JONES, Inigo, a celebrated English architect, the son of a cloth-worker of London, was born in 1572. He was at first put as apprentice to a joiner; but having early distinguished himself by his inclination for drawing or designing, he was particularly noticed for his skill in landscape-painting. This afterwards recommended him to the favour of William earl of Pembroke, who sent him abroad with a handsome allowance, in order to perfect himself in that branch. He had no sooner arrived at Rome, than he found himself in his proper sphere; he felt that nature had not formed him to decorate cabinets, but to design palaces. He accordingly dropped the pencil, and conceived Whitehall. In the state of Venice he saw the works of Palladio, and learned that refined taste may be exerted on a less theatre than the capital of an empire. How he distinguished himself in a place where he had no opportunity to display his talents, we are not informed, though it would not be the least curious part of his history. Certain it is, however, that, on the strength of his reputation at Venice, Christian IV. invited him to Denmark, and appointed him his architect; but on what buildings he was employed in that country we have yet to learn. James I. found him at Copenhagen, and Queen Anne took him, in the capacity of her architect, to Scotland. He served Prince Henry in the same capacity, and the place of surveyor-general of the works was granted to him in reversion. On the death of that prince, Jones travelled once more into Italy, and, assisted by maturity of judgment, perfected his taste. To the interval between these voyages Mr Walpole is inclined to attribute those buildings of Jones which are less pure, and border too much upon the bastard style. Inigo’s designs of that period are not Gothic, but have a littleness of parts, and a weight of ornament, with which the revival of the Grecian taste was encumbered, and which he shook off in his grander designs. The surveyor’s place having become vacant, he returned to England; and, as if architecture was not all he had learned at Rome, he disinterestedly gave up the profits of his office, which he found extremely in debt, and prevailed upon the comptroller and paymaster to imitate his example, until the whole arrears were cleared off.

In 1620 he was employed in a manner very unworthy of his genius, King James having set him upon discovering, or rather guessing, who were the founders of Stonehenge. But his ideas were all Roman; consequently, his partiality to his favourite people, which ought rather to have prevented him from charging them with that mass of barbarous clumsiness, made him conclude that it was a Roman temple.

In the same year Jones was appointed one of the commissioners for the repair of St Paul’s; but this was not commenced till the year 1633, when Laud, then bishop of London, laid the first stone, and Inigo the fourth. In the restoration of that cathedral he made two capital faults. He first renewed the sides with very bad Gothic; and then added a Roman portico magnificent indeed, but which had no affinity to the ancient parts that remained, and made his own Gothic appear ten times heavier. He committed the same error at Winchester, thrusting a screen in the Roman or Grecian taste into the middle of that cathedral. Jones indeed was by no. means successful when he attempted Gothic. The chapel of Lincoln’s-Inn has none of the characteristics of that architecture. The cloister beneath seems oppressed by the weight of the building above.

The authors of the life of Jones place the erection of the Banqueting House in the reign of King Charles; but it appears, from the accounts of Nicholas Stone, that it was begun in 1619, and finished in two years, being a small part of the pile designed for the palace of our kings, but so complete in itself, that it stands as a model of its kind. Several plates of the intended palace at Whitehall have been given, but, Mr Walpole thinks, from no finished design. The four great sheets are evidently made up from general hints; nor could such a source of invention and taste as the mind of Inigo ever produce so much sameness. The whole fabric, however, was so great an idea, that, according to Walpole, one forgets for a moment, in the regret for its not being executed, the confirmation of our liberties, obtained by a melancholy scene that passed before the windows of that very Banqueting House.

In 1623 he was employed at Somerset House, where a chapel was to be fitted up for the Infanta, the intended bride of the prince. The chapel is still in existence. The front to the river, part only of what was designed, and the water-gate, were afterwards erected on the designs of Inigo, as was the gate at York Stairs.

On the accession of Charles, Jones was continued in his posts under both king and queen. His fee as surveyor was eight shillings and fourpence a day, with an allowance of L.46 a year for house-rent, besides a clerk, and incidental expenses. What other remuneration he received, or whether he received any at all, we have not been informed.

During the prosperous state of the king’s affairs, the pleasures of the court were indulged in with much taste and magnificence. Poetry, painting, music, and architecture, were all called in to contribute rational amusements. Mr Walpole is of opinion, indeed, that the celebrated festivals of Louis XIV. were copied from the shows exhibited at Whitehall, in his time the most polite court in Europe. Ben Jonson was the laureate; Inigo Jones the inventor of the decorations; Laniere and Ferabosco composed the symphonies; whilst the king, the queen, and the young nobility, danced in the interludes. We have accounts of many of those entertainments called “masques,” which had been introduced by Anne of Denmark. Lord Burlington had a folio of the designs for these solemnities, by Inigo’s own hand, consisting of habits, masks, scenes, and so forth. The harmony of these masks was a little interrupted by a war which broke out between the composers, Inigo and Ben, in which, whoever was the aggressor, the turbulent temper of Jonson took care to put him most in the wrong.

