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THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME XV SLICE V
Joints to Justinian I.
Articles in This Slice
JOINTS, in anatomy. The study of joints, or articulations, is known as Arthrology (Gr. ἄρθρον), and naturally begins with the definition of a joint. Anatomically the term is used for any connexion between two or more adjacent parts of the skeleton, whether they be bone or cartilage. Joints may be immovable, like those of the skull, or movable, like the knee.
| Fig. 1.—Vertical section through a synchondrosis. b, b, the two bones; Sc, the interposed cartilage; l, the fibrous membrane which plays the part of a ligament. | Fig. 2.—Vertical section through a cranial suture, b, b, the two bones; s, opposite the suture; l, the fibrous membrane, or periosteum, passing between the two bones, which plays the part of a ligament, and which is continuous with the interposed fibrous membrane. |
Immovable joints, or synarthroses, are usually adaptations to growth rather than mobility, and are always between bones. When growth ceases the bones often unite, and the joint is then obliterated by a process known as synostosis, though whether the union of the bones is the cause or the effect of the stoppage of growth is obscure. Immovable joints never have a cavity between the two bones; there is simply a layer of the substance in which the bone has been laid down, and this remains unaltered. If the bone is being deposited in cartilage a layer of cartilage intervenes, and the joint is called synchondrosis (fig. 1), but if in membrane a thin layer of fibrous tissue persists, and the joint is then known as a suture (fig. 2). Good examples of synchondroses are the epiphysial lines which separate the epiphyses from the shafts of developing long bones, or the occipito-sphenoid synchondrosis in the base of the skull. Examples of sutures are plentiful in the vault of the skull, and are given special names, such as sutura dentata, s. serrata, s. squamosa, according to the plan of their outline. There are two kinds of fibrous synarthroses, which differ from sutures in that they do not synostose. One of these is a schindylesis, in which a thin plate of one bone is received into a slot in another, as in the joint between the sphenoid and vomer. The other is a peg and socket joint, or gomphosis, found where the fangs of the teeth fit into the alveoli or tooth sockets in the jaws.
| Fig. 3.—Vertical section through an amphiarthrodial joint. b, b, the two bones; c, c, the plate of cartilage on the articular surface of each bone; Fc, the intermediate fibro-cartilage; l, l, the external ligaments. |
Movable joints, or diarthroses, are divided into those in which there is much and little movement. When there is little movement the term half-joint or amphiarthrosis is used. The simplest kind of amphiarthrosis is that in which two bones are connected by bundles of fibrous tissue which pass at right angles from the one to the other; such a joint only differs from a suture in the fact that the intervening fibrous tissue is more plentiful and is organized into definite bundles, to which the name of interosseous ligaments is given, and also that it does not synostose when growth stops. A joint of this kind is called a syndesmosis, though probably the distinction is a very arbitrary one, and depends upon the amount of movement which is brought about by the muscles on the two bones. As an instance of this the inferior tibio-fibular joint of mammals may be cited. In man this is an excellent example of a syndesmosis, and there is only a slight play between the two bones. In the mouse there is no movement, and the two bones form a synchondrosis between them which speedily becomes a synostosis, while in many Marsupials there is free mobility between the tibia and fibula, and a definite synovial cavity is established. The other variety of amphiarthrosis or half-joint is the symphysis, which differs from the syndesmosis in having both bony surfaces lined with cartilage and between the two cartilages a layer of fibro-cartilage, the centre of which often softens and forms a small synovial cavity. Examples of this are the symphysis pubis, the mesosternal joint, and the joints between the bodies of the vertebrae (fig. 3).
The true diarthroses are joints in which there is either fairly free or very free movement. The opposing surfaces of the bones are lined with articular cartilage, which is the unossified remnant of the cartilaginous model in which they are formed and is called the cartilage of encrustment (fig. 4, c). Between the two cartilages is the joint cavity, while surrounding the joint is the capsule (fig. 4, l), which is formed chiefly by the superficial layers of the original periosteum or perichondrium, but it may be strengthened externally by surrounding fibrous structures, such as the tendons of muscles, which become modified and acquire fresh attachments for the purpose. It may be said generally that the greater the intermittent strain on any part of the capsule the more it responds by increasing in thickness. Lining the interior of the capsule, and all other parts of the joint cavity except where the articular cartilage is present, is the synovial membrane (fig. 4, dotted line); this is a layer of endothelial cells which secrete the synovial fluid to lubricate the interior of the joint by means of a small percentage of mucin, albumin and fatty matter which it contains.
| Fig. 4.—Vertical section through a diarthrodial joint. b, b, the two bones; c, c, the plate of cartilage on the articular surface of each bone; l, l, the investing ligament, the dotted line within which represents the synovial membrane. The letter s is placed in the cavity of the joint. | Fig. 5.—Vertical section through a diarthrodial joint, in which the cavity is subdivided into two by an interposed fibro-cartilage or meniscus, Fc. The other letters as in fig. 4. |
A compound diarthrodial joint is one in which the joint cavity is divided partly or wholly into two by a meniscus or interarticular fibro-cartilage (fig. 5, Fc).
The shape of the joint cavity varies greatly, and the different divisions of movable joints depend upon it. It is often assumed that the structure of a joint determines its movement, but there is something to be said for the view that the movements to which a joint is subject determine its shape. As an example of this it has been found that the mobility of the metacarpo-phalangeal joint of the thumb in a large number of working men is less than it is in a large number of women who use needles and thread, or in a large number of medical students who use pens and scalpels, and that the slightly movable thumb has quite a differently shaped articular surface from the freely movable one (see J. Anat. and Phys. xxix. 446). R. Fick, too, has demonstrated that the concavity or convexity of the joint surface depends on the position of the chief muscles which move the joint, and has enunciated the law that when the chief muscle or muscles are attached close to the articular end of the skeletal element that end becomes concave, while, when they are attached far off or are not attached at all, as in the case of the phalanges, the articular end is convex. His mechanical explanation is ingenious and to the present writer convincing (see Handbuch der Gelenke, by R. Fick, Jena, 1904). Bernays, however, pointed out that the articular ends were moulded before the muscular tissue was differentiated (Morph. Jahrb. iv. 403), but to this Fick replies by pointing out that muscular movements begin before the muscle fibres are formed, and may be seen in the chick as early as the second day of incubation.
The freely movable joints (true diarthrosis) are classified as follows:—
(1) Gliding joints (Arthrodia), in which the articular surfaces are flat, as in the carpal and tarsal bones.
(2) Hinge joints (Ginglymus), such as the elbow and interphalangeal joints.
(3) Condyloid joints (Condylarthrosis), allowing flexion and extension as well as lateral movement, but no rotation. The metacarpo-phalangeal and wrist joints are examples of this.
(4) Saddle-shaped joints (Articulus sellaris), allowing the same movements as the last with greater strength. The carpo-metacarpal joint of the thumb is an example.
(5) Ball and socket joints (Enarthrosis), allowing free movement in any direction, as in the shoulder and hip.
(6) Pivot-joint (Trochoides), allowing only rotation round a longitudinal axis, as in the radio-ulnar joints.
Embryology.
Joints are developed in the mesenchyme, or that part of the mesoderm which is not concerned in the formation of the serous cavities. The synarthroses may be looked upon merely as a delay in development, because, as the embryonic tissue of the mesenchyme passes from a fibrous to a bony state, the fibrous tissue may remain along a certain line and so form a suture, or, when chondrification has preceded ossification, the cartilage may remain at a certain place and so form a synchondrosis. The diarthroses represent an arrest of development at an earlier stage, for a part of the original embryonic tissue remains as a plate of round cells, while the neighbouring two rods chondrify and ossify. This plate may become converted into fibro-cartilage, in which case an amphiarthrodial joint results, or it may become absorbed in the centre to form a joint cavity, or, if this absorption occurs in two places, two joint cavities with an intervening meniscus may result. Although, ontogenetically, there is little doubt that menisci arise in the way just mentioned, the teaching of comparative anatomy suggests that, phylogenetically, they originate as an ingrowth from the capsule pushing the synovial membrane in front of them. The subject will be returned to when the comparative anatomy of the individual joints is reviewed. In the human foetus the joint cavities are all formed by the tenth week of intra-uterine life.
Anatomy
Joints of the Axial Skeleton.
The bodies of the vertebrae except those of the sacrum and coccyx are separated, and at the same time connected, by the intervertebral disks. These are formed of alternating concentric rings of fibrous tissue and fibro-cartilage, with an elastic mass in the centre known as the nucleus pulposus. The bodies are also bound together by anterior and posterior common ligaments. The odontoid process of the axis fits into a pivot joint formed by the anterior arch of the atlas in front and the transverse ligament behind; it is attached to the basioccipital bone by two strong lateral check ligaments, and, in the mid line, by a feebler middle check ligament which is regarded morphologically as containing the remains of the notochord. This atlanto-axial joint is the one which allows the head to be shaken from side to side. Nodding the head occurs at the occipito-atlantal joint, which consists of the two occipital condyles received into the cup-shaped articular facets on the atlas and surrounded by capsular ligaments. The neural arches of the vertebrae articulate one with another by the articular facets, each of which has a capsular ligament. In addition to these the laminae are connected by the very elastic ligamenta subflava. The spinous processes are joined by interspinous ligaments, and their tips by a supraspinous ligament, which in the neck is continued from the spine of the seventh cervical vertebra to the external occipital crest and protuberance as the ligamentum nuchae, a thin, fibrous, median septum between the muscles of the back of the neck.
The combined effect of all these joints and ligaments is to allow the spinal column to be bent in any direction or to be rotated, though only a small amount of movement occurs between any two vertebrae.
The heads of the ribs articulate with the bodies of two contiguous thoracic vertebrae and the disk between. The ligaments which connect them are called costo-central, and are two in number. The anterior of these is the stellate ligament, which has three bands radiating from the head of the rib to the two vertebrae and the intervening disk. The other one is the interarticular ligament, which connects the ridge, dividing the two articular cavities on the head of the rib, to the disk; it is absent in the first and three lowest ribs.
The costo-transverse ligaments bind the ribs to the transverse processes of the thoracic vertebrae. The superior costo-transverse ligament binds the neck of the rib to the transverse process of the vertebra above; the middle or interosseous connects the back of the neck to the front of its own transverse process; while the posterior runs from the tip of the transverse process to the outer part of the tubercle of the rib. The inner and lower part of each tubercle forms a diarthrodial joint with the upper and fore part of its own transverse process, except in the eleventh and twelfth ribs. At the junction of the ribs with their cartilages no diarthrodial joint is formed; the periosteum simply becomes perichondrium and binds the two structures together. Where the cartilages, however, join the sternum, or where they join one another, diarthrodial joints with synovial cavities are established. In the case of the second rib this is double, and in that of the first usually wanting. The mesosternal joint, between the pre- and mesosternum, has already been given as an example of a symphysis.
Comparative Anatomy.—For the convexity or concavity of the vertebral centra in different classes of vertebrates, see [Skeleton]: axial. The intervertebral disks first appear in the Crocodilia, the highest existing order of reptilia. In many Mammals the middle fasciculus of the stellate ligament is continued right across the ventral surface of the disk into the ligament of the opposite side, and is probably serially homologous with the ventral arch of the atlas. A similar ligament joins the heads of the ribs dorsal to the disk. To these bands the names of anterior (ventral) and posterior (dorsal) conjugal ligaments have been given, and they may be demonstrated in a seven months’ human foetus (see B. Sutton, Ligaments, London, 1902). The ligamentum nuchae is a strong elastic band in the Ungulata which supports the weight of the head. In the Carnivora it only reaches as far forward as the spine of the axis.
The Jaw Joint, or temporo-mandibular articulation, occurs between the sigmoid cavity of the temporal bone and the condyle of the jaw. Between the two there is an interarticular fibro-cartilage or meniscus, and the joint is surrounded by a capsule of which the outer part is the thickest. On first opening the mouth, the joint acts as a hinge, but very soon the condyle begins to glide forward on to the eminentia articularis (see [Skull]) and takes the meniscus with it. This gliding movement between the meniscus and temporal bone may be separately brought about by protruding the lower teeth in front of the upper, or, on one side only, by moving the jaw across to the opposite side.
Comparative Anatomy.—The joint between the temporal and mandibular bones is only found in Mammals; in the lower vertebrates the jaw opens between the quadrate and articular bones. In the Carnivora it is a perfect hinge; in many Rodents only the antero-posterior gliding movement is present; while in the Ruminants the lateralizing movement is the chief one. Sometimes, as in the Ornithorhynchus, the meniscus is absent.
Joints of the Upper Extremity.
The sterno-clavicular articulation, between the presternum and clavicle, is a gliding joint, and allows slight upward and downward and forward and backward movements. The two bony surfaces are separated by a meniscus, the vertical movements taking place outside and the antero-posterior inside this. There is a well-marked capsule, of which the anterior part is strongest. The two clavicles are joined across the top of the presternum by an interclavicular ligament.
The acromio-clavicular articulation is also a gliding joint, but allows a swinging or pendulum movement of the scapula on the clavicle. The upper part of the capsule is strongest, and from it hangs down a partial meniscus into the cavity.
Comparative Anatomy.—Bland Sutton regards the interclavicular ligament as a vestige of the interclavicle of Reptiles and Monotremes. The menisci are only found in the Primates, but it must be borne in mind that many Mammals have no clavicle, or a very rudimentary one. By some the meniscus of the sterno-clavicular joint is regarded as the homologue of the lateral part of the interclavicle, but the fact that it only occurs in the Primates where movements in different planes are fairly free is suggestive of a physiological rather than a morphological origin for it.
The Shoulder Joint is a good example of the ball and socket or enarthrodial variety. Its most striking characteristic is mobility at the expense of strength. The small size of the glenoid cavity in comparison with the head of the humerus, and the great laxity of the capsule, favour this, although the glenoid cavity is slightly deepened by a fibrous lip, called the glenoid ligament, round its margin. The presence of the coracoid and acromial processes of the scapula, with the coraco-acromial ligament between them, serves as an overhanging protection to the joint, while the biceps tendon runs over the head of the humerus, inside the capsule, though surrounded by a sheath of synovial membrane. Were it not for these two extra safeguards the shoulder would be even more liable to dislocation than it is. The upper part of the capsule, which is attached to the base of the coracoid process, is thickened, and known as the coracohumeral ligament, while inside the front of the capsule are three folds of synovial membrane, called gleno-humeral folds.
Comparative Anatomy.—In the lower Vertebrates the shoulder is adapted to support rather than prehension and is not so freely movable as in the Primates. The tendon of the biceps has evidently sunk through the capsule into the joint, and even when it is intra-capsular there is usually a double fold connecting its sheath of synovial membrane with that lining the capsule. In Man this has been broken through, but remains of it persist in the superior gleno-humeral fold. The middle gleno-humeral fold is the vestige of a strong ligament which steadies and limits the range of movement of the joint in many lower Mammals.
The Elbow Joint is an excellent example of the ginglymus or hinge, though its transverse axis of movement is not quite at right angles to the central axis of the limb, but is lower internally than externally. This tends to bring the forearm towards the body when the elbow is bent. The elbow is a great contrast to the shoulder, as the trochlea and capitellum of the humerus are closely adapted to the sigmoid cavity of the ulna and head of the radius (see [Skeleton]: appendicular); consequently movement in one plane only is allowed, and the joint is a strong one. The capsule is divided into anterior, posterior, and two lateral ligaments, though these are all really continuous. The joint cavity communicates freely with that of the superior radio-ulnar articulation.
The radio-ulnar joints are three: the upper one is an example of a pivot joint, and in it the disk-shaped head of the radius rotates in a circle formed by the lesser sigmoid cavity of the ulna internally and the orbicular ligament in the other three quarters.
The middle radio-ulnar articulation is simply an interosseous membrane, the fibres of which run downward and inward from the radius to the ulna.
The inferior radio-ulnar joint is formed by the disk-shaped lower end of the ulna fitting into the slightly concave sigmoid cavity of the radius. Below, the cavity of this joint is shut off from that of the wrist by a triangular fibro-cartilage. The movements allowed at these three articulations are called pronation and supination of the radius. The head of that bone twists, in the orbicular ligament, round its central vertical axis for about half a circle. Below, however, the whole lower end of the radius circles round the lower end of the ulna, the centre of rotation being close to the styloid process of the ulna. The radius, therefore, in its pronation, describes half a cone, the base of which is below, and the hand follows the radius.
Comparative Anatomy.—In pronograde Mammals the forearm is usually permanently pronated, and the head of the radius, instead of being circular and at the side of the upper end of the ulna, is transversely oval and in front of that bone, occupying the same place that the coronoid process of the ulna does in Man. This type of elbow, which is adapted simply to support and progression, is best seen in the Ungulata; in them both lateral ligaments are attached to the head of the radius, and there is no orbicular ligament, since the shape of the head of the radius does not allow of any supination. The olecranon process of the ulna forms merely a posterior guide or guard to the joint, but transmits no weight. No better example of the maximum changes which the uses of support and prehension bring about can be found than in contrasting the elbow of the Sheep or other Ungulate with that of Man. Towards one or other of these types the elbows of all Mammals tend. It may be roughly stated that, when pronation and supination to the extent of a quarter of a circle are possible, an orbicular ligament appears.
