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14 THE ANCESTOR king and queen that he was in the first instance appointed to this office. But it was almost exclusively as a man of letters rather than as ' a man of affairs ' or as a courtier that James, or ' Hermes ' Harris, was best known to his contemporaries ; the nickname of ' Hermes,' by which he was more familiarly distinguished, having been given to him to celebrate his author- ship of a certain treatise entitled Hermes^ or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar, James Harris' works were much thought of in their day, and Bishop Lowth, speaking of the Hermes^ pays it the following eulogium : ' The most beautiful example of analysis produced since the days of Aristotle.' This same treatise obtained such universal reputation that the French Directory ordered it to be translated and published in 1796 ; but this work, notwithstanding the very exalted position it once held among other works of a similar character, is now of no scientific value, the system upon which it was based, according to the modern theories of language, being quite erroneous, and it will probably only be discovered in the dark corners of some eighteenth century library, or, at a low price, in the shop of a secondhand bookseller. ' Sic transit gloria mundi.' Boswell's life of the mighty Johnson contains several refer- ences to ' Hermes ' Harris, but it is difficult to make out from them what was Johnson's real opinion of him. Boswell (in 1773) says :^ — 1 spoke of Mr. Harris of Salisbury as being a very learned man, and in particular an eminent Grecian. Johnson : I am not sure of that. His friends give him out as such, but I know not who of his friends are able to judge of it. Goldsmith : He is what is much better ; he is a worthy, humane man. Johnson : Nay, sir, that is not to the purpose of our argument ; that will as much prove that he can play upon the fiddle as well as Giardini, as that he is an eminent Grecian. Again, in 1778, Boswell relates for us, in his clear concise manner, the substance of one of his many conversations with Johnson, in which Johnson passes the most ambiguously- worded judgment on * Hermes ' Harris. Boswell had been talking of an interview with a certain lady friend of his as to the merits of certain parts of Mr. Gibbon's history ;^ — ^ Boswell's Life oj Dr. Johnson, edited by Augustine Birrell, iii. 80 (Constable & Co.). 2 Ibid. iv. 245.