were published, 1620-41, and are quoted as the First Jones' Reports to distinguish them from the Reports by Sir Thomas Jones.—R. H.
JONES, William, an eminent mathematician, and father of the celebrated oriental scholar, was the son of a small farmer in the isle of Anglesea. He was born in 1680, and began his career in life as a teacher of mathematics on board a man-of-war. In 1702 he published "A new Compendium of the whole Art of Navigation," and afterwards established himself as a teacher of mathematics in London. In 1706 he published "Synopsis Palmariorum Matheseos," which was long considered one of the best summaries of mathematical science, and obtained for the author the friendship and esteem of Newton, Halley, and other eminent persons. A manuscript tract of Newton's, entitled Analysis per quantitatum series, &c., which had fallen into his hands, was published by him, along with some other analytical papers, in 1711, and he thus secured to that great man the honour of being acknowledged as the first who applied the method of infinite series to all sorts of curves. Through the influence of Lords Hardwicke and Macclesfield, whom he had instructed in the sciences, he obtained some offices under government, which brought him a considerable income. At his death in 1749 he was vice-president of the Royal Society, to which he had contributed several valuable papers. He bequeathed his books and MSS. to Lord Macclesfield, and among the latter was a work which he had prepared with great labour as an introduction to the profound writings of Newton, but which has been lost.—G. BL.
JONES, William, a learned divine of the Church of England, of the Hutchinsonian school, commonly called Jones of Nayland, was born at Lowick in Northamptonshire on the 30th July, 1726, and was educated at the Charter-house, London, and University college, Oxford. In 1749 he took the degree of B.A., and in 1751 was ordained priest by the bishop of Lincoln, when he accepted first the curacy of Finedon in Northamptonshire, and a few years later, that of Wadenhoe in the same county. It was while holding these curacies that he published his first philosophical and theological works, including "The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity" and "An Essay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy." In 1764 his merits procured him from Archbishop Secker a presentation to the vicarage of Bethersden in Kent, and in the following year to the rectory of Pluckley in the same county; and here he resided for the next thirteen years of his life, continuing with ardour his studies in theology and natural philosophy, giving instruction to pupils whom he took into his house, performing with exemplary faithfulness all the duties of the pastoral cure, and issuing through the press many useful fruits of his pen; among others, "A Letter to the Common People in answer to some Popular Arguments against the Trinity," which was added by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to its list of books, and extensively circulated. Having accepted the perpetual curacy of Nayland in Suffolk, he removed thither with his family, and there he remained for the rest of his life, having never had the offer of any higher preferment in the church. In 1781 appeared his "Physiological Disquisitions, a discourse on the natural philosophy of the elements;" and in 1786 his "Lectures on the Figurative Language of Holy Scripture." He was for some time the only Sunday schoolmaster in his parish, and excelled in the art of instructing and interesting young minds. Hence his two books for children—"The Book of Nature" and "The Churchman's Catechism." In 1795 he published "Memoirs of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Bishop Horne," who was one of his earliest college friends, and who had made him his chaplain upon his elevation to the see of Norwich. His last publication was a "Discourse on the Use and Intention of some Remarkable Passages of the Scriptures not commonly understood," which appeared in 1799. On 6th February of the following year he died in the seventy-fourth year of his age; and his whole writings were published in 12 vols. 8vo in 1801.—P. L.
JONES, Sir William, the eminent orientalist and scholar, was born on the 28th of September, 1746. At the age of three he lost his father, who was of Welsh extraction, a mathematician of considerable skill and reputation, the friend of Sir Isaac Newton. The education of the boy was superintended with the greatest care and devotedness by his mother, a woman of remarkable sense and accomplishments, and at an early age he displayed signs of a quick and inquisitive intellect. Sent to Harrow at seven, he soon distinguished himself by his proficiency, not only in the studies of the place, but by the eager acquisition of knowledge of every kind. He left Harrow an excellent Greek and Latin scholar, not unacquainted with Hebrew and Arabic, a student of French and Italian, well read in English poetry, a skilful versifier and draughtsman. Some of these accomplishments he owed to his mother, and to residence at home during a year's illness and the usual holidays. Dr. Thackeray, his first head master said of him, that he was "a boy of so active a mind, that if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury plain, he would nevertheless find the road to fame and fortune." Early in 1764 he was entered at University college, Oxford, in which city, that she might be near him, his affectionate mother took up her residence. It was here that he laid the foundation of his oriental learning, eagerly studying Persian and Arabic—the latter with some assistance from a native of Aleppo whom he had met with in London, and whom he allured to Oxford. Persian he learned in the only Persian grammar then extant, and he laboured hard at the Gulistan of Saadi. The range of his culture, intellectual and physical, was remarkable. Besides the studies already named, he prosecuted at Oxford all those indigenous to the place; and during his vacations in London, he read Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, and learned riding and fencing: in short, to use his own expression, "with the fortune of a peasant, he gave himself the education of a prince." He did not wish to be a burden to his mother, and in 1765 he cheerfully accepted an offer to become private tutor to Lord Althorpe, afterwards Earl Spencer, then a boy of seven; and about a twelvemonth afterwards he obtained a fellowship, to which £100 a year was attached. This connection procured him good society, the advantages of continental travel, and leisure for study. While it continued he prosecuted his oriental studies, and wrote most of his commentaries on Asiatic poetry, taking lessons in dancing and the broadsword the while; prepared a Persian grammar, commenced a Persian dictionary, and studied "music with all its sweetness and feeling, difficult and abstruse problems in mathematics, and the beautiful and sublime in poetry and painting." Oriental study was comparatively rare in those days; and Jones had acquired a reputation in 1768, when the secretary of state applied to him to execute a French version of a Persian life of Nadir Shah, which the king of Denmark had brought with him in MS. to England, and of which his majesty was anxious to possess a translation. He performed within a year the difficult task, and the translation was published in 1770. The only reward received by the translator was a diploma, constituting him a member of the Royal Society of Copenhagen. It was in the year of the publication of the Life of Nadir Shah that he resigned his tutorship, and became a student of law in the Temple. He studied law hard, not forsaking, however, his favourite pursuits. During his years of studentship he published, in 1771, his "Persian Grammar," still a standard work, and the same year (anonymously) a sharp reply in very tolerable French, in the form of a letter, to illnatured remarks on Oxford university and some of its members which Anquetil du Perron had made in the introduction to the translation of the Zendavesta. In 1772 appeared a small volume of poems, chiefly translations from oriental languages, more elegant than striking; and in 1774 his critical and philosophical "Poeseos Asiaticæ Commentarii," formerly referred to, composed somewhat on the plan of Lowth's Prelections, and which, written in Latin, was republished by Eichhorn at Leipsic in 1776, procuring for their author a continental reputation. Called to the bar in 1774, he resolved to sacrifice literature to
