Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/773

JONES 739 receiving a post in the North Sea, he was left in restless idleness, until at last two years formal leave of absence was granted him. On this virtual dismissal, Paul Jones retired to Paris, soured and disappointed ; and after two years spent in fruitlessly importuning the Russian court, he died in that city on July 18, 1792. Paul Jones is described as a " short, thick, little fellow, about 5 feet 8 inches in height, of a dark swarthy com plexion." Naval skill and bravery he certainly had, but his letters prove him to have been boastful and quarrel some. He writhed under the suspicion of being an " adventurer "; once and again he eagerly repels the charge. English contemporary accounts generally speak of him as a pirate ; and, though he certainly ranked as an officer of the United States, the independent manner in which he cruised might well suggest letters of marque rather than a Government commission. The life of Paul Jones lias given rise to much romance. Cooper, Dumas, and Allan Cunningham have celebrated him in their novels ; and scarcely less fictitious are some of his so-called bio graphies. The most authentic seems to be the Memoirs of Paul Jones, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1830. JONES, OWEN (1741-1814), a Welsh antiquary, was born in 1741 at Llanvihangel Glyn y Myvyr in Denbigh shire, and died September 26, 1814, in Thames Street, London. Introduced in 1760 to the service of a London firm of furriers (Kidney & Nutt), he ultimately succeeded to their business, and continued to carry it on with success till his death. His fancy had been fired in boyhood with a passion for the poetry of his country, and, when wealth and leisure were attained, he devoted them both to the acquisi tion of the ancient monuments of the art. Assisted by Edward William of Glamorgan (lolo Morganwg), and Dr Owen Pughe, he published, at a cost of more than 1000, the well-known Myvyrian Archaioloyy of Wales (Lond., 1801-7, 3 vols.), a great collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the 14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are now deposited in the British Museum, the material not utilized in the Myvyrian Archaiology amounting to 100 volumes containing 16,000 pages of verse and 15,300 pages of prose. Jones was the founder of the Gwynedcligion Society (1772) in London for the encouragement of Welsh studies and literature ; and he commenced in 1805 a miscellany the Greal of which, however, only one volume appeared. An edition of the poems of Davydd ab Gwilym was also issued at his expense. A new edition of the Myvyrian Archaiology was published at Denbigh in 1870. JONES, OWEN (1809-1874), architect and art-decorator, son of the subject of last notice, was born in London in 1809. After an apprenticeship of six years in an architect s office, he travelled for four years in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Spain, making a special study of the Alhambra in the last-mentioned country. On his return to England in 1836 he busied himself in his professional work. His forte was interior decoration, for which his formula was "form without colour is like a body without a soul." He was one of the superintendents of works for the Exhibition of 1851 ; and, as director of decorations for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, he arranged the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Alhambra courts, besides being responsible for the general decoration of the whole building. Along with Mr (afterwards Sir Digby) Wyatt, Jones collected the casts of works of art on the Continent which adorn the different courts, In his later years he was much engaged in the decoration of private houses, among which may be reckoned the viceroy of Egypt s palace at Gesch. In 1857 he received the royal medal for architecture ; and after other distinctions, he was awarded a diploma of honour at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. He died in London, April 19, 1874. Chven Jones is described in The Builder for 1874 as " the most potent apostle of colour that architectural England lias had in these days." His range of activity is to be traced in his works : Plans, Elevations, and Details of the Alhambra (1&35-45), in which he was assisted by MM. Goury and Gayangos; Designs for Mosaic and Tessclated Pavements, 1842 ; Polydiromatic Ornament of Italy, 1845; An Attempt to define the Principles which regulate the Employment of Colour in Decorative Arts, 1852 ; Handbook to the Alhambra Court; Gframmar of Ornament, fol., 1856, a very important work; One Thousand and One Initial Letters, 1864; Seven Hundred and Two Monograms, 1864 ; and Examples of Chinese Ornament, 1867. JONES, Sin WILLIAM (1746-1794), one of the most accomplished linguists and Oriental scholars that England has produced, was born in London September 28, 1746. When seven years old he was sent to Harrow, where he soon far excelled all his school-fellows in every branch of study. But the classical routine of a public school failed to satisfy the ardent thirst for knowledge dis played by the boy from his earliest childhood. He accordingly began to apply himself, during the last three years of his life at Harrow, to the study of Oriental languages, teaching himself the rudiments of Arabic, and becoming sufficiently familiar with Hebrew to be able to read that language with tolerable ease. The greater part of his vacations he devoted to the improvement of his acquaintance with French and Italian by assiduously practising composition in those tongues. In 1764 young Jones went to Oxford and entered University College, where he continued to prosecute his studies with unabated vigour. Though obliged to give up a considerable portion of his time to the classical studies required by the university course, he still directed his attention chiefly to Oriental literature, particularly to Persian and Arabic. In acquiring the latter language he received effective assistance from a Syrian named Mirza, whom he discovered in London and brought with him to Oxford. Meanwhile, however, not content with all this work, he managed to make consider able progress in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. At nineteen he left Oxford to become tutor to Earl Spencer s eldest son, and remained with that nobleman s family for five years. In 1766 Jones obtained a fellowship which placed him in a position of independence, and enabled him to give his undivided attention to his linguistic pursuits. On his return from a short visit to the Continent, where he picked up some knowledge of German, he began the study of Chinese, and made himself master of the radical characters of that language. Though not more than twenty-two years of age, he was already becoming famous for his acquirements as a linguist and Oriental scholar. Accordingly when Christian VII., king of Denmark, visited England in 1768, bringing with him a life of Nadir Shah in Persian, Jones was requested to render the MS. into French. He agreed, and the translation appeared in 1770, with an introduction containing a description of Asia and a short history of Persia (2 vols. 8vo ; new ed., 1790). This was followed in the same year by a treatise in French on Oriental poetry, and by a metrical translation, in the same language, of the odes of Hafiz. For some time Jones had been thinking of taking up the law as a profession, and, having now finally decided on doing so, he became a member of the Temple. About this time the French Orientalist, Anquetil Du Perron, published his translation of the Zend Avesta, in the intro duction to which he made an unjustifiable attack on Oxford. Jones, taking on himself the defence of his university, addressed an anonymous letter in French to Du Perron, in which he convicted that scholar of unwarrantable invective and wilful misrepresentation. It is a remarkable proof of Jones s great talent for languages that the racy and idiomatic style of the French in this pamphlet led several foreign savans to attribute it to the pen of some bel esprit