The Wrist Joint, or radio-carpal articulation, lies between the radius and triangular fibro-cartilage above, and the scaphoid, semilunar, and cuneiform bones below. It is a condyloid joint allowing flexion and extension round one axis, and slight lateral movement (abduction and adduction) round the other. There is a well-marked capsule, divided into anterior, posterior, and lateral ligaments. The joint cavity is shut off from the inferior radio-ulnar joint above, and the intercarpal joints below.
The intercarpal joints are gliding articulations, the various bones being connected by palmar, dorsal, and a few interosseous ligaments, but only those connecting the first row of bones are complete, and so isolate one joint cavity from another. That part of the intercarpal joints which lies between the first and second rows of carpal bones is called the transverse carpal joint, and at this a good deal of the movement which seems to take place at the wrist really occurs.
The carpo-metacarpal articulations are, with the exception of that of the thumb, gliding joints, and continuous with the great intercarpal joint cavity. The carpo-metacarpal joint of the thumb is the best example of a saddle-shaped joint in Man. It allows forward and backward and lateral movement, and is very strong.
The metacarpo-phalangeal joints are condyloid joints like the wrist, and are remarkable for the great thickness of the palmar ligaments of their capsules. In the four inner fingers these glenoid ligaments, as they are called, are joined together by the transverse metacarpal ligament.
The interphalangeal articulations are simple hinges surrounded by a capsule, of which the dorsal part is very thin.
Comparative Anatomy.—The wrist joint of the lower Mammals allows less lateral movement than does that of Man, while the lower end of the ulna is better developed and is received into a cup-shaped socket formed by the cuneiform and pisiform bones. At the same time, unless there is pretty free pronation and supination, the triangular fibro-cartilage is only represented by an interosseous ligament, which may be continuous above with the interosseous membrane between the radius and ulna, and suggests the possibility that the fibro-cartilage is largely a derivative of this membrane. In most Mammals the wrist is divided into two lateral parts, as it is in the human foetus, but free pronation and supination seem to cause the disappearance of the septum.
Joints of the Lower Extremity.
The sacro-innominate articulation consists of the sacro-iliac joint and the sacro-sciatic ligaments. The former is one of the amphiarthroses or half-joints by which the sacrum is bound to the ilium. The mechanism of the human sacrum is that of a suspension bridge slung between the two pillars or ilia by the very strong posterior sacro-iliac ligaments which represent the chains. The axis of the joint passes through the second sacral vertebra, but the sacrum is so nearly horizontal that the weight of the body, which is transmitted to the first sacral vertebra, tends to tilt that part down. This tendency is corrected by the great and small sacro-sciatic ligaments, which fasten the lower part of the sacrum to the tuberosity and spine of the ischium respectively, so that, although the sacrum is a suspension bridge when looked at from behind, it is a lever of the first kind when seen from the side or in sagittal section.
The pubic symphysis is the union between the two pubic bones. It has all the characteristics of a symphysis, already described, and may have a small median cavity.
| (From David Hepburn, Cunningham’s Text-book of Anatomy.) |
| Fig. 6.—Dissection of the Hip Joint from the front. |
The Hip Joint, like the shoulder, is a ball and socket, but does not allow such free movement; this is due to the fact that the socket or acetabulum is deeper than the glenoid cavity and that the capsule is not so lax. At the same time the loss of mobility is made up for by increased strength. The capsule has three thickened bands, of which the most important is the ilio-femoral or Y-shaped ligament of Bigelow. The stalk of the Y is attached to the anterior inferior spine of the ilium, while the two limbs are fastened to the upper and lower parts of the spiral line of the femur. The ligament is so strong that it hardly ever ruptures in a dislocation of the hip. As a plumb-line, dropped from the centre of gravity of the body, passes behind the centre of the hip joint, this ligament, lying as it does in front of the joint, takes the strain in Man’s erect position. The other two thickened parts of the capsule are known as pubo-femoral and ischio-femoral, from their attachments. Inside the capsule, and deepening the margin of the acetabulum, is a fibrous rim known as the cotyloid ligament, which grips the spherical head of the femur and is continued across the cotyloid notch as the transverse ligament. The floor of the acetabulum has a horseshoe-shaped surface of articular cartilage, concave downward, and, occupying the “frog” of the horse’s hoof, is a mass of fat called the Haversian pad. Attached to the inner margin of the horseshoe, and to the transverse ligament where that is deficient, is a reflexion of synovial membrane which forms a covering for the pad and is continued as a tube to the depression on the head of the femur called the fossa capitis. This reflexion carries blood-vessels and nerves to the femur, and also contains fibrous tissue from outside the joint. It is known as the ligamentum teres.
Comparative Anatomy.—Bland Sutton regards the ilio-femoral ligament as an altered muscle, the scansorius, though against this is the fact that, in those cases in which a scansorius is present in Man, the ligament is as strong as usual, and indeed, if it were not there in these cases, the erect position would be difficult to maintain. He also looks upon the ligamentum teres as the divorced tendon of the pectineus muscle. The subject requires much more investigation, but there is every reason to believe that it is a tendon which has sunk into the joint, though whether that of the pectineus is doubtful, since the intra-capsular tendon comes from the ischium in Reptiles. In many Mammals, and among them the Orang, there is no ligamentum teres. In others, such as the Armadillo, the structure has not sunk right into the joint, but is connected with the pubo-femoral part of the capsule.
The Knee Joint is a hinge formed by the condyles and trochlea of the femur, the patella, and the head of the tibia. The capsule is formed in front by the ligamentum patellae, and on each side special bands form the lateral ligaments. On the outer side there are two of these: the anterior or long external lateral ligament is a round cord running from the external condyle to the head of the fibula, while the posterior is slighter and passes from the same place to the styloid process of the fibula. The internal lateral ligament is a flat band which runs from the inner condyle of the femur to the internal surface of the tibia some two inches below the level of the knee joint. The posterior part of the capsule is strengthened by an oblique bundle of fibres running upward and outward from the semimembranosus tendon, and called the posterior ligament of Winslow.
The intra-articular structures are numerous and interesting. Passing from the head of the tibia, in front and behind the spine, are the anterior and posterior crucial ligaments; the former is attached to the outer side of the intercondylar notch above, and the latter to the inner side. These two ligaments cross like an X. The semilunar fibro-cartilages—external and internal—are partial menisci, each of which has an anterior and a posterior cornu by which they are attached to the head of the tibia in front and behind the spine. They are also attached round the margin of the tibial head by a coronary ligament, but the external one is more movable than the internal, and this perhaps accounts for its coronary ligament being less often ruptured and the cartilage displaced than the inner one is. In addition to these the external cartilage has a fibrous band, called the ligament of Wrisberg, which runs up to the femur just behind the posterior crucial ligament. The external cartilage is broader, and forms more of a circle than the internal. The synovial cavity of the knee runs up, deep to the extensor muscles of the thigh, for about two inches above the top of the patella, forming the bursa suprapatellaris. At the lower part of the patella it covers a pad of fat, which lies between the ligamentum patellae and the front of the head of the tibia, and is carried up as a narrow tube to the lower margin of the trochlear surface of the femur. This prolongation is known as the ligamentum mucosum, and from the sides of its base spring two lateral folds called the ligamenta alaria. The tendon of the popliteus muscle is an intra-capsular structure, and is therefore covered with a synovial sheath. There are a large number of bursae near the knee joint, one of which, common to the inner head of the gastrocnemius and the semimembranosus, often communicates with the joint. The hinge movement of the knee is accompanied by a small amount of external rotation at the end of extension, and a compensatory internal rotation during flexion. This slight twist is enough to tighten up almost all the ligaments so that they may take a share in resisting over-extension, because, in the erect position, a vertical line from the centre of gravity of the body passes in front of the knee.
Comparative Anatomy.—In some Mammals, e.g. Bradypus and Ornithorhynchus, the knee is divided into three parts, two condylo-tibial and one trochleo-patellar, by synovial folds which in Man are represented by the ligamentum mucosum. In a typical Mammal the external semilunar cartilage is attached by its posterior horn to the internal condyle of the femur only, and this explains the ligament of Wrisberg already mentioned. In the Monkeys and anthropoid Apes this cartilage is circular. The semilunar cartilages first appear in the Amphibia, and, according to B. Sutton, are derived from muscles which are drawn into the joint. When only one kind of movement (hinge) is allowed, as in the fruit bat, the cartilages are not found. In most Mammals the superior tibio-fibular joint communicates with the knee.
The tibio-fibular articulations resemble the radio-ulnar in position but are much less movable. The superior in Man is usually cut off i from the knee and is a gliding joint; the middle is the interosseous membrane, while the lower has been already used as an example of a syndesmosis or fibrous half joint.
The Ankle Joint is a hinge, the astragalus being received into a lateral arch formed by the lower ends of the tibia and fibula. Backward dislocation is prevented by the articular surface of the astragalus being broader in front than behind. The anterior and posterior parts of the capsule are feeble, but the lateral ligaments are very strong, the external consisting of three separate fasciculi which bind the fibula to the astragalus and calcaneum. To avoid confusion it is best to speak of the movements of the ankle as dorsal and plantar flexion.
| (From D. Hepburn, Cunningham’s Text-book of Anatomy.) |
| Fig. 7.—Dissection of the Knee-joint from the front: Patella thrown down. |
The tarsal joints resemble the carpal in being gliding articulations. There are two between the astragalus and calcaneum, and at these inversion and eversion of the foot largely occur. The inner arch of the foot is maintained by a very important ligament called the calcaneo-navicular or spring ligament; it connects the sustentaculum tali of the calcaneum with the navicular, and upon it the head of the astragalus rests. When it becomes stretched, flat-foot results. The tarsal bones are connected by dorsal, plantar and interosseous ligaments. The long and short calcaneocuboid are plantar ligaments of special importance, and maintain the outer arch of the foot.
The tarso-metatarsal, metatarso-phalangeal and interphalangeal joints closely resemble those of the hand, except that the tarso-metatarsal joint of the great toe is not saddle-shaped.
Comparative Anatomy.—The anterior fasciculus of the external lateral ligament of the ankle is only found in Man, and is probably an adaptation to the erect position. In animals with a long foot, such as the Ungulates and the Kangaroo, the lateral ligaments of the ankle are in the form of an X, to give greater protection against lateral movement. In certain marsupials a fibro-cartilage is developed between the external malleolus and the astragalus, and its origin from the deeper fibres of the external lateral ligament of the ankle can be traced. These animals have a rotatory movement of the fibula on its long axis, in addition to the hinge movement of the ankle.
For further details of joints see R. Fick, Handbuch der Gelenke (Jena, 1904); H. Morris, Anatomy of the Joints (London, 1879); Quain’s, Gray’s and Cunningham’s Text-books of Anatomy; J. Bland Sutton, Ligaments, their Nature and Morphology (London, 1902); F. G. Parsons, “Hunterian Lectures on the Joints of Mammals,” Journ. Anat. & Phys., xxxiv. 41 and 301.
(F. G. P.)
Diseases and Injuries of Joints
The affection of the joints of the human body by specific diseases is dealt with under various headings ([Rheumatism], &c.); in the present article the more direct forms of ailment are discussed. In most joint-diseases the trouble starts either in the synovial lining or in the bone—rarely in the articular cartilage or ligaments. As a rule, the disease begins after an injury. There are three principal types of injury: (1) sprain or strain, in which the ligamentous and tendinous structures are stretched or lacerated; (2) contusion, in which the opposing bones are driven forcibly together; (3) dislocation, in which the articular surfaces are separated from one another.
A sprain or strain of a joint means that as the result of violence the ligaments holding the bones together have been suddenly stretched or even torn. On the inner aspect the ligaments are lined by a synovial membrane, so when the ligaments are stretched the synovial membrane is necessarily damaged. Small blood-vessels are also torn, and bleeding occurs into the joint, which may become full and distended. If, however, bleeding does not take place, the swelling is not immediate, but synovitis having been set up, serous effusion comes on sooner or later. There is often a good deal of heat of the surrounding skin and of pain accompanying the synovitis. In the case of a healthy individual the effects of a sprain may quickly pass off, but in a rheumatic or gouty person chronic synovitis may obstinately remain. In a person with a tuberculous history, or of tuberculous descent, a sprain is apt to be the beginning of serious disease of the joint, and it should, therefore, be treated with continuous rest and prolonged supervision. In a person of health and vigour, a sprained joint should be at once bandaged. This may be the only treatment needed. It gives support and comfort, and the even pressure around the joint checks effusion into it. Wide pieces of adhesive strapping, layer on layer, form a still more useful support, and with the joint so treated the person may be able at once to use the limb. If strapping is not employed, the bandage may be taken off from time to time in order that the limb and the joint may be massaged. If the sprain is followed by much synovitis a plaster of Paris or leather splint may be applied, complete rest being secured for the limb. Later on, blistering or even “firing” may be found advisable.
Synovitis.—When a joint has been injured, inflammation occurs in the damaged tissue; that is inevitable. But sometimes the attack of inflammation is so slight and transitory as to be scarcely noticeable. This is specially likely to occur if the joint-tissues were in a state of perfect nutrition at the time of the hurt. But if the individual or the joint were at that time in a state of imperfect nutrition, the effects are likely to be more serious. As a rule, it is the synovial membrane lining the fibrous capsule of the joint which first and chiefly suffers; the condition is termed synovitis. Synovitis may, however, be due to other causes than mechanical injury, as when the interior of the joint is attacked by the micro-organisms of pyæmia (blood-poisoning), typhoid fever, pneumonia, rheumatism, gonorrhœa or syphilis. Under judicious treatment the synovitis generally clears up, but it may linger on and cause the formation of adhesions which may temporarily stiffen the joint; or it may, especially in tuberculous, septic or pyæmic infections, involve the cartilages, ligaments and bones in such serious changes as to destroy the joint, and possibly call for resection or amputation.
The symptoms of synovitis include stiffness and tenderness in the joint. The patient notices that movements cause pain. Effusion of fluid takes place, and there is marked fullness in the neighbourhood. If the inflammation is advancing, the skin over the joint may be flushed, and if the hand is placed on the skin it feels hot. Especially is this the case if the joint is near the surface, as at the knee, wrist or ankle.
The treatment of an inflamed joint demands rest. This may be conveniently obtained by the use of a light wooden splint, padding and bandages. Slight compression of the joint by a bandage is useful in promoting absorption of the fluid. If the inflamed joint is in the lower extremity, the patient had best remain in bed, or on the sofa; if in the upper extremity, he should wear his arm in a sling. The muscles acting on the joint must be kept in complete control. If the inflammation is extremely acute a few leeches, followed by a fomentation, will give relief; or an icebag or an evaporating lotion may, by causing constriction of the blood-vessels, lessen the congestion of the part and the associated pain. As the inflammation is passing off, massage of the limb and of the joint will prove useful. If the inflammation is long continued, the limb must still be kept at rest. By this time it may be found that some other material for the retentive apparatus is more convenient and comfortable, as, for instance, undressed leather which has been moulded on wet and allowed to dry and harden; poro-plastic felt, which has been softened by heat and applied limp, or house-flannel which has been dipped in a creamy mixture of plaster-of-Paris and water, and secured by a bandage.
Chronic Disease of a Joint may be the tailing off of an acute affection, and under the influence of alternate douchings of hot and cold water, of counter-irritation by blistering or “firing,” and of massage, it may eventually clear up, especially if the general health of the individual is looked after. But if chronic disease lingers in the joint of a child or young person, the probability of its being under the influence of tuberculous infection must be considered. In such a case prolonged and absolute rest is the one thing necessary. If the disease be in the hip, knee, ankle or foot, the patient may be fitted with an appropriate Thomas’s splint and allowed to walk about, for it is highly important to have these patients out in the fresh air. If the disease be in the shoulder, elbow, wrist or hand, a leather or poro-plastic splint should be moulded on, and the arm worn in a sling. There must be no hurry; convalescence will needs be slow. And if the child can be sent to a bracing sea-side place it will be much in his favour.
As the disease clears up, the surface heat, the pains and the tenderness having disappeared, and the joint having so diminished in size as to be scarcely larger than its fellow—though the wasting of the muscles of the limb may cause it still to appear considerably enlarged—the splint may be gradually left off. This remission may be for an hour or two every other day; then every other night; then every other day, and so on, the freedom being gained little by little, and the surgeon watching the case carefully. On the slightest indication of return of trouble, the former restrictive measures must be again resorted to. Massage and gentle exercises may be given day by day, but there must be no thought of “breaking down the stiffness.” Many a joint has in such circumstances been wrecked by the manipulations of a “bone-setter.”
Permanent Stiffness.—During the treatment of a case of chronic disease of a joint, the question naturally arises as to whether the joint will be left permanently stiff. People have the idea that if an inflamed joint is kept long on a splint, it may eventually be found permanently stiff. And this is quite correct. But it should be clearly understood that it is not the rest of the inflamed joint which causes the stiffness. The matter should be put thus: in tuberculous and other forms of chronic disease stiffness may ensue in spite of long-continued rest. It is the destructive disease, not the enforced rest which causes it; for inflammation of a joint rest is absolutely necessary.
The Causes of permanent Stiffness are the destructive changes wrought by the inflammation. In one case it may be that the synovial membrane is so far destroyed by the tuberculous or septic invasion that its future usefulness is lost, and the joint ever afterwards creaks at its work and easily becomes tired and painful. Thus the joint is crippled but not destroyed. In another case the ligaments and the cartilages are implicated as well as the synovial membrane, and when the disease clears up, the bones are more or less locked, only a small range of motion being left, which forcible flexion and other methods of vigorous treatment are unable materially to improve. In another set of cases the inflammatory germs quickly destroy the soft tissues of the joint, and then invade the bones, and, the disease having at last come to an end, the softened ends of the bones solidly join together like the broken fragments in simple fracture. As a result, osseous solidification of the joint (synostosis) ensues without, of course, the possibility of any movement. And, inasmuch as the surgeon cannot tell in any case whether the disease may not advance in this direction, he is careful to place the limb in that position in which it will be most useful if the bony union should occur. Thus, the leg is kept straight, and the elbow bent.