The works of Inigo Jones are not scarce; and Surgeons’ Hall is one of his best performances. One of the most admired is the arcade of Covent-garden, and the church; “two structures,” says Mr Walpole, “of which I want taste to see the beauties. In the arcade there is nothing remarkable; the pilasters are as arrant and homely stripes as any plasterer could make. The barn-roof over the portico of the church strikes my eyes with as little idea of dignity and beauty as it could do if it covered nothing but a barn. It must be owned, that the defect is not in the architect, but in the order. Who ever saw a beautiful Tuscan building? Would the Romans have chosen that order for a temple ?” The expense of building the church amounted to L.4500.

Ambresbury in Wiltshire was designed by Jones, but executed by his scholar Webb. Jones was one of the first who observed the same diminution in pilasters as in pillars. Lindsay House in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, which he built, owes its chief grace to this singularity. In 1618, a [7:12:620]special commission was issued to the Lord Chancellor, the Earls of Worcester, Pembroke, Arundel, and others, to plant and reduce to uniformity Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, as it should be drawn by way of map or ground-plot, by Inigo Jones, surveyor-general of the works. That square is laid out with a regard to so trifling a singularity, as to be of the exact dimensions of one of the Pyramids; a conceit which would have been admired in those ages when the keep at Kenilworth Castle was erected in the form of an horse-fetter, and the Escurial in the shape of St Laurence’s gridiron.

Coleshill in Berkshire, the seat of Sir Matthew Pley-deD, built in 1650, and Cobham Hall in Kent, were works of Jones. He was employed to rebuild Castle Ashby, and finished one front; but the civil war interrupted his progress there and at Stoke Park in Northamptonshire. Shaftesbury House, now the London Lying-in Hospital, on the east side of Aldersgate Street, is a beautiful front of his. The Grange, the seat of Lord Henley, in Hampshire, is entirely of this master. It is by no means a large house, but one of the best proofs of his taste. The hall, which opens to a small vestibule with a cupola, and the staircase adjoining, are beautiful models of the purest and most classic antiquity The gate of Beaufort Garden at Chelsea, designed by Jones, was purchased by Lord Burlington, and transported to Chiswick. He also drew a plan for a palace at Newmarket. One of the most beautiful of his works is the queen’s house at Greenwich. The first idea of the hospital is said to have been taken from his papers by his scholar Webb. Heriot’s Hospital in Edinburgh, and the improvements made in his time on Glammis Castle, Forfarshire, Scotland, are specimens of the designs of Inigo Jones.

Inigo tasted early the misfortunes of his master. Being not only a favourite, but a Roman Catholic, he in 1646 paid L.545 for his delinquency and sequestration. Whether it was before or after this fine, it is uncertain, that he and Stone the mason buried their joint stock in Scotland yard; but an order being published to encourage the informers of such concealments, and four persons being privy to the spot where the money was hidden, it was taken up, and reburied in Lambeth marsh. Grief, misfortunes, and age, put a period to his life, at Somerset House, on the 21st of July 1651. Several of his designs have been published by Mr Kent, Mr Colin Campbell, and Mr Isaac Ware. He left in manuscript some curious notes on Palladio’s architecture, which are inserted in an edition of Palladio published in 1714.

Jones, Sir William, the son of William Jones, Esq. an eminent mathematician, contemporary with the great Newton, was born in London on the 28th of September 1746, and received the rudiments of his education at Harrow School, under the tuition of Dr Robert Sumner, whom he has celebrated in an elegant and affecting enlogium. From Harrow School he went to University College, Oxford, where the rapidity of his literary acquisitions excited universal admiration.

He travelled through France at the age of twenty-three, taking up his residence for some time at Nice, where society, and the various forms of government, became the favourite objects of his investigation. A wish to relieve his mother from the burden of his education made him long for a fellowship in his college; but having no immediate prospect of obtaining it, he, in 1765, became tutor to young Lord Al-ţhorp, afterwards Earl Spencer, in which situation he was introduced to the best of company, and had also leisure to prosecute the acquisition of knowledge, and the further cultivation of his intellectual powers, which were objects ever dear to him.

He obtained next year the fellowship he expected, and was thus raised to a state which he could not help viewing as independent. Being at Spa with his pupil in the year 1767, he employed much of his time in making himself acquainted with the German language; and in the follow ing year he was requested, by the Duke of Grafton’s under-secretary, to undertake a translation of a Persian manuscript of the life of Nadir Shah into the French language, of which the king of Denmark was anxious to have a version. This, his first publication, appeared in 1770, with the addition of a treatise on oriental poetry, which was very much admired on account of the elegance of the French style and the accuracy of the, translation. For this excellent publication it appears that he received nothing more than a diploma from his Danish majesty, constituting him a member of the Royal Society of Copenhagen, with a warm recommendation to the notice of his own sovereign.

