James, a distinguished English writer on the subject of grammar, was born at Salisbury on the 20th of July 1709. He received his early education at Salisbury, whence he was removed to Oxford at the age of sixteen; and having passed the usual number of years as a gentleman commoner at Wadham College, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn as a student of law, though not intended for the bar. When he had attained his twenty-fourth year, his father died; and this event having at once freed him from all control, and placed him in the possession of an independent fortune, enabled him to exchange the study of law for other pursuits more congenial to his taste. The decided bent of his mind had always been towards the Greek and Latin classics, which he preferred to every other kind of reading; and to the study of these authors he now applied himself with unremitting assiduity during a period of fourteen or fifteen years. The first fruit of this lengthened course of application was a volume which he published in 1744, containing three treatises; one on Art, another on Music, Painting, and Poetry, and a third on Happiness. These treatises are illustrated with a variety of learned notes and observations; and one of them, that upon Art, has been commended by Lord Monboddo as containing "the best specimen of the dividing or diarctic manner, as the ancients called it, that is to be found in any modern book." But the work by which he is best known is his Hermes, a philosophical inquiry concerning universal grammar, which appeared in 1751, 8vo. "Those who would enter deeply into the subject" (of universal grammar), says Dr Lowth, "will find it fully and accurately handled, with the greatest acuteness of investigation, perspicuity of application, and elegance of method, in a treatise entitled Hermes, by James Harris, Esq.; the most beautiful example of analysis that has been exhibited since the days of Aristotle." To this eulogium, however, the philosophical grammarians of the present time are not by any means disposed to subscribe. Without questioning the learning displayed in the Hermes, we may venture to affirm, that the arrangement of the parts of speech into substantives, attributives, definitives, and connectives, is entirely arbitrary; that nothing whatever is gained by this departure from the ordinary classification, excepting perhaps to impart to the work an appearance of originality, which, upon examination, will be found to vanish; that, though professing to treat the subject of grammar in a philosophical manner, Mr Harris is in reality the slave of authority; and that there is no quality for which his work is less distinguished than that rigid analysis which Bishop Lowth has somewhat hastily given him credit for. This, we think, has been fully established in the article Grammar of the present work, to which accordingly the reader is referred for more ample information.

Mr Harris's attention seems to have been first directed to this subject by the Minerva of Sanctius, to which he has confessed himself indebted for much valuable information; but it is somewhat remarkable, that with the treatise of Apollonius (De Constructione Orationis) also before him, he should not have avoided the narrow and confined views which he has adopted on particular points, or should have missed principles which would have served to guide him through the intricacies in which he is frequently entangled. Mr Harris's other productions are, Philosophical Arrangements, published in 1775, being part of a larger work which he had meditated, but did not complete, on the peripatetic logic; and Philological Inquiries, printed in 1780, but not published till 1781, containing not so much a regular system, as a summary of the conclusions to which the philosophy of the ancients had conducted them in their critical inquiries. After severe suffering from illness, Mr Harris expired on the 22d of December 1780, in the seventy-second year of his age. In 1801, his son, Lord Malmesbury, published an edition of his works in two volumes quarto; prefixed to which is a biographical sketch of the author from the pen of the editor.

a district of the Outer Hebrides, comprehending the southern part of Lewis, and the small islands surrounding it, of which Bernera, Scalpey, Scarp, Anabich, Taransay, Pabbey, Ensey, and Killigrey, are inhabited. The mainland of Harris is separated from the rest of Lewis by an isthmus about 6 miles across, formed by the harbours of Loch Resort on the W., and Loch Seaforth on the E. coast. It is about 20 miles in length, but of very unequal breadth, being deeply indented by arms of the sea; its general breadth, however, is from 6 to 8 miles. The surface is bleak, rocky, and unproductive; but on the shore are patches of cultivated land, and the valleys afford tolerable pasturage. Pop. of parish or district (1851) 4250.