In the course of a tuberculous or other chronic disease of a joint, the germs of septic disease may find access to the inflamed area, through a wound or ulceration into the joint, or by the germs being carried thither by the blood-stream. A joint-abscess results, which has to be treated by incision and fomentations. If chronic suppuration continues, it may become necessary to scrape out or to excise the joint, or even to amputate the limb. And if tuberculous disease of the joint is steadily progressing in spite of treatment, vigorous measures may be needed to prevent the fluid from quietly ulcerating its way out and thus inviting the entrance of septic germs. The fluid may need to be drawn off by aspiration, and direct treatment of the diseased synovial membrane may be undertaken by injections of chloride of zinc or some other reagent. Or the joint may need scraping out with a sharp spoon with the view of getting rid of the tuberculous material. Later, excision may be deemed necessary, or in extreme cases, amputation. But before these measures are considered, A. C. G. Bier’s method of treatment by passive congestion, and the treatment by serum injection, will probably have been tried. If a joint is left permanently stiff in an awkward and useless position, the limb may be greatly improved by excision of the joint. Thus, if the knee is left bent and the joint is excised a useful, straight limb may be obtained, somewhat shortened, and, of course, permanently stiff. If after disease of the hip-joint the thigh remains fixed in a faulty position, it may be brought down straight by dividing the bone near the upper end. A stiff shoulder or elbow may be converted into a useful, movable joint by excision of the articular ends of the bones.
A stiff joint may remain as the result of long continued inflammation; the unused muscles are wasted and the joint in consequence looks large. Careful measurement, however, may show that it is not materially larger than its fellow. And though all tenderness may have passed away, and though the neighbouring skin is no longer hot, still the joint remains stiff and useless. No progress being made under the influence of massage, or of gentle exercises, the surgeon may advise that the lingering adhesion be broken down under an anaesthetic, after which the function of the joint may quickly return.
There are the cases over which the “bone-setter” secures his greatest triumphs. A qualified practitioner may have been for months judiciously treating an inflamed joint by rest, and then feels a hesitation with regard to suddenly flexing the stiffened limb. The “bone-setter,” however, has no such qualms, and when the case passes out of the hands of the perhaps over-careful surgeon, the unqualified practitioner (because he, from a scientific point of view, knows nothing) fears nothing, and, breaking down inflammatory adhesions, sets the joint free. And his manipulations prove triumphantly successful. But, knowing nothing and fearing nothing, he is apt to do grievous harm in carrying out his rough treatment in other cases. Malignant disease at the end of a bone (sarcoma), tuberculosis of a joint, and a joint stiffened by old inflammation are to him the same thing. “A small bone is out of place,” or, “The bone is out of its socket; it has never been put in,” and a breaking down of everything that resists his force is the result of the case being taken to him. For the “bone-setter” has only one line of treatment. Of the improvement which he often effects as if by magic the public are told much. Of the cases over which the doctor has been too long devoting skill and care, and which are set free by the “bone-setter,” everybody hears—and sometimes to the discomfiture of the medical man. But of the cases in which irreparable damage follows his vigorous manipulation nothing is said—of his rough usage of a tuberculous hip, or of a sarcomatous shoulder-joint, and of the inevitable disaster and disappointment, those most concerned are least inclined to talk! A practical surgeon with common-sense has nothing to learn from the “bone-setter.”
Rheumatoid Arthritis, or chronic Osteo-arthritis, is generally found in persons beyond middle age; but it is not rare in young people, though with them it need not be the progressive disease which it too often is in their elders. It is an obscure affection of the cartilage covering the joint surfaces of the bones, and it eventually involves the bones and the ligaments. A favourite joint for it is the knee or hip, and when one large joint is thus affected the other joints may escape. But when the hands or feet are implicated pretty nearly all the small joints are apt to suffer. Whether the joint is large or small, the cartilages wear away and new bone is developed about the ends of the bones, so that the joint is large and mis-shapen, the fingers being knotted and the hands deformed. When the spine is affected it becomes bowed and stiff. This is the disease which has crippled the old people in the workhouses and almshouses, and with them it is steadily progressive. Its early signs are stiffness and creaking or cracking in the joints, with discomfort and pain after exercise, and with a little effusion into the capsule of the joint. As regards treatment, medicines are of no great value. Wet, cold and damp being bad for the patient, he should be, if possible, got into a dry, bright, sunny place, and he should dress warmly. Perhaps there is no better place for him in the winter than Assuan. Cairo is not so suitable as it used to be before the dam was made, when its climate was drier. For the spring and summer certain British and Continental watering-places serve well. But if this luxury cannot be afforded, the patient must make himself as happy as he can with such hot douchings and massage as he can obtain, keeping himself warm, and his joints covered by flannel bandages and rubbed with stimulating liniments. In people advanced or advancing in years, the disease, as a rule, gets slowly worse, sometimes very slowly, but sometimes rapidly, especially when its makes its appearance in the hip, shoulder or knee as the result of an injury. In young people, however, its course may be cut short by attention being given to the principles stated above.
Charcot’s Disease resembles osteo-arthritis in that it causes destruction of a joint and greatly deforms it. The deformity, however, comes on rapidly and without pain or tenderness. It is usually associated with the symptoms of locomotor ataxy, and depends upon disease of the nerves which preside over the nutrition of the joints. It is incurable.
A Loose Cartilage, or a Displaced Cartilage in the Knee Joint is apt to become caught in the hinge between the thigh bone and the leg bone, and by causing a sudden stretching of the ligaments of the joint to give rise to intense pain. When this happens the individual is apt to be thrown down as he walks, for it comes on with great suddenness. And thus he feels himself to be in a condition of perpetual insecurity. After the joint has thus gone wrong, bleeding and serous effusion take place into it, and it becomes greatly swollen. And if the cartilage still remains in the grip of the bones he is unable to straighten or bend his knee. But the surgeon by suddenly flexing and twisting the leg may manage to unhitch the cartilage and restore comfort and usefulness to the limb. As a rule, the slipping of a cartilage first occurs as the result of a serious fall or of a sudden and violent action—often it happens when the man is “dodging” at football, the foot being firmly fixed on the ground and the body being violently twisted at the knee. After the slipping has occurred many times, the amount of swelling, distress and lameness may diminish with each subsequent slipping, and the individual may become somewhat reconciled to his condition. As regards treatment, a tightly fitting steel cage-like splint, which, gripping the thigh and leg, limits the movements of the knee to flexion and extension, may prove useful. But for a muscular, athletic individual the wearing of this apparatus may prove vexatious and disappointing. The only alternative is to open the joint and remove the loose cartilage. The cartilage may be found on operation to be split, torn or crumpled, and lying right across between the joint-surfaces of the bones, from which nothing but an operation could possibly have removed it. The operation is almost sure to give complete and permanent relief to the condition, the individual being able to resume his old exercises and amusements without fear of the knee playing him false. It is, however, one that should not be undertaken without due consideration and circumspection, and the details of the operation should be carried out with the utmost care and cleanliness.
An accidental wound of a joint, as from the blade of a knife, or a spike, entering the knee is a very serious affair, because of the risk of septic germs entering the synovial cavity either at the time of the injury or later. If the joint becomes thus infected there is great swelling of the part, with redness of the skin, and with the escape of blood-stained or purulent synovia. Absorption takes place of the poisonous substances produced by the action of the germs, and, as a result, great constitutional disturbance arises. Blood-poisoning may thus threaten life, and in many cases life is saved only by amputation. The best treatment is freely to open the joint, to wash it out with a strong antiseptic fluid, and to make arrangement for thorough drainage, the limb being fixed on a splint. Help may also be obtained by increasing the patient’s power of resistance to the effect of the poisoning by injections of a serum prepared by cultivation of the septic germs in question. If the limb is saved, there is a great chance of the knee being permanently stiff.
Dislocation.—The ease with which the joint-end of a bone is dislocated varies with its form and structure, and with the position in which it happens to be placed when the violence is applied. The relative frequency of fracture of the bone and dislocation of the joint depends on the strength of the bones above and below the joint relatively to the strength of the joint itself. The strength of the various joints in the body is dependent upon either ligament or muscle, or upon the shape of the bones. In the hip, for instance, all three sources of strength are present; therefore, considering the great leverage of the long thigh bone, the hip is rarely dislocated. The shoulder, in order to allow of extensive movement, has no osseus or ligamentous strength; it is, therefore, frequently dislocated. The wrist and ankle are rarely dislocated; as the result of violence at the wrist the radius gives way, at the ankle the fibula, these bones being relatively weaker than the respective joints. The wrist owes its strength to ligaments, the elbow and the ankle to the shape of the bones. The symptoms of a dislocation are distortion and limited movement, with absence of the grating sensation felt in fracture when the broken ends of the bone are rubbed together. The treatment consists in reducing the dislocation, and the sooner this replacement is effected the better—the longer the delay the more difficult it becomes to put things right. After a variable period, depending on the nature of the joint and the age of the person, it may be impossible to replace the bones. The result will be a more or less useless joint. The administration of an anaesthetic, by relaxing the muscles, greatly assists the operation of reduction. The length of time that a joint has to be kept quiet after it has been restored to its normal shape depends on its form, but, as a rule, early movement is advisable. But when by the formation of the bones a joint is weak, as at the outer end of the collar-bone, and at the elbow-end of the radius, prolonged rest for the joint is necessary or dislocation may recur.
Congenital Dislocation at the Hip.—Possibly as a result of faulty position of the subject during intra-uterine life, the head of the thigh-bone leaves, or fails throughout to occupy, its normal situation on the haunch-bone. The defect, which is a very serious one, is probably not discovered until the child begins to walk, when its peculiar rolling gait attracts attention. The want of fixation at the joint permits of the surgeon thrusting up the thigh-bone, or drawing it down in a painless, characteristic manner.
The first thing to be done is to find out by means of the X-rays whether a socket exists into which, under an anaesthetic, the surgeon may fortunately be enabled to lodge the end of the thigh-bone. If this offers no prospect of success, there are three courses open: First, to try under an anaesthetic to manipulate the limb until the head of the thigh-bone rests as nearly as possible in its normal position, and then to endeavour to fix it there by splints, weights and bandaging until a new joint is formed; second, to cut down upon the site of the joint, to scoop out a new socket in the haunch-bone, and thrust the end of the thigh-bone into it, keeping it fixed there as just described; and third, to allow the child to run about as it pleases, merely raising the sole of the foot of the short leg by a thick boot, so as to keep the lower part of the trunk fairly level, lest secondary curvature of the spine ensue. The first and second methods demand many months of careful treatment in bed. The ultimate result of the second is so often disappointing that the surgeon now rarely advises its adoption. But, if under an anaesthetic, as the result of skilful manipulation the head of the thigh-bone can be made to enter a more or less rudimentary socket, the case is worth all the time, care and attention bestowed upon it. Sometimes the results of prolonged treatment are so good that the child eventually is able to walk with scarce a limp. But a vigorous attempt at placing the head of the bone in its proper position should be made in every case.
(E. O.*)
JOINTS, in engineering, may be classed either (a) according to their material, as in stone or brick, wood or metal; or (b) according to their object, to prevent leakage of air, steam or water, or to transmit force, which may be thrust, pull or shear; or (c) according as they are stationary or moving (“working” in technical language). Many joints, like those of ship-plates and boiler-plates, have simultaneously to fulfil both objects mentioned under (b).
All stone joints of any consequence are stationary. It being uneconomical to dress the surfaces of the stones resting on each other smoothly and so as to be accurately flat, a layer of mortar or other cementing material is laid between them. This hardens and serves to transmit the pressure from stone to stone without its being concentrated at the “high places.” If the ingredients of the cement are chosen so that when hard the cement has about the same coefficient of compressibility as the stone or brick, the pressure will be nearly uniformly distributed. The cement also adheres to the surfaces of the stone or brick, and allows a certain amount of tension to be borne by the joint. It likewise prevents the stones from slipping one on the other, i.e. it gives the joint very considerable shearing strength. The composition of the cement is chosen according as it has to “set” in air or water. The joints are made impervious to air or water by “pointing” their outer edges with a superior quality of cement.
Wood joints are also nearly all stationary. They are made partially fluid-tight by “grooving and tenoning,” and by “caulking” with oakum or similar material. If the wood is saturated with water, it swells, the edges of the joints press closer together, and the joints become tighter the greater the water-pressure is which tends to produce leakage. Relatively to its weaker general strength, wood is a better material than iron so far as regards the transmission of a thrust past a joint. So soon as a heavy pressure comes on the joint all the small irregularities of the surfaces in contact are crushed up, and there results an approximately uniform distribution of the pressure over the whole area (i.e. if there be no bending forces), so that no part of the material is unduly stressed. To attain this result the abutting surfaces should be well fitted together, and the bolts binding the pieces together should be arranged so as to ensure that they will not interfere with the timber surfaces coming into this close contact. Owing to its weak shearing strength on sections parallel to the fibre, timber is peculiarly unfitted for tension joints. If the pieces exerting the pull are simply bolted together with wooden or iron bolts, the joint cannot be trusted to transmit any considerable force with safety. The stresses become intensely localized in the immediate neighborhood of the bolts. A tolerably strong timber tension-joint can, however, be made by making the two pieces abut, and connecting them by means of iron plates covering the joint and bolted to the sides of the timbers by bolts passing through the wood. These plates should have their surfaces which lie against the wood ribbed in a direction transverse to the pull. The bolts should fit their holes slackly, and should be well tightened up so as to make the ribs sink into the surface of the timber. There will then be very little localized shearing stress brought upon the interior portions of the wood.
Iron and the other commonly used metals possess in variously high degrees the qualities desirable in substances out of which joints are to be made. The joint ends of metal pieces can easily be fashioned to any advantageous form and size without waste of material. Also these metals offer peculiar facilities for the cutting of their surfaces at a comparatively small cost so smoothly and evenly as to ensure the close contact over their whole areas of surfaces placed against each other. This is of the highest importance, especially in joints designed to transmit force. Wrought iron and mild steel are above all other metals suitable for tension joints where there is not continuous rapid motion. Where such motion occurs, a layer, or, as it is technically termed, a “bush,” of brass is inserted underneath the iron. The joint then possesses the high strength of a wrought-iron one and at the same time the good frictional qualities of a brass surface. Leakage past moving metal joints can be prevented by cutting the surfaces very accurately to fit each other. Steam-engine slide-valves and their seats, and piston “packing-rings” and the cylinders they work to and fro in, may be cited as examples. A subsidiary compressible “packing” is in other situations employed, an instance of which may be seen in the “stuffing boxes” which prevent the escape of steam from steam-engine cylinders through the piston-rod hole in the cylinder cover. Fixed metal joints are made fluid tight—(a) by caulking a riveted joint, i.e. by hammering in the edge of the metal with a square-edged chisel (the tighter the joint requires to be against leakage the closer must be the spacing of the rivets—compare the rivet-spacing in bridge, ship and boiler-plate joints); (b) by the insertion between the surfaces of a layer of one or other of various kinds of cement, the layer being thick or thin according to circumstances; (c) by the insertion of a layer of soft solid substance called “packing” or “insertion.”
Apart from cemented and glued joints, most joints are formed by cutting one or more holes in the ends of the pieces to be joined, and inserting in these holes a corresponding number of pins. The word “pin” is technically restricted to mean a cylindrical pin in a movable joint. The word “bolt” is used when the cylindrical pin is screwed up tight with a nut so as to be immovable. When the pin is not screwed, but is fastened by being beaten down on either end, it is called a “rivet.” The pin is sometimes rectangular in section, and tapered or parallel lengthwise. “Gibs” and “cottars” are examples of the latter. It is very rarely the case that fixed joints have their pins subject to simple compression in the direction of their length, though they are frequently subject to simple tension in that direction. A good example is the joint between a steam cylinder and its cover, where the bolts have to resist the whole thrust of the steam, and at the same time to keep the joint steam-tight.
JOINTS, in geology. All rocks are traversed more or less completely by vertical or highly inclined divisional planes termed joints. Soft rocks, indeed, such as loose sand and uncompacted clay, do not show these planes; but even a soft loam after standing for some time, consolidated by its own weight, will usually be found to have acquired them. Joints vary in sharpness of definition, in the regularity of their perpendicular or horizontal course, in their lateral persistence, in number and in the directions of their intersections. As a rule, they are most sharply defined in proportion to the fineness of grain of the rock. They are often quite invisible, being merely planes of potential weakness, until revealed by the slow disintegrating effects of the weather, which induces fracture along their planes in preference to other directions in the rock; it is along the same planes that a rock breaks most readily under the blow of a hammer. In coarse-textured rocks, on the other hand, joints are apt to show themselves as irregular rents along which the rock has been shattered, so that they present an uneven sinuous course, branching off in different directions. In many rocks they descend vertically at not very unequal distances, so that the spaces between them are marked off into so many wall-like masses. But this symmetry often gives place to a more or less tortuous course with lateral joints in various apparently random directions, more especially where in stratified rocks the beds have diverse lithological characters. A single joint may be traced sometimes for many yards or even for several miles, more particularly when the rock is fine-grained and fairly rigid, as in limestone. Where the texture is coarse and unequal, the joints, though abundant, run into each other in such a way that no one in particular can be identified for so great a distance. The number of joints in a mass of rock varies within wide limits. Among rocks which have undergone little disturbance the joints may be separated from each other by intervals of several yards. In other cases where the terrestrial movement appears to have been considerable, the rocks are so jointed as to have acquired therefrom a fissile character that has almost obliterated their tendency to split along the lines of bedding.
