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Jones
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Jones

find terms to express their admiration at the wonderful progress which he had made in the sciences which they professed’ (ib. ii. 306, 307). The only note of discordance with the universal opinion of Sir William Jones's merits is a remark of his old schoolfellow, Dr. Parr, who is said to have observed that ‘when Jones dabbled in metaphysics he forgot his logic; and when he meddled with oriental literature he lost his taste’ (Memoir of John, first Lord Teignmouth, by his son, ii. 79). But Dr. Parr contradicted this criticism in his eulogium on his friend in the ‘Notes’ to his ‘Spital Sermon,’ and it was perhaps caused by his annoyance in not being selected as Jones's biographer.

A portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds belongs to Earl Spencer. It was engraved by Heath in 1779, and by J. Hall in 1782 as the frontispiece to Jones's ‘Moallakat.’ Another portrait is at University College, Oxford.

A collective edition of the works of Sir William Jones was published by Lord Teignmouth and Lady Jones in 6 vols. 4to, 1799. Two supplementary volumes appeared in 1801, and a life by Teignmouth in an additional volume in 1804. The whole were reprinted in 13 vols. 8vo in 1807. An edition of his ‘Poems’ was also published at Calcutta in 1800, and another in London in 1810; they were included in Chalmers's ‘Collections of the British Poets.’ His ‘Persian Grammar’ reached a seventh edition in 1809, and was re-edited by Professor Samuel Lee in 1823 and 1828, 4to. The ‘Essay on Bailments’ was reissued in London in 1798 (ed. Balmanno), in 1823 (ed. J. Nichol), and in 1834 (ed. W. Theobald), while in America it was edited by Brattleborough (1813) and Halstead (1828), and was reissued in Philadelphia in 1836. A collection of Jones's manuscript letters is at Spencer House, of which a few only were printed by Teignmouth (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. 13).

[Jones's Memoirs, by Lord Teignmouth, were first published in 1 vol. 4to in 1804, were prefixed (2 vols.) to the 8vo edition of his works, and were reprinted in 1 vol. 8vo in 1815, and in 2 vols. 8vo in 1835. Some information has been kindly supplied by Sir George Birdwood, K.C.I.E.]

H. M. S.

JONES, WILLIAM, of Nayland (1726–1800), divine, born at Lowick in Northamptonshire 30 July 1726, was son of Morgan Jones, a descendant of Colonel John Jones [q. v.], the regicide. The divine is said to have always kept 30 Jan. as a day of humiliation for the sins of his ancestor. His mother was the daughter of Mr. George Lettin of Lowick. He became a scholar at the Charterhouse, and on 9 July 1745 matriculated at University College, Oxford, with a Charterhouse exhibition. He there became acquainted with his lifelong friend, George Horne [q. v.], afterwards Bishop of Norwich. Both were already students of the writings of John Hutchinson [q. v.], though they were never unreservedly ‘Hutchinsonians.’ In 1749 he proceeded B.A. He was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Peterborough, and in 1751 priest by the Bishop of Lincoln. His first curacy was at Finedon in Northamptonshire. In 1754 he married Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Nathaniel Bridges, and in the same year became curate to his brother-in-law, the Rev. Brook Bridges, at Wadenhoe, Northamptonshire. In 1764, Archbishop Secker, who only knew him as the author of ‘The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity,’ presented him to the vicarage of Bethersden, and in 1765 to the more valuable rectory of Pluckley, both in Kent, ‘as some reward for his able defence of Christian orthodoxy.’ The value of the living had been exaggerated, and he was obliged to take pupils almost to the end of his life. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society 22 June 1775. After twelve years' residence at Pluckley he accepted in 1777 the perpetual curacy of Nayland in Suffolk, and exchanged Pluckley for Paston in Northamptonshire with Dr. Disney; but Nayland was his constant residence, and he has always been known as ‘Jones of Nayland.’ Horne, upon becoming Bishop of Norwich, made Jones his chaplain. About 1792 he formed a short-lived Society for the Reformation of Principles by appropriate literature. Its only results were the foundation of the ‘British Critic,’ of which, however, Jones was neither editor nor contributor, and the publication of a collection of tracts called ‘The Scholar Armed against the Errors of the Time’ (1792), which is still of use to young students of divinity. Nayland vicarage became the centre of a little circle which afterwards expanded into the high-church party of the early part of the nineteenth century. Jones was in some distress in his old age. His intimate friend and biographer William Stevens, it is said, ‘took upon him the expense of a curate for the “Old Boy” (as Jones was called), and wrote to Archbishop Moore, who allowed him 100l. a year out of his own pocket, calling it a sinecure’ (Sir James Allan Park, Memoirs of W. Stevens, 1815). Stevens in his memoir of Jones says that the archbishop presented Jones to the sinecure rectory of Hollingbourne, Kent. In 1799 Jones lost his wife, and he never recovered the blow. He died 6 Jan. 1800.

Jones of Nayland was one of the most