That he might be enabled to gratify his commendable ambition, he now began to think seriously of some profession ,∙ and, as he had conceived an early predilection for the law, he made that the object of his choice, and, in the month of September 1770, entered himself at the Temple. Yet the studies of his profession did not prevent him from making those literary advances in which he so much delighted; and oriental literature still continued a favourite object. When the life of Zoroaster by Anquetil Duperron made its appearance, in the preliminary discourse to which the university of Oxford had been attacked, our author defended it in a pamphlet written with equal severity and elegance. In 1772, he published a small volume of poems, being translations from the Asiatic poets, remarkable for the grace and brilliancy of their style; and in 1774 appeared his work De Poesi Asiatica, the beauty and purity of the Latin in which it is composed exciting the admiration of men of taste and learning both at home and abroad. He was called to the bar in the beginning of 1774, but declined to act in that capacity without a previous knowledge of the actual business of the profession. He was appointed a commissioner of bankrupts in 1776, about which period he addressed a letter to Lord Althorp, in which he expresses his ardent wish to have constitutional liberty established by constitutional means.

His translation of the speech of Isaeus, on account of the elegant style and the profound critical and historical knowledge it displayed, commanded the admiration of every competent judge. Soon after this his practice at the bar increased with rapidity; but he had little reason to flatter himself with the prospect of advancement in professional rank and dignity, because he was known to be convinced of the injustice of the British cause respecting the American war, which he was at no pains to conceal; and an opponent of the measures of those who had then the direction of public affairs, had little preferment to look for. In 1780 he became a candidate to succeed to Sir Roger Newdigate as representative in parliament for the university of Oxford, in which he was respectably supported; but his political sentiments were ill suited to secure him a majority, a circumstance which made him decline the contest prior to the election. He soon afterwards published a pamphlet entitled “An Inquiry into the legal mode of suppressing Riots, with a Constitutional Plan of future Defence,” recommending the propriety of making every citizen a soldier in cases of imminent danger. He next published a translation of seven ancient poems of the highest reputation in Arabia, which, with an ode on the marriage of Lord Althorp, procured for him the highest reputation. His essay on the law of bailment was also much admired, as was his speech at the London Tavern in defence of a parliamentary reform in 1782. At Paris he drew up a dialogue between a farmer and a country gentleman on the principles of government, which was published in Wales by the dean of St Asaph, and for which a bill of indictment was preferred against [7:12:621]that clergyman. In a letter to Lord Kenyon, Mr Jones avowed himself the author, and asserted the principles it contained to be perfectly agreeable to the British constitution; but it appears that he afterwards relaxed considerably in his political ardour.

After the resignation of Lord North, and the appointment of Lord Shelburne, Mr J ones was nominated one of the judges in the British territories of India; an appointment which he had long wished for, as it would afford him an opportunity of prosecuting his favourite researches into oriental literature. He was appointed a judge in March 1783, and on the 20th of that month the honour of knighthood was conferred upon him. He arrived at Calcutta in September, and entered upon his office in December, opening the sessions with a very elegant charge to the grand jury. Here he planned the institution of a society similar to the Royal Society of London, the valuable labours and researches of which are already in the hands of the public. He collected materials for a complete digest of the Hindu and Mahommedan laws, which interesting work he did not live to bring to a conclusion. The publication of the Asiatic Researches occupied much of his attention. In 1789 he translated an ancient Indian drama called Sacontala, which has been considered as an interesting curiosity. In 1794 he gave the world his Ordinances of Menu, a famous Indian legislator, containing a system of duties both civil and religious.

The climate of India having proved unfavourable to the health of Lady Jones, she was obliged to return to England, whither Sir William designed soon to follow her. But, on the 20th of April 1794, he was seized at Calcutta with an inflammation of the liver, which set the powers of medicine at defiance, and on the 27th of the same month he expired without pain or struggle.

It may be fairly asserted that few men have died more respected or regretted, as few have passed a more useful and irreproachable life. The uncommon extent of his erudition has been displayed in all his writings, and hardly any subject of human research escaped his notice. He has scarcely ever been equalled as a linguist, for he is said to have been more or less acquainted with about twenty-eight different languages. Taste and elegance marked all his exertions, and he might have risen as a poet to the very first rank. Great as his knowledge was, his virtue and religion were not inferior. In whatever light we think proper to view him as standing in relation to society, he was undoubtedly a pattern worthy of imitation.

As a permanent monument to his memory, his affectionate lady published his whole finished works in six quarto volumes, in the year 1799; and a marble monument to his memory by the same endeared friend was placed in the anti-chamber of University College, Oxford. The East India Company also voted a monument to his memory in St Paul’s Cathedral, and a statue of him to be sent out to Bengal. Memoirs of his life were published by Lord Teignmouth; and a society of gentlemen in Bengal, who had been educated at Oxford, subscribed a sum for a prize dissertation on his character and merits, by students of that university.