The Cause of Jointing in Rocks.—The continual state of movement in the crust of the earth is the primary cause of the majority of joints. It is to the outermost layers of the lithosphere that joints are confined; in what van Hise has described as the “zone of fracture,” which he estimates may extend to a depth of 12,000 metres in the case of rigid rocks. Below the zone of fracture, joints cannot be formed, for there the rocks tend to flow rather than break. The rocky crust, as it slowly accommodates itself to the shrinking interior of the earth, is subjected unceasingly to stresses which induce jointing by tension, compression and torsion. Thus joints are produced during the slow cyclical movements of elevation and depression as well as by the more vigorous movements of earthquakes. Tension-joints are the most widely spread; they are naturally most numerous over areas of upheaval. Compression-joints are generally associated with the more intense movements which have involved shearing, minor-faulting and slaty cleavage. A minor cause of tension-jointing is shrinkage, due either to cooling or to desiccation. The most striking type of jointing is that produced by the cooling of igneous rocks, whereby a regularly columnar structure is developed, often called basaltic structure, such as is found at the Giant’s Causeway. This structure is described in connexion with modern volcanic rocks, but it is met with in igneous rocks of all ages. It is as well displayed among the felsites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, and the basalts of Carboniferous Limestone age as among the Tertiary lavas of Auvergne and Vivarais. This type of jointing may cause the rock to split up into roughly hexagonal prisms no thicker than a lead pencil; on the other hand, in many dolerites and diorites the prisms are much coarser, having a diameter of 3 ft. or more, and they are more irregular in form; they may be so long as to extend up the face of a cliff for 300 or 400 ft. A columnar jointing has often been superinduced upon stratified rocks by contact with intrusive igneous masses. Sandstones, shales and coal may be observed in this condition. The columns diverge perpendicularly from the surface of the injected altering substance, so that when the latter is vertical, the columns are horizontal; or when it undulates the columns follow its curvatures. Beautiful examples of this character occur among the coal-seams of Ayrshire. Occasionally a prismatic form of jointing may be observed in unaltered strata; in this case it is usually among those which have been chemically formed, as in gypsum, where, as noticed by Jukes in the Paris Basin, some beds are divided from top to bottom by vertical hexagonal prisms. Desiccation, as shown by the cracks formed in mud when it dries, has probably been instrumental in causing jointing in a limited number of cases among stratified rocks.
Movement along Joint Planes.—In some conglomerates the joints may be seen traversing the enclosed pebbles as well as the surrounding matrix; large blocks of hard quartz are cut through by them as sharply as if they had been sliced by a lapidary’s machine. A similar phenomenon may be observed in flints as they lie embedded in the chalk, and the same joints may be traced continuously through many yards of rock. Such facts show that the agency to which the jointing of rocks was due must have operated with considerable force. Further indication of movement is supplied by the rubbed and striated surfaces of some joints. These surfaces, termed slickensides, have evidently been ground against each other.
Influence of Joints on Water-flow and Scenery.—Joints form natural paths for the passage downward and upward of subterranean water and have an important bearing upon water supply. Water obtained directly from highly jointed rock is more liable to become contaminated by surface impurities than that from a more compact rock through which it has had to soak its way; for this reason many limestones are objected to as sources of potable water. On exposed surfaces joints have great influence in determining the rate and type of weathering. They furnish an effective lodgment for surface water, which, frozen by lowering of temperature, expands into ice and wedges off blocks of the rock; and the more numerous the joints the more rapidly does the action proceed. As they serve, in conjunction with bedding, to divide stratified rocks into large quadrangular blocks, their effect on cliffs and other exposed places is seen in the splintered and dislocated aspect so familiar in mountain scenery. Not infrequently, by directing the initial activity of weathering agents, joints have been responsible for the course taken by large streams as well as for the type of scenery on their banks. In limestones, which succumb readily to the solvent action of water, the joints are liable to be gradually enlarged along the course of the underground waterflow until caves are formed of great size and intricacy.
Infilled Joints.—Joints which have been so enlarged by solution are sometimes filled again completely or partially by minerals brought thither in solution by the water traversing the rock; calcite, barytes and ores of lead and copper may be so deposited. In this way many valuable mineral veins have been formed. Widened joints may also be filled in by detritus from the surface, or, in deep-seated portions of the crust, by heated igneous rock, forced from below along the planes of least resistance. Occasionally even sedimentary rocks may be forced up joints from below, as in the case of the so-called “sandstone dykes.”
| Joints in Limestone Quarry near Mallow, co. Cork. (G. V. Du Noyer.) |
Practical Utility of Joints.—An important feature in the joints of stratified rocks is the direction in which they intersect each other. As the result of observations we learn that they possess two dominant trends, one coincident in a general way with the direction in which the strata are inclined to the horizon, the other running transversely approximately at right angles. The former set is known as dip-joints, because they run with the dip or inclination of the rocks, the latter is termed strike-joints, inasmuch as they conform to the general strike or mean outcrop. It is owing to the existence of this double series of joints that ordinary quarrying operations can be carried on. Large quadrangular blocks can be wedged off that would be shattered if exposed to the risk of blasting. A quarry is usually worked on the dip of the rock, hence strike-joints form clean-cut faces in front of the workmen as they advance. These are known as backs, and the dip-joints which traverse them as cutters. The way in which this double set of joints occurs in a quarry may be seen in the figure, where the parallel lines which traverse the shaded and unshaded faces mark the successive strata. The broad white spaces running along the length of the quarry behind the seated figure are strike-joints or backs, traversed by some highly inclined lines which mark the position of the dip-joints or cutters. The shaded ends looking towards the spectator are cutters from which the rock has been quarried away on one side. In crystalline (igneous) rocks, bedding is absent and very often there is no horizontal jointing to take its place; the joint planes break up the mass more irregularly than in stratified rocks. Granite, for example, is usually traversed by two sets of chief or master-joints cutting each other somewhat obliquely. Their effect is to divide the rock into long quadrangular, rhomboidal, or even polygonal columns. But a third set may often be noticed cutting across the columns, though less continuous and dominant than the others. When these transverse joints are few in number, columns many feet in length can be quarried out entire. Such monoliths have been from early times employed in the construction of obelisks and pillars.
(J. A. H.)
JOINTURE, in law, a provision for a wife after the death of her husband. As defined by Sir E. Coke, it is “a competent livelihood of freehold for the wife, of lands or tenements, to take effect presently in possession or profit after the death of her husband, for the life of the wife at least, if she herself be not the cause of determination or forfeiture of it” (Co. Litt. 36b). A jointure is of two kinds, legal and equitable. A legal jointure was first authorized by the Statute of Uses. Before this statute a husband had no legal seisin in such lands as were vested in another to his “use,” but merely an equitable estate. Consequently it was usual to make settlements on marriage, the most general form being the settlement by deed of an estate to the use of the husband and wife for their lives in joint tenancy (or “jointure”), so that the whole would go to the survivor. Although, strictly speaking, a jointure is a joint estate limited to both husband and wife, in common acceptation the word extends also to a sole estate limited to the wife only. The requisites of a legal jointure are: (1) the jointure must take effect immediately after the husband’s death; (2) it must be for the wife’s life or for a greater estate, or be determinable by her own act; (3) it must be made before marriage—if after, it is voidable at the wife’s election, on the death of the husband; (4) it must be expressed to be in satisfaction of dower and not of part of it. In equity, any provision made for a wife before marriage and accepted by her (not being an infant) in lieu of dower was a bar to such. If the provision was made after marriage, the wife was not barred by such provision, though expressly stated to be in lieu of dower; she was put to her election between jointure and dower (see [Dower]).
JOINVILLE, the name of a French noble family of Champagne, which traced its descent from Étienne de Vaux, who lived at the beginning of the 11th century. Geoffroi III. (d. 1184), sire de Joinville, who accompanied Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne, to the Holy Land in 1147, received from him the office of seneschal, and this office became hereditary in the house of Joinville. In 1203 Geoffroi V., sire de Joinville, died while on a crusade, leaving no children. He was succeeded by his brother Simon, who married Beatrice of Burgundy, daughter of the count of Auxonne, and had as his son Jean (q.v.), the historian and friend of St Louis. Henri (d. 1374), sire de Joinville, the grandson of Jean, became count of Vaudémont, through his mother, Marguerite de Vaudémont. His daughter, Marguerite de Joinville, married in 1393 Ferry of Lorraine (d. 1415), to whom she brought the lands of Joinville. In 1552, Joinville was made into a principality for the house of Lorraine. Mlle de Montpensier, the heiress of Mlle de Guise, bequeathed the principality of Joinville to Philip, duke of Orleans (1693). The castle, which overhung the Marne, was sold in 1791 to be demolished. The title of prince de Joinville (q.v.) was given later to the third son of King Louis Philippe. Two branches of the house of Joinville have settled in other countries: one in England, descended from Geoffroi de Joinville, sire de Vaucouleurs, and brother of the historian, who served under Henry III. and Edward I.; the other, descended from Geoffroi de Joinville, sire de Briquenay, and son of Jean, settled in the kingdom of Naples.
See J. Simonnet, Essai sur l’histoire et la généalogie des seigneurs de Joinville (1875); H. F. Delaborde, Jean de Joinville et les seigneurs de Joinville (1894).
(M. P.*)
JOINVILLE, FRANÇOIS FERDINAND PHILIPPE LOUIS MARIE, Prince de (1818-1900), third son of Louis Phllippe, duc d’Orléans, afterwards king of the French, was born at Neuilly on the 14th of August 1818. He was educated for the navy, and became lieutenant in 1836. His first conspicuous service was at the bombardment of San Juan de Ulloa, in November 1838, when he headed a landing party and took the Mexican general Arista prisoner with his own hand at Vera Cruz. He was promoted captain, and in 1840 was entrusted with the charge of bringing the remains of Napoleon from St Helena to France. In 1844 he conducted naval operations on the coast of Morocco, bombarding Tangier and occupying Mogador, and was recompensed with the grade of vice-admiral. In the following year he published in the Revue des deux mondes an article on the deficiencies of the French navy which attracted considerable attention, and by his hostility to the Guizot ministry, as well as by an affectation of ill-will towards Great Britain, he gained considerable popularity. The revolution of 1848 nevertheless swept him away with the other Orleans princes. He hastened to quit Algeria, where he was then serving, and took refuge at Claremont, in Surrey, with the rest of his family. In 1861, upon the breaking out of the American Civil War, he proceeded to Washington, and placed the services of his son and two of his nephews at the disposal of the United States government. Otherwise, he was little heard of until the overthrow of the Empire in 1870, when he re-entered France, only to be promptly expelled by the government of national defence. Returning incognito, he joined the army of General d’Aurelle de Paladines, under the assumed name of Colonel Lutherod, fought bravely before Orleans, and afterwards, divulging his identity, formally sought permission to serve. Gambretta, however, arrested him and sent him back to England. In the National Assembly, elected in February 1871, the prince was returned by two departments and elected to sit for the Haute Marne, but, by an arrangement with Thiers, did not take his seat until the latter had been chosen president of the provincial republic. His deafness prevented him from making any figure in the assembly, and he resigned his seat in 1876. In 1886 the provisions of the law against pretenders to the throne deprived him of his rank as vice-admiral, but he continued to live in France, and died in Paris on the 16th of June 1900. He had married in 1843 the princess Francisca, sister of Pedro II., emperor of Brazil, and had a son, the duc de Penthièvre (born in 1845), also brought up to the navy, and a daughter Françoise (1844- ) who married the duc de Chartres in 1863.
The prince de Joinville was the author of several essays and pamphlets on naval affairs and other matters of public interest, which were originally published for the most part either unsigned or pseudonymously, and subsequently republished under his own name after the fall of the Empire. They include Essais sur la marine française (1853); Études sur la marine (1859 and 1870); La Guerre d’Amérique, campagne du Potomac (1862 and 1872); Encore un mot sur Sadowa (Brussels, 1868); and Vieux souvenirs (1894).
JOINVILLE, JEAN, Sire de (1224-1319), was the second great writer of history in Old French, and in a manner occupies the interval between Villehardouin and Froissart. Numerous minor chroniclers fill up the gaps, but no one of them has the idiosyncrasy which distinguishes these three writers, who illustrate the three periods of the middle ages—adolescence, complete manhood, and decadence. Joinville was the head of a noble family of the province of Champagne (see [Joinville], above). The provincial court of the counts of Champagne had long been a distinguished one, and the action of Thibaut the poet, together with the proximity of the district to Paris, made the province less rebellious than most of the great feudal divisions of France to the royal authority. Joinville’s first appearance at the king’s court was in 1241, on the occasion of the knighting of Louis IX.’s younger brother Alphonse. Seven years afterwards he took the cross, thereby giving St Louis a valuable follower, and supplying himself with the occasion of an eternal memory. The crusade, in which he distinguished himself equally by wisdom and prowess, taught his practical spirit several lessons. He returned with the king in 1254. But, though his reverence for the personal character of his prince seems to have known no bounds, he had probably gauged the strategic faculties of the saintly king, and he certainly had imbibed the spirit of the dictum that a man’s first duties are those to his own house. He was in the intervals of residence on his own fief a constant attendant on the court, but he declined to accompany the king on his last and fatal expedition. In 1282 he was one of the witnesses whose testimony was formally given at St Denis in the matter of the canonization of Louis, and in 1298 he was present at the exhumation of the saint’s body. It was not till even later that he began his literary work, the occasion being a request from Jeanne of Navarre, the wife of Philippe le Bel and the mother of Louis le Hutin. The great interval between his experiences and the period of the composition of his history is important for the due comprehension of the latter. Some years passed before the task was completed, on its own showing, in October 1309. Jeanne was by this time dead, and Joinville presented his book to her son Louis the Quarreller. This original manuscript is now lost, whereby hangs a tale. Great as was his age, Joinville had not ceased to be actively loyal, and in 1315 he complied with the royal summons to bear arms against the Flemings. He was at Joinville again in 1317, and on the 11th of July 1319 he died at the age of ninety-five, leaving his possessions and his position as seneschal of Champagne to his second son Anselm. He was buried in the neighbouring church of St Laurent, where during the Revolution his bones underwent profanation. Besides his Histoire de Saint Louis and his Credo or “Confession of Faith” written much earlier, a considerable number, relatively speaking, of letters and business documents concerning the fief of Joinville and so forth are extant. These have an importance which we shall consider further on; but Joinville owes his place in general estimation only to his history of his crusading experiences and of the subsequent fate of St Louis.
Of the famous French history books of the middle ages Joinville’s bears the most vivid impress of the personal characteristics of its composer. It does not, like Villehardouin, give us a picture of the temper and habits of a whole order or cast of men during a heroic period of human history; it falls far short of Froissart in vivid portraying of the picturesque and external aspects of social life; but it is a more personal book than either. The age and circumstances of the writer must not be forgotten in reading it. He is a very old man telling of circumstances which occurred in his youth. He evidently thinks that the times have not changed for the better—what with the frequency with which the devil is invoked in modern France, and the sinful expenditure common in the matter of embroidered silk coats. But this laudation of times past concentrates itself almost wholly on the person of the sainted king whom, while with feudal independence he had declined to swear fealty to him, “because I was not his man,” he evidently regarded with an unlimited reverence. His age, too, while garrulous to a degree, seems to have been free from the slightest taint of boasting. No one perhaps ever took less trouble to make himself out a hero than Joinville. He is constantly admitting that on such and such an occasion he was terribly afraid; he confesses without the least shame that, when one of his followers suggested defiance of the Saracens and voluntary death, he (Joinville) paid not the least attention to him; nor does he attempt to gloss in any way his refusal to accompany St Louis on his unlucky second crusade, or his invincible conviction that it was better to be in mortal sin than to have the leprosy, or his decided preference for wine as little watered as might be, or any other weakness. Yet he was a sincerely religious man, as the curious Credo, written at Acre and forming a kind of anticipatory appendix to the history, sufficiently shows. He presents himself as an altogether human person, brave enough in the field, and, at least when young, capable of extravagant devotion to an ideal, provided the ideal was fashionable, but having at bottom a sufficient respect for his own skin and a full consciousness of the side on which his bread is buttered. Nor can he be said to be in all respects an intelligent traveller. There were in him what may be called glimmerings of deliberate literature, but they were hardly more than glimmerings. His famous description of Greek fire has a most provoking mixture of circumstantial detail with absence of verifying particulars. It is as matter-of-fact and comparative as Dante, without a touch of Dante’s genius. “The fashion of Greek fire was such that it came to us as great as a tun of verjuice, and the fiery tail of it was as big as a mighty lance; it made such noise in the coming that it seemed like the thunder from heaven, and looked like a dragon flying through the air; so great a light did it throw that throughout the host men saw as though it were day for the light it threw.” Certainly the excellent seneschal has not stinted himself of comparisons here, yet they can hardly be said to be luminous. That the thing made a great flame, a great noise, and struck terror into the beholder is about the sum of it all. Every now and then indeed a striking circumstance, strikingly told, occurs in Joinville, such as the famous incident of the woman who carried in one hand a chafing dish of fire, in the other a phial of water, that she might burn heaven and quench hell, lest in future any man should serve God merely for hope of the one or fear of the other. But in these cases the author only repeats what he has heard from others. On his own account he is much more interested in small personal details than in greater things. How the Saracens, when they took him prisoner, he being half dead with a complication of diseases, kindly left him “un mien couverture d’écarlate” which his mother had given him, and which he put over him, having made a hole therein and bound it round him with a cord; how when he came to Acre in a pitiable condition an old servant of his house presented himself, and “brought me clean white hoods and combed my hair most comfortably”, how he bought a hundred tuns of wine and served it—the best first, according to high authority—well-watered to his private soldiers, somewhat less watered to the squires, and to the knights neat, but with a suggestive phial of the weaker liquid to mix “si comme ils vouloient”—these are the details in which he seems to take greatest pleasure, and for readers six hundred years after date perhaps they are not the least interesting details.
