INIGO, a celebrated English architect, was the son of a cloth-worker of London, and was born in 1572. He was at first put apprentice to a joiner; but early distinguished himself by his inclination to drawing or designing, and was particularly taken notice of 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 was no sooner 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 dropt the pencil and conceived Whitehall. In the state of Venice he saw the works of Palladio, and learned how beautiful taste may be exerted on a less theatre than the capital of an empire. How his abilities distinguished themselves in a spot where they certainly had no opportunity to act, we are not told, though it would not be the least curious part of his history; certain it is, 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 are yet to learn. James I. found him at Copenhagen, and Queen Anne took him in the quality 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, with whom at least all his lamented qualities did not die, Jones travelled once more into Italy, and, assisted by ripeness of judgment, perfected his taste. To the interval between these voyages Mr Walpole is inclined to assign those buildings of Inigo, which are less pure, and border too much upon the bastard style, which one may call King James's Gothic. Inigo's designs of that period are not Gothic, but have a littleness of parts, and a weight of ornaments, with which the revival of the Grecian taste was encumbered, and which he shook off in his grander designs. The surveyor's place fell, and he returned to England; and, as if architecture was not all he had learned at Rome, with an air of Roman disinterestedness he gave up the profits of his office, which he found extremely in debt; and prevailed upon the comptroller and paymaster to imitate his example, till the whole arrears were cleared.
In 1629, he was employed in a manner very unworthy of his genius: King James set him upon discovering, that is, guessing, who were the founders of Stonehenge. His ideas were all Romanised; 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 it a Roman temple.
In the same year Jones was appointed one of the commissioners for the repair of St Paul's; but which 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 and beautiful indeed, but which had no affinity with 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 erecting 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—a small part of the pile designed for the palace of our kings; but so complete in itself, that it stands a model of the most pure and beautiful taste. 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 glorious an idea, that one forgets for a moment (says Mr Walpole), in the regret for its not being executed, the confirmation of our liberties, obtained by a melancholy scene that palled 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 being. The front to the river, part only of what was designed, and the water-gate, were erected afterwards 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 8s. gd. a-day, with an allowance of 40l. a-year for house-rent, besides a clerk, and incidental expenses. What greater rewards he had, are not upon record.
During the prosperous state of the king's affairs, the pleasures of the court were carried on with much taste and magnificence. Poetry, painting, music, and architecture, were all called in to make them rational amusements. Mr Walpole is of opinion, 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 laureat; Inigo Jones the inventor of the decorations; Laniere and Farafoce composed the symphonies; the king, the queen, and the young nobility, danced in the interludes. We have accounts of many of those entertainments, called masques; they 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, &c. The harmony of these masks was a little interrupted by a war that broke out between the composers, Inigo and Ben, in which whoever was the aggressor, the turbulent temper of Johnson took care to be most in the wrong.
The works of Inigo Jones are not scarce; Surgeon's hall is one of his best works. 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 asarrant and homely stripes as any plasterer would 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.—Whoever saw a beautiful Tuscan building? Would the Romans have chosen that order for a temple?" The expense of building that church was 450l.
Ambrosebury in Wiltshire was designed by Jones, but executed by his scholar Webb. Jones was one of the first that observed the same diminution of pilasters as in pillars. Lindsey-house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he built, owes its chief grace to this singularity. In 1618, a 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 shall 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 trifling a singularity, as to be of the exact dimensions of one of the pyramids: this would have been admired in those ages when the keep at Kenilworth Castle was erected in the form of an horsetrader, and the Escorial in the shape of St Laurence's gridiron.
Coleford in Berkshire, the seat of Sir Matthew Pleydell, built in 1630, and Cobham-hall in Kent, were Jones's. 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 Aldergate-street, is a
beautiful front. The Grange, the seat of the lord chancellor Henley in Hampshire, is entirely of this maitter. It is not a large house, but by far 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 Beautfort-garden at Chelsea, designed by Jones, was purchased by Lord Burlington, and transported to Chiswick. He drew a plan for a palace at Newmarket; but not that wretched hovel that stands there at present. 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 Glamis Castle in Forfarshire in Scotland, are specimens of the designs of Inigo Jones.
Inigo tasted early the misfortunes of his master. He was not only a favourite, but a Roman Catholic: in 1646 he paid 545l. for his delinquency and sequestration. Whether it was before or after this fine, it is uncertain, that he and Stone 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 hid, it was taken up, and reburied in Lambeth-marsh. Grief, misfortunes, and age, put an end to his life at Somerset-house, July 21, 1651. Several of his designs have been published by Mr Kent, Mr Colin Campbell, and Mr Isaac Ware. He left in MS 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 eulogium which will probably be coeval with time. From Harrow school he went to University college, Oxford, where the rapidity of his literary acquisitions excited the admiration of all.
He travelled through France at the age of 23, taking up his residence for some time at Nice, where man, 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 Althorp, 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 farther 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 following year he was requested by the duke of Grafton's under-secretary, to undertake a translation of a Persian MS. of the life of Nadir Shaw, into the French language, of which the king of Denmark was anxious 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 through life; 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, he entered 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 du Perron 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 severity and with 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 Poësia Asiaica," the beauty and purity of the Latin in which it is composed, exciting the admiration of men of literature 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 Althorpe, in which he beautifully expresses his ardent wish to have constitutional liberty established by constitutional means.
His translation of the speeches of Isaeus, on account of his elegant style, his profound critical and historical knowledge, 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 therefore an opponent of the measures of those who had 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 respectfully supported; but his political sentiments were ill suited to secure him a majority, which made him decline the contest prior to the election. He soon after 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 Althorpe, procured for him the highest reputation. His essay on the laws of bailments 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, published in Wales by the dean of St Asaph, for which a bill of indictment was preferred against that clergyman. In a letter to Lord Kenyon, Mr Jones avowed himself to be 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 appointment of Lord Shelburne, Mr Jones 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 chosen 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, many valuable labours and researches of which are already in the hands of the public. He collected materials for a complete digest of the Hindoo and Mahometan 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 "Ordnances of Menu," a famous Indian legislator, containing a system of duties both civil and religious.
The climate of India proving unfavourable to the health of Lady Jones, obliged her to return to England, whither Sir William soon designed to follow her. 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 put a period to his existence 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 scarcely 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 28 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 endearing friend, is placed in the antechamber 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... 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 in that university.