law, and kept his resolution pretty faithfully for several years, in the course of which he was appointed a commissioner of bankrupts, and practised his profession with diligence and success. A quasi-legal publication was his version, with an instructive introduction and notes, of the "Speeches of Isæus in causes concerning the law of succession to property at Athens," 1778; and decidedly legal was his "Essay on the Law of Bailments," 1780, which received the approval of Lord Mansfield. His only manifest divergence into pure literature was the publication of a version of the Moallakat, the ancient Arabic poems of the pre-mahometan period, which were rewarded for their assumed excellence by being hung up in the temple of Mecca. Translations published by him apparently about the same time, of an Arabic poem and tract on the mahometan laws of inheritance and of succession to the property of intestates, were written partly to advance his professional aims. He cherished the hope of being made an Indian judge, of accumulating a fortune rapidly in the East, and of returning home to play a part in public life. At this time Jones was a keen politician. He had saluted the American revolution in a Latin ode, and was the friend and correspondent of Franklin. He was a member of political societies, and spoke and wrote in favour of parliamentary reform—at one time indulging in a brief dream of representing his Alma Mater on advanced liberal principles. His liberalism did not further his prospects of a judgeship, or strengthen the friendships which his accomplishments and character had procured for him among men of eminence, but of different politics. With the accession, however, of the Shelburne ministry to power, his ambition was gratified. Chiefly through the influence of Dunning (Lord Ashburton), he was appointed a judge of the supreme court of judicature at Fort-William. The following month he was thus enabled to marry. Lady Jones was the eldest daughter of Dr. Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph, who had recommended him as tutor to Lord Althorpe; and it was in those early years that he formed the attachment at last crowned by wedlock. After a voyage in which he occupied himself with framing large projects, literary and legal, he arrived in the September of 1783 at Calcutta, where his fame had long preceded him, and where he was warmly received. Thus advantageously situated for the prosecution of his favourite studies, he always subordinated them to the improvement of judicial practice and procedure in India. If he began the study of Sanscrit, his chief inducement was to be able to test and correct the interpretations of the native legal practitioners, at whose mercy a judge ignorant of Sanscrit was placed. If a master of Sanscrit, he amused himself with the translation of Sakontala, that charming drama of "the Shakspeare of India," as he called its author Kalidasa; he exerted himself still more strenuously to produce an English version of the Ordinances of Menu, as the foundation of Hindoo jurisprudence. If one of his first enterprizes on arriving in India was to found the Asiatic Society, of which he was appointed president—and his papers read before which are among the most interesting of his miscellanies—he laboured still more diligently to execute another, and so to speak, a professional scheme. It was in 1788 that he broached in an elaborate letter to Lord Cornwallis, then governor-general, his project for the compilation of a digest of Hindoo and Mahometan law, which should effect for India what the Pandects of Justinian effected for the Roman world. The scheme was approved of by the governor-general, who gladly accepted Sir William Jones' offers of superintendence and co-operation. Sir William selected a number of competent persons, Hindoo and Mahometan, to execute the work, of which he traced the plan and superintended the execution until his death, bequeathing its completion to Colebrooke. It was a remarkable homage paid to his character and disinterested zeal, that in this, as in other and minor instances, the Brahmins threw off their usual reserve and distrust so far as to accept the direction of a European in compiling a digest of their own laws. His anxiety to see the great work completed led him to allow Lady Jones to proceed by herself to England, when in 1793 the state of her health rendered her return indispensable. He intended to follow her home in 1795, but a sudden and rapid attack of inflammation of the liver carried him off on the 23rd of April, 1794. He was attended in his last moments by his friend and biographer Sir John Shore, then governor-general of India, and afterwards Lord Teignmouth. Sir William Jones' was a pure, elevated, and harmonious character. In all the relations of life, and in the performance of all its duties, he was irreproachable. If he lacked the brilliancy and susceptibility of genius, he pursued his own culture and improvement in his own sphere with the rarest assiduity. Few men, even among professed scholars, have 'been so generally accomplished. There were oriental scholars in England before him, and Wilkins preceded him in the study of Sanscrit. But by his tact and taste, the judgment of his selections and the elegance of his style, he was the first to popularize in Europe the literature of the East, and to help in bridging over the chasm which formerly separated the mind of England from that of her great Indian dependency. His essays and disquisitions on eastern literature, philology, and mythology abound with fruitful hints and suggestions, and contain the germs of those most surprising theories of later days which have affiliated to one common origin important languages and worships seemingly the most disconnected and dissimilar.—F. E.
JONSIUS, Johannes, born in 1624; died at Leipsic in 1659. He was an able and accomplished scholar, and is honourably remembered for his treatises on Aristotelian philosophy, and especially his "De Scriptoribus Historiæ Philosophicæ."
JONSON, Benjamin or Ben (as in his own days he was generally, and is now universally known), one of the great masters of the English drama, was born in Westminster in 1574, and Hartshorne Lane, near Northumberland Street, Charing Cross, is assigned as the locality. He was of Scotch descent, and his father, who died shortly before Ben's birth, was "a grave minister of the gospel," who had suffered persecution and loss of property in the time of Mary. It is stated by Malone, on the authority of an entry in a parish register, that his mother again married in 1575, a master bricklayer. This assertion, as old as Anthony à Wood's day, and adopted by Gifford, has been strongly impugned by recent inquirers; and it may be now doubted whether she married a second time, and if so, who was her husband. At all events Ben was not neglected. He was sent after some preliminary education to Westminster school, where he had the good fortune, as he gratefully acknowledges, to learn under Camden. It is stated by some of his biographers that Jonson went to St. John's college, Cambridge. Of this there is no evidence, though it is not improbable. His stay, however, could have been but short, as we find him actually working as a bricklayer in London, helping, as Fuller records, "in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's inn; when having a trowel in one hand, he had a book in his pocket." How uncongenial and disgusting this occupation was we learn from himself. It became intolerable; he enlisted as a volunteer, joined the army then in Flanders, and during his short service gave proof of personal daring. He says himself—"He loved the profession, and did not shame it by his actions." At nineteen years of age he is again in London, with a good stock of knowledge and a scanty supply of money. To turn the former to account, and to increase the latter, Jonson betook himself to the stage, and trod the boards as an actor with no great success, writing, as was the habit of the day, in conjunction with others for the stage. A misadventure suspended his labours for a season. A dispute with a man, who is supposed from an entry in the parish registry of St. Leonards, Shoreditch, to have been one Gabriell Spencer, a player, ended in a duel, in which the latter was killed, and the victor severely wounded, imprisoned on a charge of murder, and "brought near the gallows." (If the date of this entry is correctly given by Mr. P. Cunningham as 1598, Spencer could not have been the person whom Jonson killed.) After a confinement of near a year, during which he was converted by a Romish priest, Jonson was set at liberty—by what means is not known, probably for want of prosecution. Again he betook himself to his literary work in connection with the stage; and being now twenty years of age, he married a young woman, who Gifford states was "of domestic habits, and content, perhaps, to struggle with poverty for the sake of her children." "Shrewish, but honest," is Ben's own brief description of her in 1618, after her death. He soon became of sufficient mark as a writer to induce Henslowe to advance him occasional small loans; but whether he wrote any drama by himself previous to 1596 is uncertain In that year we first find mention of "Every Man in his Humour," as being performed at "the Globe." It was evidently successful from the outset, as it was played eleven times between the 25th of November in that year and the 10th of May following. It was acted in the form in which it is now published (English scenes and names substituted