It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that Joinville’s book is exclusively or even mainly a chronicle of small beer. If he is not a Villehardouin or a Carlyle, his battlepieces are vivid and truthful, and he has occasional passages of no small episodic importance, such as that dealing with the Old Man of the Mountain. But, above all, the central figure of his book redeems it from the possibility of the charge of being commonplace or ignoble. To St Louis Joinville is a nobler Boswell; and hero-worshipper, hero, and heroic ideal all have something of the sublime about them. The very pettiness of the details in which the good seneschal indulges as to his own weakness only serves to enhance the sublime unworldliness of the king. Joinville is a better warrior than Louis, but, while the former frankly prays for his own safety, the latter only thinks of his army’s when they have escaped from the hands of the aliens. One of the king’s knights boasts that ten thousand pieces have been “forcontés” (counted short) to the Saracens; and it is with the utmost trouble that Joinville and the rest can persuade the king that this is a joke, and that the Saracens are much more likely to have got the advantage. He warns Joinville against wine-bibbing, against bad language, against all manner of foibles small and great; and the pupil acknowledges that this physician at any rate had healed himself in these respects. It is true that he is severe towards infidels; and his approval of the knight who, finding a Jew likely to get the better of a theological argument, resorted to the baculine variety of logic, does not meet the views of the 20th century. But Louis was not of the 20th century but of the 13th, and after his kind he certainly deserved Joinville’s admiration. Side by side with his indignation at the idea of cheating his Saracen enemies may be mentioned his answer to those who after Taillebourg complained that he had let off Henry III. too easily. “He is my man now, and he was not before,” said the king, a most unpractical person certainly, and in some ways a sore saint for France. But it is easy to understand the half-despairing adoration with which a shrewd and somewhat prosaic person like Joinville must have regarded this flower of chivalry born out of due time. He has had his reward, for assuredly the portrait of St Louis, from the early collection of anecdotes to the last hearsay sketch of the woeful end at Tunis, with the famous enseignement which is still the best summary of the theoretical duties of a Christian king in medieval times, is such as to take away all charge of vulgarity or mere commérage from Joinville, a charge to which otherwise he might perhaps have been exposed.
The arrangement of the book is, considering its circumstances and the date of its composition, sufficiently methodical. According to its own account it is divided into three parts—the first dealing generally with the character and conduct of the hero; the second with his acts and deeds in Egypt, Palestine, &c., as Joinville knew them; the third with his subsequent life and death. Of these the last is very brief, the first not long; the middle constitutes the bulk of the work. The contents of the first part are, as might be expected, miscellaneous enough, and consist chiefly of stories chosen to show the valour of Louis, his piety, his justice, his personal temperance, and so forth. The second part enters upon the history of the crusade itself, and tells how Joinville pledged all his land save so much as would bring in a thousand livres a year, and started with a brave retinue of nine knights (two of whom besides himself wore bannerets), and shared a ship with the sire d’Aspremont, leaving Joinville without raising his eyes, “pour ce que le cuer ne me attendrisist du biau chastel que je lessoie et de mes deux enfans”; how they could not get out of sight of a high mountainous island (Lampedusa or Pantellaria) till they had made a procession round the masts in honour of the Virgin; how they reached first Cyprus and then Egypt; how they took Damietta, and then entangled themselves in the Delta. Bad generalship, which is sufficiently obvious, unwholesome food—it was Lent, and they ate the Nile fish which had been feasting on the carcases of the slain—and Greek fire did the rest, and personal valour was of little avail, not merely against superior numbers and better generals, but against dysentery and a certain “mal de l’ost” which attacked the mouth and the legs, a curious human version of a well-known bestial malady. After ransom Acre was the chief scene of Louis’s stay in the East, and here Joinville lived in some state, and saw not a few interesting things, hearing besides much gossip as to the inferior affairs of Asia from ambassadors, merchants and others. At last they journeyed back again to France, not without considerable experiences of the perils of the deep, which Joinville tells with a good deal of spirit. The remainder of the book is very brief. Some anecdotes of the king’s “justice,” his favourite and distinguishing attribute during the sixteen years which intervened between the two crusades, are given; then comes the story of Joinville’s own refusal to join the second expedition, a refusal which bluntly alleged the harm done by the king’s men who stayed at home to the vassals of those who went abroad as the reason of Joinville’s resolution to remain behind. The death of the king at Tunis, his enseignement to his son, and the story of his canonization complete the work.
The book in which this interesting story is told has had a literary history which less affects its matter than the vicissitudes to which Froissart has been subjected, but which is hardly less curious in its way. There is no reason for supposing that Joinville indulged in various editions, such as those which have given Kervyn de Lettenhove and Siméon Luce so much trouble, and which make so vast a difference between the first and the last redaction of the chronicler of the Hundred Years’ War. Indeed the great age of the seneschal of Champagne, and his intimate first-hand acquaintance with his subject, made such variations extremely improbable. But, whereas there is no great difficulty (though much labour) in ascertaining the original and all subsequent texts of Froissart, the original text of Joinville was until recently unknown, and even now may be said to be in the state of a conjectural restoration. It has been said that the book was presented to Louis le Hutin. Now we have a catalogue of Louis le Hutin’s library, and, strange to say, Joinville does not figure in it. His book seems to have undergone very much the same fate as that which befell the originals of the first two volumes of the Paston Letters which Sir John Fenn presented to George the Third. Several royal library catalogues of the 14th century are known, but in none of these does the Histoire de St Louis appear. It does appear in that of Charles V. (1411), but apparently no copy even of this survives. As everybody knows, however, books could be and were multiplied by the process of copying tolerably freely, and a copy at first or second hand which belonged to the fiddler king René of Provence in the 15th century was used for the first printed edition in 1547. Other editions were printed from other versions, all evidently posterior to the original. But in 1741 the well-known medievalist La Curne de St Palaye found at Lucca a manuscript of the 16th century, evidently representing an older text than any yet printed. Three years later a 14th-century copy was found at Brussels, and this is the standard manuscript authority for the text of Joinville. Those who prefer to rest on MS. authority will probably hold to this text, which appears in the well-known collection of Michaud and Poujoulat as well as that of Buchon, and in a careful and useful separate edition by Francisque Michel. The modern science of critical editing, however, which applies to medieval texts the principles long recognized in editing the classics, has discovered in the 16th-century manuscript, and still more in the original miscellaneous works of Joinville, the letters, deeds, &c., already alluded to, the materials for what we have already called a conjectural restoration, which is not without its interest, though perhaps it is possible for that interest to be exaggerated.
For merely general readers Buchon’s or Michaud’s editions of Joinville will amply suffice. Both include translations into modern French, which, however, are hardly necessary, for the language is very easy. Natalis de Wailly’s editions of 1868 and particularly 1874 are critical editions, embodying the modern research connected with the text, the value of which is considerable, but contestable. They are accompanied by ample annotations and appendices, with illustrations of great merit and value. Much valuable information appeared for the first time in the edition of F. Michel (1859). To these may be added A. F. Didot’s Études sur Joinville (1870) and H. F. Delaborde’s Jean de Joinville (1894). A good sketch of the whole subject will be found in Aubertin’s Histoire de la langue et de la littérature françaises au moyen âge, ii. 196-211; see also Gaston Paris, Litt. française au moyen âge (1893), and A. Debidour, Les Chroniqueurs (1888). There are English translations by T. Johnes (1807), J. Hutton (1868), Ethel Wedgwood (1906), and (more literally) Sir F. T. Marzials (“Everyman’s Library,” 1908).
(G. Sa.)
JOIST, in building, one of a row or tier of beams set edgewise from one wall or partition to another and carrying the flooring boards on the upper edge and the laths of the ceiling on the lower. In double flooring there are three series of joists, binding, bridging, and ceiling joists. The binding joists are the real support of the floor, running from wall to wall, and carrying the bridging joists above and the ceiling joists below (see [Carpentry]), The Mid. Eng. form of the word was giste or gyste, and was adapted from O. Fr. giste, modern gîte, a beam supporting the platform of a gun. By origin the word meant that on which anything lies or rests (gésir, to lie; Lat. jacere).
The English word “gist,” in such phrases as “the gist of the matter,” the main or central point in an argument, is a doublet of joist. According to Skeat, the origin of this meaning is an O. Fr. proverbial expression, Je sçay bien où gist le lièvre, I know well where the hare lies, i.e. I know the real point of the matter.
JÓKAI, MAURUS (1825-1904), Hungarian novelist, was born at Rév-Komárom on the 19th of February 1825. His father, Joseph, was a member of the Asva branch of the ancient Jókay family; his mother was a scion of the noble Pulays. The lad was timid and delicate, and therefore educated at home till his tenth year, when he was sent to Pressburg, subsequently completing his education at the Calvinist college at Pápá, where he first met Petöfi, Alexander Kozma, and several other brilliant young men who subsequently became famous. His family had meant him to follow the law, his father’s profession, and accordingly the youth, always singularly assiduous, plodded conscientiously through the usual curriculum at Kecskemet and Pest, and as a full-blown advocate actually succeeded in winning his first case. But the drudgery of a lawyer’s office was uncongenial to the ardently poetical youth, and, encouraged by the encomiums pronounced by the Hungarian Academy upon his first play, Zsidó fiu (“The Jew Boy”), he flitted, when barely twenty, to Pest in 1845 with a MS. romance in his pocket; he was introduced by Petöfi to the literary notabilities of the Hungarian capital, and the same year his first notable romance Hétköznapok (“Working Days”), appeared, first in the columns of the Pesti Dievatlap, and subsequently, in 1846, in book form. Hétköznapok, despite its manifest crudities and extravagances, was instantly recognized by all the leading critics as a work of original genius, and in the following year Jókai was appointed the editor of Életképek, the leading Hungarian literary journal, and gathered round him all the rising talent of the country. On the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 the young editor enthusiastically adopted the national cause, and served it with both pen and sword. Now, as ever, he was a moderate Liberal, setting his face steadily against all excesses; but, carried away by the Hungarian triumphs of April and May 1849, he supported Kossuth’s fatal blunder of deposing the Hapsburg dynasty, and though, after the war was over, his life was saved by an ingenious stratagem of his wife, the great tragic actress, Roza Benke Laborfalvi, whom he had married on the 29th of August 1848, he lived for the next fourteen years the life of a political suspect. Yet this was perhaps the most glorious period of his existence, for during it he devoted himself to the rehabilitation of the proscribed and humiliated Magyar language, composing in it no fewer than thirty great romances, besides innumerable volumes of tales, essays, criticisms and facetiæ. This was the period of such masterpieces as Erdély Arany Kord (“The Golden Age of Transylvania”), with its sequel Törökvilág Magyarországon (“The Turks in Hungary”), Egy Magyar Nábob (“A Hungarian Nabob”), Karpáthy Zoltán, Janicsárok végnapjai (“The Last Days of the Janissaries”), Szomorú napok (“Sad Days”). On the re-establishment of the Hungarian constitution by the Composition of 1867, Jókai took an active part in politics. As a constant supporter of the Tisza administration, not only in parliament, where he sat continuously for more than twenty years, but also as the editor of the government organ, Hon, founded by him in 1863, he became a power in the state, and, though he never took office himself, frequently extricated the government from difficult places. In 1897 the emperor appointed him a member of the upper house. As a suave, practical and witty debater he was particularly successful. Yet it was to literature that he continued to devote most of his time, and his productiveness after 1870 was stupendous, amounting to some hundreds of volumes. Stranger still, none of this work is slipshod, and the best of it deserves to endure. Amongst the finest of his later works may be mentioned the unique and incomparable Az arany ember (“A Man of Gold”)—translated into English under the title of Timar’s Two Worlds—and A téngerzemü hölgy (“Eyes like the Sea”), the latter of which won the Academy’s prize in 1890. He died at Budapest on the 5th of May 1904; his wife having predeceased him in 1886. Jókai was an arch-romantic, with a perfervid Oriental imagination, and humour of the purest, rarest description. If one can imagine a combination, in almost equal parts, of Walter Scott, William Beckford, Dumas père, and Charles Dickens, together with the native originality of an ardent Magyar, one may perhaps form a fair idea of the great Hungarian romancer’s indisputable genius.
See Névy László, Jókai Mór; Hegedúsis Sándor, Jókai Mórról; H. W. Temperley, “Maurus Jokai and the Historical Novel,” Contemporary Review (July 1904).
JOKJAKARTA, or Jokjokarta (more correctly Jokyakarta; Du. Djokjakarta), a residency of the island of Java, Dutch East Indies, bounded N. by Kedu and Surakarta, E. by Surakarta, S. by the Indian Ocean, W. by Bagelen. Pop. (1897), 858,392. The country is mountainous with the exception of a wedge-like strip in the middle between the rivers Progo and Upak. In the north-west are the southern slopes of the volcano Merapi, and in the east the Kidul hills and the plateau of Sewu. The last-named is an arid and scantily populated chalk range, with numerous small summits, whence it is also known as the Thousand Hills. The remainder of the residency is well-watered and fertile, important irrigation works having been carried out. Sugar, rice and indigo are cultivated; salt-making is practised on the coast. The minerals include coal-beds in the Kidul hills and near Nangulan, marble and gold in the neighbourhood of Kalasan. The natives are poor, owing chiefly to maladministration, the use of opium and the usury practised by foreigners (Chinese, Arabs, &c.). The principality is divided between the sultan (vassal of the Dutch government) and the so-called independent prince Paku Alam; Ngawen and Imogiri are enclaves of Surakarta. There are good roads, and railways connect the chief town with Batavia, Samarang, Surakarta, &c. The town of Jokjakarta (see [Java]) the seat of the resident, the sultan and the Paku Alam princes; its most remarkable section is the kraton or citadel of the sultan. Imogiri, S.W. of the capital, the burial-place of the princes of Surakarta and Jokjakarta, is guarded by priests and officials. Sentolo, Nangulan, Brosot, Kalasan, Tempel, Wonosari are considerable villages. There are numerous remains of Hindu temples, particularly in the neighbourhood of Kalasan near the border of Surakarta and Prambanan, which is just across it. Remarkable sacred grottoes are found on the coast, namely, the so-called Nyabi Kidul and Rongkob, and at Selarong, south-east of Jokjakarta.
JOLIET, a city and the county-seat of Will county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the township of Joliet, in the N.E. part of the state, on the Des Plaines river, 40 m. S.W. of Chicago. Pop. (1890), 23,264; (1900), 29,353, of whom 8536 were foreign-born, 1889 being German, 1579 Austrian, 1206 Irish and 951 Swedish; (1910 census) 34,670. In addition there is a large population in the immediate suburbs: that of the township including the city was 27,438 in 1890, and 50,640 in 1910. Joliet is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago & Alton, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Michigan Central, the Illinois, Iowa & Minnesota, and the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern railways, by interurban electric lines, and is on the Illinois & Michigan canal and the Chicago Sanitary (ship) canal. The city is situated in a narrow valley, on both sides of the river. It is the seat of the northern Illinois penitentiary, and has a public library (in front of which is a statue, by S. Asbjornsen, of Louis Joliet), the township high school, two hospitals, two Catholic academies and a club-house, erected by the Illinois Steel Company for the use of its employees. There are two municipal parks, West Park and Highland Park; Dellwood Park is an amusement resort, owned by the Chicago & Joliet Electric Railway Company. In the vicinity are large deposits of calcareous building stone, cement and fireclay, and there are coal mines 20 m. distant. Mineral resources and water-power have facilitated the development of manufactures. The factory product in 1905 was valued at $33,788,700 (20.3% more than in 1900), a large part of which was represented by iron and steel goods. There are large industrial establishments just outside the city limits. The first settlement on the site of Joliet (1833) was called Juliet, in honour of the daughter of James B. Campbell, one of the settlers. The present name was adopted in 1845, in memory of Louis Joliet (1645-1700), the French Canadian explorer of the Mississippi, and in 1852 a city charter was secured.
