year after of the treasury, which office he held two years. In 1774 he was appointed the queen's secretary and comptroller. He was at one time attached to a mission to St. Petersburg. His first work, three treatises—1. "On Art," 2. "On Music, Painting, and Poetry," 3. "On Happiness"—appeared in 1744. In 1751 he published the work by which he is chiefly known, "Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar," in which "the chief end" he modestly proposed to himself was "to excite his readers to inquiry." The learning and philosophical discrimination displayed in this treatise, however, which Lowth, in the preface to his English grammar, called "one of the most beautiful pieces of analysis since Aristotle," justified the celebrity it acquired and long retained; although the author's want of conversance with the northern and oriental languages laid it in some part open, as the ground of philology gradually widened, to the attacks which were directed against it by Horne Tooke and others. Metaphysical and Aristotelian methods are now out of favour, and "Hermes" is comparatively neglected; but, as one proof among many of the repute it enjoyed in its day, the French translation by Thurot was among the works ordered by the French Government in 1796 to be undertaken at the national expense. His next work, "Philosophical Arrangements" (categories or predicaments), which was part of an intended larger one on Aristotelian logic, and in which he takes occasion to defend religion against the materialistic theories of the day, was published in 1775. His last treatise, "Philological Inquiries," in three parts, appeared in 1781. The third part of this work was translated into French by A. Boulard, Paris, 1789, as "L'Histoire Littéraire du Moyen age." A complete edition of his works, with an affectionate biographical sketch, was published in 1801 by his son, Lord Malmesbury. Notwithstanding his constant study and various employments, he discharged assiduously the duties of a magistrate for Wilts, and had found time for much cheerful social intercourse, and for the cultivation of music, of which art he had a practical and scientific knowledge. Two volumes of his selections of German, Italian, and other music, with words from Milton, &c., for Salisbury festivals and concerts, were published after his death by Mr. Corfe, organist of the cathedral. He died in 1780. A monument to his memory has been placed in the north aisle of Salisbury cathedral—J. W. F.
HARRIS, John, an English clergyman, doctor of divinity, and man of letters and science, was born in 1667, and died on the 7th of September, 1719. He is said to have been the first compiler of an encyclopædia in any modern language; the work was called "Lexicon Technicum; an Universal Dictionary of Science and Art," and was published in London in 1708 in two folio volumes. He published also a compilation of voyages and travels, a collection of sermons, a treatise on algebra, and some astronomical and topographical writings. He was for a time secretary, and afterwards one of the vice-presidents, of the Royal Society.—W. J. M. R.
HARRIS, John, D.D., an English divine of the Independent connection, was born on the 8th of March, 1802, in the little village of Ugborough in South Devon, where his father was a tailor and draper. He grew up a thoughtful, contemplative boy, fond of reading and hearing legendary tales, and from his sedate manners went by the sobriquet of "Little Parson Harris." About the year 1815 he removed with his parents to Bristol, where they took apartments in the neighbourhood of "the tabernacle," soon afterwards the whole family, who were formerly church people, joined this congregation of dissenters. In his sixteenth or seventeenth year he was admitted a member of the tabernacle church, and shortly afterwards began to preach in the villages about Bristol, in connection with the Bristol Itinerant Society, and became highly popular among his rustic auditors, by whom he was called "the boy preacher." Eventually he was placed under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Scott at Rowell, with a view to his being instructed in some preparatory studies before entering the dissenting academy at Hoxton. Having passed through the academical course at Hoxton, he was ordained minister of the congregational church at Epsom, where he resided till 1838. In 1835 he published his first work, the "Great Teacher: characteristics of our Lord's ministry," which was followed in 1836 by "Mammon; or, covetousness the sin of the christian church," a prize essay. In 1838 he was appointed theological tutor and president of Cheshunt college, and shortly afterwards received the degree of D.D. from Brown university. In 1850, when New college, London, was formed. Dr. Harris was chosen professor of systematic and pastoral theology, and. was subsequently appointed principal of the college. This appointment he continued to hold until his death, 21st December, 1856. Besides the two works above mentioned. Dr. Harris was author of two prize essays, entitled "Britannia" and the "Great Commission;" also, of a volume entitled "Christian Union;" of a poem called the "Incarnate One," and some other poems and lyrics; of the "Pre-Adamite Earth;" "Man Primeval;" and "Patriarchy." He was likewise one of the editors of the Biblical Review, and a frequent contributor to the Evangelical Magazine. The "Posthumous Works" of Dr. Harris, consisting exclusively of sermons and charges, were published in two volumes under the editorship of the Rev. Philip Smith in 1857.—G. B—n.
HARRIS, Joseph, an English astronomer, died about 1764. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and warden of the mint. He was the author of some papers in the Philosophical Transactions from 1728 to 1740, relating to astronomical and magnetic observations; and of a treatise on optics, published after his death in 1775.—W. J. M. R.
HARRIS or HARRIES, Walter, a physician, born at Gloucester about the year 1647. He obtained a perpetual fellowship at New college, Oxford; but having embraced the Roman catholic religion, he relinquished his position in the college and went to France, where he took his doctor's degree. He then returned to London and acquired a considerable practice, chiefly among his co-religionists. In 1679, after Oates' plot, he published a pamphlet entitled "A Farewell to Popery," in which he renounced the Romish faith; and on the Revolution he was appointed physician to William III. He published "Pharmacologia Antiempirica," and other medical works. He was alive in 1725, but the year of his death is not known.—G. BL.
HARRIS, William, D.D., an eminent English presbyterian minister of the eighteenth century, was born in London about the year 1675. He was first assistant to Mr. Henry Read, in Gravel Lane, Southwark, from whence, in 1698, he was removed to the pastoral charge of the important congregation of Crutched Friars. Here he continued in uninterrupted usefulness, and in the enjoyment of a high reputation as a preacher and religious writer, till his death in 1740. His publications were very numerous; and he was reckoned by his contemporaries one of the best writers of English among the dissenters. His principal work was a volume of discourses "On the principal representations of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament," which were written to meet Collins' Discourses on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion. He was one of the continuators of Matthew Henry's Commentary, for which he wrote the commentary on the epistles to the Philippians and Colossians. He bequeathed his valuable library to Dr. Williams' library in Red Cross Street.—P. L.
HARRIS, William, an historical biographer, was born at Salisbury in 1720, the son of a tradesman of that city. He was educated for the dissenting ministry, and spent most of his life in it at St. Loo in Cornwall, at Wells, and finally at Luppit, in the neighbourhood of Honiton. He published a life of Hugh Peters, 1751; of James I., 1753; of Charles I., 1758; of Cromwell, 1761; and of Charles II., 1765. He died in February 1770, before he could complete his design of writing a life of James II. His biographies avow themselves to be written "after the manner of Mr. Bayle," and the text, accordingly, is drowned by a profusion of annotation, which often, however, contains curious excerpted matter; several collections of scarce old books and pamphlets having been placed at his disposal by such collectors as Birch and Hollis.—F. E.
HARRIS, Sir William Snow, a distinguished electrician, and meteorologist, was born at Plymouth in 1792. He was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society in 1831. His name first became known by his papers communicated to the latter body, describing some important instruments of his invention—particularly the hydrostatic balance and thermo-electrometer—by means of which he has thrown considerable light on the laws of electricity and magnetism. He is chiefly distinguished, however, as the author of an efficient system for protecting ships from lightning, which has long been successfully applied in the royal navy. His improvement consists in connecting together the masts and all the large metallic masses of the ship by a com-