JOLLY (from O. Fr. jolif; Fr. joli, the French word is obscure in origin; it may be from late Lat. gaudivus, from gaudere, to rejoice, the change of d to l being paralleled by cigada and cigale, or from O. Norse jol, Eng. “yule,” the northern festival of midwinter), and adjective meaning gay, cheerful, jovial, high-spirited. The colloquial use of the term as an intensive adverb, meaning extremely, very, was in early usage quite literary; thus John Trapp (1601-1669), Commentaries on the New Testament, Matthew (1647), writes, “All was jolly quiet at Ephesus before St Paul came hither.” In the royal navy “jolly” used as a substantive, is the slang name for a marine. To “jolly” is a slang synonym for “chaff.” The word “jolly-boat,” the name of a ship’s small broad boat, usually clinker-built, is of doubtful etymology. It occurs in English in the 18th century, and is usually connected with Dan. or Swed. jolle, Dutch jol, a small ship’s boat; these words are properly represented in English by “yawl” originally a ship’s small boat, now chiefly used of a rig of sailing vessels, with a cutter-rigged foremast and a small mizzen stepped far aft, with a spanker sail (see [Rigging]). A connexion has been suggested with a word of much earlier appearance in English, jolywat, or gellywatte. This occurs at the end of the 15th century and is used of a smaller type of ship’s boat. This is supposed to be a corruption of the French galiote or Dutch galjoot, galliot (see [Galley]). The galliot was, however, a large vessel.
JOLY DE LOTBINIÈRE, SIR HENRI GUSTAVE (1829-1908), Canadian politician, was born at Epernay in France on the 5th of December 1829. His father, Gaspard Pierre Gustave Joly, the owner of famous vineyards at Epernay, was of Huguenot descent, and married Julie Christine, grand-daughter of Eustache Gaspard Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, marquis de Lotbinière (one of Montcalm’s engineers at Quebec); he thus became seigneur de Lotbinière. Henri Gustave adopted the name of de Lotbinière in 1888, under a statute of the province of Quebec. He was educated in Paris, and called to the bar of lower Canada in 1858. On the 6th of May 1856 he married Margaretta Josepha (d. 1904), daughter of Hammond Gowen, of Quebec. At the general election of 1861 he was elected to the house of assembly of the province of Canada as Liberal member for the county of Lotbinière, and from 1867 to 1874 he represented the same county in the House of Commons, Ottawa, and in the legislative assembly, Quebec. Joly was opposed to confederation and supported Dorion in the stand which he took on this question. In 1878 he was called by Luc Letellier de St Just, lieutenant-governor of Quebec, to form an administration, which was defeated in 1879, and until 1883 he was leader of the opposition. During his brief administration he adopted a policy of retrenchment, and endeavoured to abolish the legislative council. In 1885, as a protest against the attitude of his party towards Louis Riel, who was tried and executed for high treason, he retired from public life. Early in the year 1895 he was induced again to take an active part in the campaign of his party, and at the general election of 1896 he was returned as member for the county of Portneuf. He had already in 1895 been created K.C.M.G. On the formation of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s administration he accepted the office of controller of inland revenue, and a year later he became a privy councillor, as minister of inland revenue. From 1900 to 1906 he was lieutenant-governor of the province of British Columbia. He twice declined a seat in the senate, but rendered eminent service to Canada by promoting the interest of agriculture, horticulture and of forestry. He died on the 17th of November 1908.
(A. G. D.)
JOMINI, ANTOINE HENRI, Baron (1779-1869), general in the French and afterwards in the Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the art of war, was born on the 6th of March 1779 at Payerne in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, where his father was syndic. His youthful preference for a military life was disappointed by the dissolution of the Swiss regiments of France at the Revolution. For some time he was a clerk in a Paris banking-house, until the outbreak of the Swiss revolution. At the age of nineteen he was appointed to a post on the Swiss headquarters staff, and when scarcely twenty-one to the command of a battalion. At the peace of Lunéville in 1801 he returned to business life in Paris, but devoted himself chiefly to preparing the celebrated Traité des grandes opérations militaires, which was published in 1804-1805. Introduced to Marshal Ney, he served in the campaign of Austerlitz as a volunteer aide-de-camp on Ney’s personal staff. In December 1805 Napoleon, being much impressed by a chapter in Jomini’s treatise, made him a colonel in the French service. Ney thereupon made him his principal aide-de-camp. In 1806 Jomini published his views as to the conduct of the impending war with Prussia, and this, along with his knowledge of Frederick the Great’s campaigns, which he had described in the Traité, led Napoleon to attach him to his own headquarters. He was present with Napoleon at the battle of Jena, and at Eylau won the cross of the Legion of Honour. After the peace of Tilsit he was made chief of the staff to Ney, and created a baron. In the Spanish campaign of 1808 his advice was often of the highest value to the marshal, but Jomini quarrelled with his chief, and was left almost at the mercy of his numerous enemies, especially Berthier, the emperor’s chief of staff. Overtures had been made to him, as early as 1807, to enter the Russian service, but Napoleon, hearing of his intention to leave the French army, compelled him to remain in the service with the rank of general of brigade. For some years thereafter Jomini held both a French and a Russian commission, with the consent of both sovereigns. But when war between France and Russia broke out, he was in a difficult position, which he ended by taking a command on the line of communication. He was thus engaged when the retreat from Moscow and the uprising of Prussia transferred the seat of war to central Germany. He promptly rejoined Ney, took part in the battle of Lützen and, as chief of the staff of Ney’s group of corps, rendered distinguished services before and at the battle of Bautzen, and was recommended for the rank of general of division. Berthier, however, not only erased Jomini’s name from the list, but put him under arrest and censured him in army orders for failing to supply certain returns that had been called for. How far Jomini was held responsible for certain misunderstandings which prevented the attainment of all the results hoped for from Ney’s attack (see [Bautzen]) there is no means of knowing. But the pretext for censure was trivial and baseless, and during the armistice Jomini did as he had intended to do in 1809-10, and went into the Russian service. As things then were, this was tantamount to deserting to the enemy, and so it was regarded by Napoleon and by the French army, and by not a few of his new comrades. It must be observed, in Jomini’s defence, that he had for years held a dormant commission in the Russian army, that he had declined to take part in the invasion of Russia in 1812, and that he was a Swiss and not a Frenchman. His patriotism was indeed unquestioned, and he withdrew from the Allied Army in 1814 when he found that he could not prevent the violation of Swiss neutrality. Apart from love of his own country, the desire to study, to teach and to practise the art of war was his ruling motive. At the critical moment of the battle of Eylau he exclaimed, “If I were the Russian commander for two hours!” On joining the allies he received the rank of lieutenant-general and the appointment of aide-de-camp from the tsar, and rendered important assistance during the German campaign, though the charge that he betrayed the numbers, positions and intentions of the French to the enemy was later acknowledged by Napoleon to be without foundation. He declined as a Swiss patriot and as a French officer to take part in the passage of the Rhine at Basel and the subsequent invasion of France.
In 1815 he was with the emperor Alexander in Paris, and attempted in vain to save the life of his old commander Ney. This almost cost him his position in the Russian service, but he succeeded in making head against his enemies, and took part in the congress of Vienna. Resuming, after a period of several years of retirement and literary work, his post in the Russian army, he was about 1823 made a full general, and thenceforward until his retirement in 1829 he was principally employed in the military education of the tsarevich Nicholas (afterwards emperor) and in the organization of the Russian staff college, which was opened in 1832 and still bears its original name of the Nicholas academy. In 1828 he was employed in the field in the Russo-Turkish War, and at the siege of Varna he was given the grand cordon of the Alexander order. This was his last active service. In 1829 he settled at Brussels where he chiefly lived for the next thirty years. In 1853, after trying without success to bring about a political understanding between France and Russia, Jomini was called to St Petersburg to act as a military adviser to the tsar during the Crimean War. He returned to Brussels on the conclusion of peace in 1856 and some years afterwards settled at Passy near Paris. He was busily employed up to the end of his life in writing treatises, pamphlets and open letters on subjects of military art and history, and in 1859 he was asked by Napoleon III. to furnish a plan of campaign in the Italian War. One of his last essays dealt with the war of 1866 and the influence of the breech-loading rifle, and he died at Passy on the 24th of March 1869 only a year before the Franco-German War. Thus one of the earliest of the great military theorists lived to speculate on the tactics of the present day.
Amongst his numerous works the principal, besides the Traité, are: Histoire critique et militaire des campagnes de la Révolution (1806; new ed. 1819-1824); Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon racontée par lui-même (1827) and, perhaps the best known of all his publications, the theoretical Précis de l’art de la guerre (1836).
See Ferdinand Lecomte, Le Général Jomini, sa vie et ses écrits (1861; new ed. 1888); C. A. Saint-Beuve, Le Général Jomini (1869); A. Pascal, Observations historiques sur la vie, &c., du général Jomini (1842).
JOMMELLI, NICCOLA (1714-1774), Italian composer, was born at Aversa near Naples on the 10th of September 1714. He received his musical education at two of the famous music schools of that capital, being a pupil of the Conservatorio de’ poveri di Gesù Cristo under Feo, and also of the Conservatorio della pietà dei Turchini under Prota, Mancini and Leo. His first opera, L’Errore amoroso, was successfully produced at Naples (under a pseudonym) when Jommelli was only twenty-three. Three years afterwards he went to Rome to bring out two new operas, and thence to Bologna, where he profited by the advice of Padre Martini, the greatest contrapuntist of his age. In the meantime Jommelli’s fame began to spread beyond the limits of his country, and in 1748 he went for the first time to Vienna, where one of his finest operas, Didone, was produced. Three years later he returned to Italy, and in 1753 he obtained the post of chapel-master to the duke of Württemberg at Stuttgart, which city he made his home for a number of years. In the same year he had ten commissions to write operas for princely courts. In Stuttgart he permitted no operas but his own to be produced, and he modified his style in accordance with German taste, so much that, when after an absence of fifteen years he returned to Naples, his countrymen hissed two of his operas off the stage. He retired in consequence to his native village, and only occasionally emerged from his solitude to take part in the musical life of the capital. His death took place on the 25th of August 1774, his last composition being the celebrated Miserere, a setting for two female voices of Saverio Mattei’s Italian paraphrase of Psalm li. Jommelli is the most representative composer of the generation following Leo and Durante. He approaches very closely to Mozart in his style, and is important as one of the composers who, by welding together German and Italian characteristics, helped to form the musical language of the great composers of the classical period of Vienna.
JONAH, in the Bible, a prophet born at Gath-hepher in Zebulun, perhaps under Jeroboam (2) (781-741 B.C.?), who foretold the deliverance of Israel from the Aramaeans (2 Kings xiv. 25). This prophet may also be the hero of the much later book of Jonah, but how different a man is he! It is, however, the later Jonah who chiefly interests us. New problems have arisen out of the book which relates to him, but here we can only attempt to consider what, in a certain sense, may be called the surface meaning of the text.
This, then is what we appear to be told. The prophet Jonah is summoned to go to Nineveh, a great and wicked city (cf. 4 Esdras ii. 8, 9), and prophesy against it. Jonah, however, is afraid (iv. 2) that the Ninevites may repent, so, instead of going to Nineveh, he proceeds to Joppa, and takes his passage in a ship bound for Tarshish. But soon a storm arises, and, supplication to the gods failing, the sailors cast lots to discover the guilty man who has brought this great trouble. The lot falls on Jonah, who has been roughly awakened by the captain, and when questioned frankly owns that he is a Hebrew and a worshipper of the divine creator Yahweh, from whom he has sought to flee (as if He were only the god of Canaan). Jonah advises the sailors to throw him into the sea. This, after praying to Yahweh, they actually do; at once the sea becomes calm and they sacrifice to Yahweh. Meantime God has “appointed a great fish” which swallows up Jonah. Three days and three nights he is in the fish’s belly, till, at a word from Yahweh, it vomits Jonah on to the dry ground. Again Jonah receives the divine call. This time he obeys. After delivering his message to Nineveh he makes himself a booth outside the walls and waits in vain for the destruction of the city (probably iv. 5 is misplaced and should stand after iii. 4). Thereupon Jonah beseeches Yahweh to take away his worthless life. As an answer Yahweh “appoints” a small quickly-growing tree with large leaves (the castor-oil plant) to come up over the angry prophet and shelter him from the sun. But the next day the beneficent tree perishes by God’s “appointment” from a worm-bite. Once more God “appoints” something; it is the east wind, which, together with the fierce heat, brings Jonah again to desperation. The close is fine, and reminds us of Job. God himself gives short-sighted man a lesson. Jonah has pitied the tree, and should not God have pity on so great a city?
Two results of criticism are widely accepted. One relates to the psalm in ch. ii., which has been transferred from some other place; it is in fact an anticipatory thanksgiving for the deliverance of Israel, mostly composed of phrases from other psalms. The other is that the narrative before us is not historical but an imaginative story (such as was called a Midrash) based upon Biblical data and tending to edification. It is, however, a story of high type. The narrator considered that Israel had to be a prophet to the “nations” at large, that Israel had, like Jonah, neglected its duty and for its punishment was “swallowed up” in foreign lands. God had watched over His people and prepared its choicer members to fulfil His purpose. This company of faithful but not always sufficiently charitable men represented their people, so that it might be said that Israel itself (the second Isaiah’s “Servant of Yahweh”—see [Isaiah]) had taken up its duty, but in an ungenial spirit which grieved the All-merciful One. The book, which is post-exilic, may therefore be grouped with another Midrash, the Book of Ruth, which also appears to represent a current of thought opposed to the exclusive spirit of Jewish legalism.
Some critics, however, think that the key of symbolism needs to be supplemented by that of mythology. The “great fish” especially has a very mythological appearance. The Babylonian dragon myth (see [Cosmogony]) is often alluded to in the Old Testament, e.g. in Jer. li. 44, which, as the present writer long since pointed out, may supply the missing link between Jonah i. 17 and the original myth. For the “great fish” is ultimately Tiāmat, the dragon of chaos, represented historically by Nebuchadrezzar, by whom for a time God permitted or “appointed” Israel to be swallowed up.
For further details see T. K. Cheyne, Ency. Bib., “Jonah”; and his article “Jonah, a Study in Jewish Folklore and Religion,” Theological Review (1877), pp. 211-219. König, Hastings’s Dict. Bible, “Jonah,” is full but not lucid; C. H. H. Wright, Biblical Studies (1886) argues ably for the symbolic theory. Against Cheyne, see Marti’s work on the Minor Prophets (1894); the “great fish” and the “three days and three nights” remain unexplained by this writer. On these points see Zimmern, K.A.T. (3), pp. 366, 389, 508. The difficulties of the mission of a Hebrew prophet to Asshur are diminished by Cheyne’s later theory, Critica Biblica (1904), pp. 150-152.
(T. K. C.)
JONAH, RABBI (Abulwalid Merwan Ibn Janah, also R. Marinus) (c. 990-c. 1050), the greatest Hebrew grammarian and lexicographer of the middle ages. He was born before the year 990, in Cordova, studied in Lucena, left his native city in 1012, and, after somewhat protracted wanderings, settled in Saragossa, where he died before 1050. He was a physician, and Ibn Abi Uṣaibia, in his treatise on Arabian doctors, mentions him as the author of a medical work. But Rabbi Jonah saw the true vocation of his life in the scientific investigation of the Hebrew language and in a rational biblical exegesis based upon sound linguistic knowledge. It is true, he wrote no actual commentary on the Bible, but his philological works exercised the greatest influence on Judaic exegesis. His first work—composed, like all the rest, in Arabic—bears the title Almustalḥa, and forms, as is indicated by the word, a criticism and at the same time a supplement to the two works of Yehuda ‘Ḥayyuj on the verbs with weak-sounding and double-sounding roots. These two tractates, with which ‘Ḥayyuj had laid the foundations of scientific Hebrew grammar, were recognized by Abulwalid as the basis of his own grammatical investigations, and Abraham Ibn Daud, when enumerating the great Spanish Jews in his history, sums up the significance of R. Jonah in the words: “He completed what ‘Ḥayyuj had begun.” The principal work of R. Jonah is the Kitab al Tanḳiḥ (“Book of Exact Investigation”), which consists of two parts, regarded as two distinct books—the Kitab al-Luma (“Book of Many-coloured Flower-beds”) and the Kitab al-uṣul (“Book of Roots”). The former (ed. J. Derenbourg, Paris, 1886) contains the grammar, the latter (ed. Ad. Neubauer, Oxford, 1875) the lexicon of the Hebrew language. Both works are also published in the Hebrew translation of Yehuda Ibn Tibbon (Sefer Ha-Riḳmah, ed. B. Goldberg, Frankfurt am Main, 1855; Sefer Ha-Schoraschim, ed. W. Bacher, Berlin, 1897). The other writings of Rabbi Jonah, so far as extant, have appeared in an edition of the Arabic original accompanied by a French translation (Opuscules et traités d’Abou’l Walid, ed. Joseph and Hartwig Derenbourg, Paris 1880). A few fragments and numerous quotations in his principal book form our only knowledge of the Kitab al-Tashwir (“Book of Refutation”) a controversial work in four parts, in which Rabbi Jonah successfully repelled the attacks of the opponents of his first treatise. At the head of this opposition stood the famous Samuel Ibn Nagdela (S. Ha-Nagid) a disciple of ‘Ḥayyuj. The grammatical work of Rabbi Jonah extended, moreover, to the domain of rhetoric and biblical hermeneutics, and his lexicon contains many exegetical excursuses. This lexicon is of especial importance by reason of its ample contribution to the comparative philology of the Semitic languages—Hebrew and Arabic, in particular. Abulwalid’s works mark the culminating point of Hebrew scholarship during the middle ages, and he attained a level which was not surpassed till the modern development of philological science in the 19th century.
See S. Munk, Notice sur Abou’l Walid (Paris, 1851); W. Bacher, Leben und Werke des Abulwalid und die Quellen seiner Schrifterklärung (Leipzig, 1885); id., Aus der Schrifterklärung des Abulwalid (Leipzig, 1889); id., Die hebr.-arabische Sprachvergleichung des Abulwalid (Vienna, 1884); id., Die hebräisch-neuhebräische und hebr.-aramäische Sprachvergleichung des Abulwalid (Vienna, 1885).
(W. Ba.)
JONAS, JUSTUS (1493-1555), German Protestant reformer, was born at Nordhausen in Thuringia, on the 5th of June 1493. His real name was Jodokus (Jobst) Koch, which he changed according to the common custom of German scholars in the 16th century, when at the university of Erfurt. He entered that university in 1506, studied law and the humanities, and became Master of Arts in 1510. In 1511 he went to Wittenberg, where he took his bachelor’s degree in law. He returned to Erfurt in 1514 or 1515, was ordained priest, and in 1518 was promoted doctor in both faculties and appointed to a well-endowed canonry in the church of St Severus, to which a professorship of law was attached. His great admiration for Erasmus first led him to Greek and biblical studies, and his election in May 1519 as rector of the university was regarded as a triumph for the partisans of the New Learning. It was not, however, until after the Leipzig disputation with Eck that Luther won his allegiance. He accompanied Luther to Worms in 1521, and there was appointed by the elector of Saxony professor of canon law at Wittenberg. During Luther’s stay in the Wartburg Jonas was one of the most active of the Wittenberg reformers. Giving himself up to preaching and polemics, he aided the Reformation by his gift as a translator, turning Luther’s and Melanchthon’s works into German or Latin as the case might be, thus becoming a sort of double of both. He was busied in conferences and visitations during the next twenty years, and in diplomatic work with the princes. In 1541 he began a successful preaching crusade in Halle; he became superintendent of its churches in 1542. In 1546 he was present at Luther’s deathbed at Eisleben, and preached the funeral sermon; but in the same year was banished from the duchy by Maurice, duke (later elector) of Saxony. From that time until his death, Jonas was unable to secure a satisfactory living. He wandered from place to place preaching, and finally went to Eisfeld (1553), where he died. He had been married three times.
See Briefswechsel des Justus Jonas, gesammelt und bearbeitet von G. Kawerau (2 vols., Halle, 1884-1885); Kawerau’s article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie, ed. 3, with bibliography.
JONATHAN (Heb. “Yah [weh] gives”). Of the many Jewish bearers of this name, three are well known: (1) the grandson of Moses, who was priest at Dan (Judg. xviii. 30). The reading Manasseh (see R.V. mg.; obtained by inserting n above the consonantal text in the Hebrew) is apparently intended to suggest that he was the son of that idolatrous king. (2) The eldest son of Saul, who, together with his father, freed Israel from the crushing oppression of the Philistines (1 Sam. xiii. seq.). Both are lauded in an elegy quoted from the Book of Jashar (2 Sam. i.) for their warm mutual love, their heroism, and their labours on behalf of the people. Jonathan’s name is most familiar for the firm friendship which subsisted between him and David (1 Sam. xviii. 1-4; xix. 1-7; xx., xxii. 8; xxiii. 16-18), and when he fell at the battle of Gilboa and left behind him a young child (1 Sam. xxxi.; 2 Sam. iv. 4), David took charge of the youth and gave him a place at his court (2 Sam. ix.). See further [David], [Saul]. (3) The Maccabee (see [Jews]; [Maccabees]).
JONCIÈRES, VICTORIN (1839-1903), French composer, was born in Paris on the 12th of April 1839. He first devoted his attention to painting, but afterwards took up the serious study of music. He entered the Paris Conservatoire, but did not remain there long, because he had espoused too warmly the cause of Wagner against his professor. He composed the following operas: Sardanapale (1867), Le Dernier jour de Pompéi (1869), Dimitri (1876), La Reine Berthe (1878), Le Chevalier Jean (1885), Lancelot (1900). He also wrote incidental music to Hamlet, a symphony, and other works. Joncières’ admiration for Wagner asserted itself rather in a musical than a dramatic sense. The influence of the German master’s earlier style can be traced in his operas. Joncières, however, adhered to the recognized forms of the French opera and did not model his works according to the later developments of the Wagnerian “music drama.” He may indeed be said to have been at least as much influenced by Gounod as by Wagner. From 1871 he was musical critic for La Liberté. He died on the 26th of October 1903.
JONES, ALFRED GILPIN (1824-1906), Canadian politician, was born at Weymouth, Nova Scotia, in September 1824, the son of Guy C. Jones of Yarmouth, and grandson of a United Empire Loyalist. In 1865 he opposed the federation of the British American provinces, and, in his anger at the refusal of the British government to repeal such portions of the British North America Act as referred to Nova Scotia, made a speech which won for him the name of Haul-down-the-flag Jones. He was for many years a member of the Federal Parliament, and for a few months in 1878 was minister of militia under the Liberal government. Largely owing to his influence the Liberal party refused in 1878 to abandon its Free Trade policy, an obstinacy which led to its defeat in that year. In 1900 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of his native province, and held this position till his death on the 15th of March 1906.
JONES, SIR ALFRED LEWIS (1845-1909), British shipowner, was born in Carmarthenshire, in 1845. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to the managers of the African Steamship Company at Liverpool, making several voyages to the west coast of Africa. By the time he was twenty-six he had risen to be manager of the business. Not finding sufficient scope in this post, he borrowed money to purchase two or three small sailing vessels, and started in the shipping business on his own account. The venture succeeded, and he made additions to his fleet, but after a few years’ successful trading, realizing that sailing ships were about to be superseded by steamers, he sold his vessels. About this time (1891) Messrs. Elder, Dempster & Co., who purchased the business of the old African Steamship Company, offered him a managerial post. This offer he accepted, subject to Messrs. Elder, Dempster selling him a number of their shares, and he thus acquired an interest in the business, and subsequently, by further share purchases, its control. See further [Steamship Lines]. In 1901 he was knighted. Sir Alfred Jones took a keen interest in imperial affairs, and was instrumental in founding the Liverpool school of tropical medicine. He acquired considerable territorial interests in West Africa, and financial interests in many of the companies engaged in opening up and developing that part of the world. He also took the leading part in opening up a new line of communication with the West Indies, and stimulating the Jamaica fruit trade and tourist traffic. He died on the 13th of December 1909, leaving large charitable bequests.
JONES, EBENEZER (1820-1860), British poet, was born in Islington, London, on the 20th of January 1820. His father, who was of Welsh extraction, was a strict Calvinist, and Ebenezer was educated at a dull, middle-class school. The death of his father obliged him to become a clerk in the office of a tea merchant. Shelley and Carlyle were his spiritual masters, and he spent all his spare time in reading and writing; but he developed an exaggerated style of thought and expression, due partly to a defective education. The unkind reception of his Studies of Sensation and Event (1843) seemed to be the last drop in his bitter cup of life. Baffled and disheartened, he destroyed his manuscripts. He earned his living as an accountant and by literary hack work, and it was not until he was rapidly dying of consumption that he wrote his three remarkable poems, “Winter Hymn to the Snow,” “When the World is Burning” and “To Death.” The fame that these and some of the pieces in the early volume brought to their author came too late. He died on the 14th of September 1860.
It was not till 1870 that Dante Gabriel Rossetti praised his work in Notes and Queries. Rossetti’s example was followed by W. B. Scott, Theodore Watts-Dunton, who contributed some papers on the subject to the Athenaeum (September and October 1878), and R. H. Sheppard, who edited Studies of Sensation and Event in 1879.
JONES, ERNEST CHARLES (1819-1869), English Chartist, was born at Berlin on the 25th of January 1819, and educated in Germany. His father, an officer in the British army, was then equerry to the duke of Cumberland—afterwards king of Hanover. In 1838 Jones came to England, and in 1841 published anonymously The Wood Spirit, a romantic novel. This was followed by some songs and poems. In 1844 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. In 1845 he joined the Chartist agitation, quickly becoming its most prominent figure, and vigorously carrying on the party’s campaign on the platform and in the press. His speeches, in which he openly advocated physical force, led to his prosecution, and he was sentenced in 1848 to two years’ imprisonment for sedition. While in prison he wrote, it is said in his own blood on leaves torn from a prayer-book, The Revolt of Hindostan, an epic poem. On his release he again became the leader of what remained of the Chartist party and editor of its organ. But he was almost its only public speaker; he was out of sympathy with the other leading Chartists, and soon joined the advanced Radical party. Thenceforward he devoted himself to law and literature, writing novels, tales and political songs. He made several unsuccessful attempts to enter parliament, and was about to contest Manchester, with the certainty of being returned, when he died there on the 26th of January 1869. He is believed to have sacrificed a considerable fortune rather than abandon his Chartist principles. His wife was Jane Atherley; and his son, Llewellyn Atherley-Jones, K.C. (b. 1851), became a well-known barrister and Liberal member of parliament.
JONES, HENRY (1831-1899), English author, well known as a writer on whist under his nom de guerre “Cavendish,” was born in London on the 2nd of November 1831, being the eldest son of Henry D. Jones, a medical practitioner. He adopted his father’s profession, established himself in 1852 and continued for sixteen years in practice in London. The father was a keen devotee of whist, and under his eye the son became early in life a good player. He was a member of several whist clubs, among them the “Cavendish,” and in 1862 appeared his Principles of Whist, stated and explained by “Cavendish,” which was destined to become the leading authority as to the practice of the game. This work was followed by treatises on the laws of piquet and écarté. “Cavendish” also wrote on billiards, lawn tennis and croquet, and contributed articles on whist and other games to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. “’Cavendish’ was not a law-maker, but he codified and commented upon the laws which had been made during many generations of card-playing.” One of the most noteworthy points in his character was the manner in which he kept himself abreast of improvements in his favourite game. He died on the 10th of February 1899.
JONES, HENRY ARTHUR (1851- ), English dramatist, was born at Grandborough, Buckinghamshire, on the 28th of September 1851 the son of Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare time being given to literary pursuits. He was twenty-seven before his first piece, Only Round the Corner, was produced at the Exeter Theatre, but within four years of his début as a dramatist he scored a great success by The Silver King (November 1882), written with Henry Herman, a melodrama produced by Wilson Barrett at the Princess’s Theatre. Its financial success enabled the author to write a play “to please himself.” Saints and Sinners (1884), which ran for two hundred nights, placed on the stage a picture of middle-class life and religion in a country town, and the introduction of the religious element raised considerable outcry. The author defended himself in an article published in the Nineteenth Century (January 1885), taking for his starting-point a quotation from the preface to Molière’s Tartuffe. His next serious piece was The Middleman (1889), followed by Judah (1890), both powerful plays, which established his reputation. Later plays were The Dancing Girl (1891), The Crusaders (1891), The Bauble Shop (1893), The Tempter (1893), The Masqueraders (1894), The Case of Rebellious Susan (1894), The Triumph of the Philistines (1895), Michael and his Lost Angel (1896), The Rogue’s Comedy (1896), The Physician (1897), The Liars (1897), Carnac Sahib (1899), The Manœuvres of Jane (1899), The Lackeys’ Carnival (1900), Mrs Dane’s Defence (1900), The Princess’s Nose (1902), Chance the Idol (1902), Whitewashing Julia (1903), Joseph Entangled (1904), The Chevalier (1904), &c. A uniform edition of his plays began to be issued in 1891; and his own views of dramatic art have been expressed from time to time in lectures and essays, collected in 1895 as The Renascence of the English Drama.
JONES, INIGO (1573-1651), English architect, sometimes called the “English Palladio,” the son of a cloth-worker, was born in London on the 15th of July 1573. It is stated that he was apprenticed to a joiner, but at any rate his talent for drawing attracted the attention of Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel (some say William, 3rd earl of Pembroke), through whose help he went to study landscape-painting in Italy. His preference soon transferred itself to architecture, and, following chiefly the style of Palladio, he acquired at Venice such a reputation that in 1604 he was invited by Christian IV. to Denmark, where he is said to have designed the two great royal palaces of Rosenborg and Frederiksborg. In the following year he accompanied Anne of Denmark to the court of James I. of England, where, besides being appointed architect to the queen and Prince Henry, he was employed in supplying the designs and decorations of the court masques. After a second visit to Italy in 1612, Jones was appointed surveyor-general of royal buildings by James I., and was engaged to prepare designs for a new palace at Whitehall. In 1620 he was employed by the king to investigate the origin of Stonehenge, when he came to the absurd conclusion that it had been a Roman temple. Shortly afterwards he was appointed one of the commissioners for the repair of St Paul’s, but the work was not begun till 1633. Under Charles I. he enjoyed the same offices as under his predecessor, and in the capacity of designer of the masques he came into collision with Ben Jonson, who frequently made him the butt of his satire. After the Civil War Jones was forced to pay heavy fines as a courtier and malignant. He died in poverty on the 5th of July 1651.
A list of the principal buildings designed by Jones is given in Dallaway’s edition of Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting, and for an estimate of him as an architect see Fergusson’s History of Modern Architecture. The Architecture of Palladio, in 4 books, by Inigo Jones, appeared in 1715; The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain, called Stonehenge, restored by Inigo Jones, in 1655 (ed. with memoir, 1725); the Designs of Inigo Jones, by W. Kent, in 1727; and The Designs of Inigo Jones, by J. Ware, in 1757. See also G. H. Birch, London Churches of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (1896); W. J. Loftie, Inigo Jones and Wren, or the Rise and Decline of Modern Architecture in England (1893).
JONES, JOHN (c. 1800-1882), English art collector, was born about 1800 in or near London. He was apprenticed to a tailor, and about 1825 opened a shop of his own in the west-end of London. In 1850 he was able to retire from active management with a large fortune. When quite a young man he had begun to collect articles of vertu. The rooms over his shop in which he at first lived were soon crowded, and even the bedrooms of his new house in Piccadilly were filled with art treasures. His collection was valued at approximately £250,000. Jones died in London on the 7th of January 1882, leaving his pictures, furniture and objects of art to the South Kensington Museum.
A Catalogue of the Jones Bequest was published by the Museum in 1882, and a Handbook, with memoir, in 1883.
JONES, JOHN PAUL (1747-1792), American naval officer, was born on the 6th of July 1747, on the estate of Arbigland, in the parish of Kirkbean and the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, Scotland. His father, John Paul, was gardener to Robert Craik, a member of parliament; and his mother, Jean Macduff, was the daughter of a Highlander. Young John Paul, at the age of twelve, became shipmaster’s apprentice to a merchant of Whitehaven, named Younger. At seventeen he shipped as second mate and in the next year as first mate in one of his master’s vessels; on being released from his indentures, he acquired an interest in a ship, and as first mate made two voyages between Jamaica and the Guinea coast, trading in slaves. Becoming dissatisfied with this kind of employment, he sold his share in the ship and embarked for England. During the voyage both the captain and the mate died of fever, and John Paul took command and brought the ship safely to port. The owners gave him and the crew 10% of the cargo; after 1768, as captain of one of their merchantmen, John Paul made several voyages to America; but for unknown reasons he suddenly gave up his command to live in America in poverty and obscurity until 1775. During this period he assumed the name of Jones, apparently out of regard for Willie Jones, a wealthy planter and prominent political leader of North Carolina, who had befriended John Paul in his days of poverty.
When war broke out between England and her American colonies, John Paul Jones was commissioned as a first lieutenant by the Continental Congress, on the 22nd of December 1775. In 1776 he participated in the unsuccessful attack on the island of New Providence, and as commander first of the “Providence” and then of the “Alfred” he cruised between Bermuda and Nova Scotia, inflicting much damage on British shipping and fisheries. On the 10th of October 1776 he was promoted captain. On the 1st of November 1777 he sailed in the sloop-of-war “Ranger” for France with despatches for the American commissioners, announcing the surrender of Burgoyne and asking that Jones should be supplied with a swift frigate for harassing the coasts of England. Failing to secure a frigate, Jones sailed from Brest in the “Ranger” on the 10th of April 1778. A few days later he surprised the garrisons of the two forts commanding the harbour of Whitehaven, a port with which he was familiar from boyhood, spiked the guns and made an unsuccessful attempt to fire the shipping. Four days thereafter he encountered the British sloop-of-war “Drake,” a vessel slightly superior to his in fighting capacity, and after an hour’s engagement the British ship struck her colours and was taken to Brest. By this exploit Jones became a great hero in the eyes of the French, just beginning a war with Great Britain. With the rank of commodore he was now put at the head of a squadron of five ships. His flagship, the “Duras,” a re-fitted East Indiaman, was re-named by him the “Bonhomme Richard,” as a compliment to Benjamin Franklin, whose Poor Richard’s Almanac was then popular in France. On the 14th of August the five ships sailed from L’Orient, accompanied by two French privateers. Several of the French commanders under Jones proved insubordinate, and the privateers and three of the men-of-war soon deserted him. With the others, however, he continued to take prizes, and even planned to attack the port of Leith, but was prevented by unfavourable winds. On the evening of the 23rd of September the three men-of-war sighted two British men-of-war, the “Serapis” and the “Countess of Scarbrough,” off Flamborough Head. The “Alliance,” commanded by Captain Landais, made off, leaving the “Bonhomme Richard” and the “Pallas” to engage the Englishmen. Jones engaged the greatly superior “Serapis,” and after a desperate battle of three and a half hours compelled the English ship to surrender. The “Countess of Scarbrough” had meanwhile struck to the more formidable “Pallas.” Jones transferred his men and supplies to the “Serapis,” and the next day the “Bonhomme Richard” sank.
During the following year Jones spent much of his time in Paris. Louis XVI. gave him a gold-hilted sword and the royal order of military merit, and made him chevalier of France. Early in 1781 Jones returned to America to secure a new command. Congress offered him the command of the “America,” a frigate then building, but the vessel was shortly afterwards given to France. In November 1783 he was sent to Paris as agent for the prizes captured in European waters under his own command, and although he gave much attention to social affairs and engaged in several private business enterprises, he was very successful in collecting the prize money. Early in 1787 he returned to America and received a gold medal from Congress in recognition of his services.
In 1788 Jones entered the service of the empress Catherine of Russia, avowing his intention, however, “to preserve the condition of an American citizen and officer.” As a rear-admiral he took part in the naval campaign in the Liman (an arm of the Black Sea, into which flow the Bug and Dnieper rivers) against the Turks, but the jealous intrigues of Russian officers caused him to be recalled to St Petersburg for the pretended purpose of being transferred to a command in the North Sea. Here he was compelled to remain in idleness, while rival officers plotted against him and even maliciously assailed his private character. In August 1789 he left St Petersburg a bitterly disappointed man. In May 1790 he arrived in Paris, where he remained in retirement during the rest of his life, although he made several efforts to re-enter the Russian service.
Undue exertion and exposure had wasted his strength before he reached the prime of life, and after an illness, in which he was attended by the queen’s physician, he died on the 18th of July 1792. His body was interred in the St Louis cemetery for foreign Protestants, the funeral expenses being paid from the private purse of Pierrot François Simmoneau, the king’s commissary. In the confusion during the following years the burial place of Paul Jones was forgotten; but in June 1899 General Horace Porter, American ambassador to France, began a systematic search for the body, and after excavations on the site of the old Protestant cemetery, now covered with houses, a leaden coffin was discovered, which contained the body in a remarkable state of preservation. In July 1905 a fleet of American war-ships carried the body to Annapolis, where it now rests in one of the buildings of the naval academy.
Jones was a seaman of great bravery and technical ability, but over-jealous of his reputation and inclined to be querulous and boastful. The charges by the English that he was a pirate were particularly galling to him. Although of unprepossessing appearance, 5 ft. 7 in. in height and slightly round-shouldered, he was noted for his pleasant manners and was welcomed into the most brilliant courts of Europe.
Romance has played with the memory of Paul Jones to such an extent that few accounts of his life are correct. Of the early biographies the best are Sherburne’s (London, 1825), chiefly a collection of Jones’s correspondence; the Janette-Taylor Collection (New York, 1830), containing numerous extracts from his letters and journals; and the life by A. S. MacKenzie (2 vols., New York, 1846). In recent years a number of new biographies have appeared, including A. C. Buell’s (2 vols., 1900), the trustworthiness of which has been discredited, and Hutchins Hapgood’s in the Riverside Biographical Series (1901). The life by Cyrus Townsend Brady in the “Great Commanders Series” (1900) is perhaps the best.
JONES, MICHAEL (d. 1649), British soldier. His father was bishop of Killaloe in Ireland. At the outbreak of the English Civil War he was studying law, but he soon took service in the army of the king in Ireland. He was present with Ormonde’s army in many of the expeditions and combats of the devastating Irish War, but upon the conclusion of the “Irish Cessation” (see [Ormonde, James Butler, Duke of]) he resolved to leave the king’s service for that of the parliament, in which he soon distinguished himself by his activity and skill. In the Welsh War, and especially at the last great victory at Rowton Heath, Jones’s cavalry was always far superior to that of the Royalists, and in reward for his services he was made governor of Chester when that city fell into the hands of the parliament. Soon afterwards Jones was sent again to the Irish War, in the capacity of commander-in-chief. He began his work by reorganizing the army in the neighbourhood of Dublin, and for some time he carried on a desultory war of posts, necessarily more concerned for his supplies than for a victory. But at Dungan Hill he obtained a complete success over the army of General Preston, and though the war was by no means ended, Jones was able to hold a large tract of country for the parliament. But on the execution of Charles I., the war entered upon a new phase, and garrison after garrison fell to Ormonde’s Royalists. Soon Jones was shut up in Dublin, and then followed a siege which was regarded both in England and Ireland with the most intense interest. On the 2nd of August 1649 the Dublin garrison relieved itself by the brilliant action of Rathmines, in which the royal army was practically destroyed. A fortnight later Cromwell landed with heavy reinforcements from England. Jones, his lieutenant-general, took the field; but on the 19th of December 1649 he died, worn out by the fatigues of the campaign.
JONES, OWEN (1741-1814), Welsh antiquary, was born on the 3rd of September 1741 at Llanvihangel Glyn y Myvyr in Denbighshire. In 1760 he entered the service of a London firm of furriers, to whose business he ultimately succeeded. He had from boyhood studied Welsh literature, and later devoted time and money to its collection. Assisted by Edward William of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and Dr. Owen Pughe, he published, at a cost of more than £1000, the well-known Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales (1801-1807), a collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the 14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are deposited in the British Museum; the material not utilized in the Myvyrian Archaiology amounts to 100 volumes, containing 16,000 pages of verse and 15,300 pages of prose. Jones was the founder of the Gwyneddigion Society (1772) in London for the encouragement of Welsh studies and literature; and he began in 1805 a miscellany—the Greal—of which only one volume appeared. An edition of the poems of Davydd ab Gwilym was also issued at his expense. He died on the 26th of December 1814 at his business premises in Upper Thames Street, London.
JONES, OWEN (1809-1874), British architect and art decorator, son of Owen Jones, a Welsh antiquary, was born in London. 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. 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 was responsible for the general decoration of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Along with Digby Wyatt, Jones collected the casts of works of art with which the palace was filled. He died in London on the 19th of April 1874.
Owen Jones was described in the Builder for 1874 as “the most potent apostle of colour that architectural England has had in these days.” His range of activity is to be traced in his works: Plans, Elevations and Details of the Alhambra (1835-1845), in which he was assisted by MM. Goury and Gayangos; Designs for Mosaic and Tesselated Pavements (1842); Polychromatic 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 (1854); Grammar of Ornament (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, RICHARD (1790-1855), English economist, was born at Tunbridge Wells. The son of a solicitor, he was intended for the legal profession, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. Owing to ill-health, he abandoned the idea of the law and took orders soon after leaving Cambridge. For several years he held curacies in Sussex and Kent. In 1833 he was appointed professor of political economy at King’s College, London, resigning this post in 1835 to succeed T. R. Malthus in the chair of political economy and history at the East India College at Haileybury. He took an active part in the commutation of tithes in 1836 and showed great ability as a tithe commissioner, an office which he filled till 1851. He was for some time, also, a charity commissioner. He died at Haileybury, shortly after he had resigned his professorship, on the 26th of January 1855. In 1831 Jones published his Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation, his most important work. In it he showed himself a thorough-going critic of the Ricardian system.
Jones’s method is inductive; his conclusions are founded on a wide observation of contemporary facts, aided by the study of history. The world he professed to study was not an imaginary world, inhabited by abstract “economic men,” but the real world with the different forms which the ownership and cultivation of land, and, in general, the conditions of production and distribution, assume at different times and places. His recognition of such different systems of life in communities occupying different stages in the progress of civilization led to his proposal of what he called a “political economy of nations.” This was a protest against the practice of taking the exceptional state of facts which exists, and is indeed only partially realized, in a small corner of our planet as representing the uniform type of human societies, and ignoring the effects of the early history and special development of each community as influencing its economic phenomena. Jones is remarkable for his freedom from exaggeration and one-sided statement; thus, whilst holding Malthus in, perhaps, undue esteem, he declines to accept the proposition that an increase of the means of subsistence is necessarily followed by an increase of population; and he maintains what is undoubtedly true, that with the growth of population, in all well-governed and prosperous states, the command over food, instead of diminishing, increases.
A collected edition of Jones’s works, with a preface by W. Whewell, was published in 1859.
JONES, THOMAS RUPERT (1819- ), English geologist and palaeontologist, was born in London on the 1st of October 1819. While at a private school at Ilminster, his attention was attracted to geology by the fossils that are so abundant in the Lias quarries. In 1835 he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Taunton, and he completed his apprenticeship in 1842 at Newbury in Berkshire. He was then engaged in practice mainly in London, till in 1849 he was appointed assistant secretary to the Geological Society of London. In 1862 he was made professor of geology at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Having devoted his especial attention to fossil microzoa, he now became the highest authority in England on the Foraminifera and Entomostraca. He edited the 2nd edition of Mantell’s Medals of Creation (1854), the 3rd edition of Mantell’s Geological Excursions round the Isle of Wight (1854), and the 7th edition of Mantell’s Wonders of Geology (1857); he also edited the 2nd edition of Dixon’s Geology of Sussex (1878). He was elected F.R.S. in 1872 and was awarded the Lyell medal by the Geological Society in 1890. For many years he was specially interested in the geology of South Africa.
His publications include A Monograph of the Entomostraca of the Cretaceous Formation of England (Palaeontograph. Soc., 1849); A Monograph of the Tertiary Entomostraca of England (ibid. 1857); A Monograph of the Fossil Estheriae (ibid. 1862); A Monograph of the Foraminifera of the Crag (ibid. 1866, &c., with H. B. Brady); and numerous articles in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, the Geological Magazine, the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, and other journals.
JONES, WILLIAM (1726-1800), English divine, was born at Lowick, in Northamptonshire on the 30th of July 1726. He was descended from an old Welsh family and one of his progenitors was Colonel John Jones, brother-in-law of Cromwell. He was educated at Charterhouse School, and at University College, Oxford. There a kindred taste for music, as well as a similarity in regard to other points of character, led to his close intimacy with George Horne (q.v.), afterwards bishop of Norwich, whom he induced to study Hutchinsonian doctrines. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 1749, Jones held various preferments. In 1777 he obtained the perpetual curacy of Nayland, Suffolk, and on Horne’s appointment to Norwich became his chaplain, afterwards writing his life. His vicarage became the centre of a High Church coterie, and Jones himself was a link between the non-jurors and the Oxford movement. He could write intelligibly on abstruse topics. He died on the 6th of January 1800.
In 1756 Jones published his tractate On the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, a statement of the doctrine from the Hutchinsonian point of view, with a succinct and able summary of biblical proofs. This was followed in 1762 by an Essay on the First Principles of Natural Philosophy, in which he maintained the theories of Hutchinson in opposition to those of Sir Isaac Newton, and in 1781 he dealt with the same subject in Physiological Disquisitions. Jones was also the originator of the British Critic (May 1793). His collected works, with a life by William Stevens, appeared in 1801, in 12 vols., and were condensed into 6 vols. in 1810. A life of Jones, forming pt. 5 of the Biography of English Divines, was published in 1849.
JONES, SIR WILLIAM (1746-1794), British Orientalist and jurist, was born in London on the 28th of September 1746. He distinguished himself at Harrow, and during his last three years there applied himself to the study of Oriental languages, teaching himself the rudiments of Arabic, and reading Hebrew with tolerable ease. In his vacations he improved his acquaintance with French and Italian. In 1764 Jones entered University College, Oxford, where he continued to study Oriental literature, and perfected himself in Persian and Arabic by the aid of a Syrian Mirza, whom he had discovered and brought from London. He added to his knowledge of Hebrew and made considerable progress in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He began the study of Chinese, and made himself master of the radical characters of that language. During five years he partly supported himself by acting as tutor to Lord Althorpe, afterwards the second Earl Spencer, and in 1766 he obtained a fellowship. Though but twenty-two years of age, he was already becoming famous as an Orientalist, and when Christian VII. of Denmark visited England in 1768, bringing with him a life of Nadir Shah in Persian, Jones was requested to translate the MS. into French. The translation appeared in 1770, with an introduction containing a description of Asia and a short history of Persia. This was followed in the same year by a Traité sur la poésie orientale, and by a French metrical translation of the odes of Hafiz. In 1771 he published a Dissertation sur la littérature orientale, defending Oxford scholars against the criticisms made by Anquetil Du Perron in the introduction to his translation of the Zend-Avesta. In the same year appeared his Grammar of the Persian Language. In 1772 Jones published a volume of Poems, Chiefly Translations from Asiatick Languages, together with Two Essays on the Poetry of Eastern Nations and on the Arts commonly called Imitative, and in 1774 a treatise entitled Poeseos Asiaticæ commentatorium libri sex, which definitely confirmed his authority as an Oriental scholar.
Finding that some more financially profitable occupation was necessary, Jones devoted himself with his customary energy to the study of the law, and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1774. He studied not merely the technicalities, but the philosophy, of law, and within two years had acquired so considerable a reputation that he was in 1776 appointed commissioner in bankruptcy. Besides writing an Essay on the Law of Bailments, which enjoyed a high reputation both in England and America, Jones translated, in 1778, the speeches of Isaeus on the Athenian right of inheritance. In 1780 he was a parliamentary candidate for the university of Oxford, but withdrew from the contest before the day of election, as he found he had no chance of success owing to his Liberal opinions, especially on the questions of the American War and of the slave trade.
In 1783 was published his translation of the seven ancient Arabic poems called Moallakât. In the same year he was appointed judge of the supreme court of judicature at Calcutta, then “Fort William,” and was knighted. Shortly after his arrival in India he founded, in January 1784, the Bengal Asiatic Society, of which he remained president till his death. Convinced as he was of the great importance of consulting the Hindu legal authorities in the original, he at once began the study of Sanskrit, and undertook, in 1788, the colossal task of compiling a digest of Hindu and Mahommedan law. This he did not live to complete, but he published the admirable beginnings of it in his Institutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Manu (1794); his Mohammedan Law of Succession to Property of Intestates; and his Mohammedan Law of Inheritance (1792). In 1789 Jones had completed his translation of Kālidāsa’s most famous drama, Sakuntalā. He also translated the collection of fables entitled the Hitopadesa, the Gītagovinda, and considerable portions of the Vedas, besides editing the text of Kālidāsa’s poem Ritusamhara. He was a large contributor also to his society’s volumes of Asiatic Researches.
His unremitting literary labours, together with his heavy judicial work, told on his health after a ten years’ residence in Bengal; and he died at Calcutta on the 27th of April 1794. An extraordinary linguist, knowing thirteen languages well, and having a moderate acquaintance with twenty-eight others, his range of knowledge was enormous. As a pioneer in Sanskrit learning and as founder of the Asiatic Society he rendered the language and literature of the ancient Hindus accessible to European scholars, and thus became the indirect cause of later achievements in the field of Sanskrit and comparative philology. A monument to his memory was erected by the East India Company in St Paul’s, London, and a statue in Calcutta.
See the Memoir (1804) by Lord Teignmouth, published in the collected edition of Sir W. Jones’s works.
JÖNKÖPING, a town of Sweden, capital of the district (län) of Jönköping, 230 m. S.W. of Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900), 23,143. It occupies a beautiful but somewhat unhealthy position between the southern end of Lake Vetter and two small lakes, Roksjö and Munksjö. Two quarters of the town, Svenska Mad and Tyska Mad, recall the time when the site was a marsh (mad), and buildings were constructed on piles. The residential suburbs among the hills, especially Dunkehallar, are attractive and healthier than the town. The church of St Kristine (c. 1650), the court-houses, town-hall, government buildings, and high school, are noteworthy. The town is one of the leading industrial centres in Sweden. The match manufacture, for which it is principally famous, was founded by Johan Edvard Lundström in 1844. The well-known brand of säkerhets-tändstickor (safety-matches) was introduced later. There are also textile manufactures, paper-factories (on Munksjö), and mechanical works. There is a large fire-arms factory at Huskvarna, 5 m. E. Water-power is supplied here by a fine series of falls. The hill Taberg, 8 m. S., is a mass of magnetic iron ore, rising 410 ft. above the surrounding country, 2950 ft. long and 1475 ft. broad, but the percentage of iron is low as compared with the rich ores of other parts, and the deposit is little worked. Jönköping is the seat of one of the three courts of appeal in Sweden.
Jönköping received the earliest extant Swedish charter in 1284 from Magnus I. The castle is mentioned in 1263, when Waldemar Birgersson married the Danish princess Sophia. Jönköping was afterwards the scene of many events of moment in Scandinavian history—of parliaments in 1357, 1439, and 1599; of the meeting of the Danish and Swedish plenipotentiaries in 1448; and of the death of Sten Sture, the elder, in 1503. In 1612 Gustavus Adolphus caused the inhabitants to destroy their town lest it should fall into the hands of the Danes; but it was rebuilt soon after, and in 1620 received special privileges from the king. At this period a textile industry was started here, the first of any importance in Sweden. It was from the Dutch and German workmen, introduced at this time, that the quarter Tyska Mad received its name. On the 10th of December 1809 the plenipotentiaries of Sweden and Denmark concluded peace in the town.
JONSON, BEN[1] (1573-1637), English dramatist, was born, probably in Westminster, in the beginning of the year 1573 (or possibly, if he reckoned by the unadopted modern calendar, 1572; see Castelain, p. 4, note 1). By the poet’s account his grandfather had been a gentleman who “came from” Carlisle, and originally, the grandson thought, from Annandale. His arms, “three spindles or rhombi,” are the family device of the Johnstones of Annandale, a fact which confirms his assertion of Border descent. Ben Jonson further related that he was born a month after the death of his father, who, after suffering in estate and person under Queen Mary, had in the end “turned minister.” Two years after the birth of her son the widow married again; she may be supposed to have loved him in a passionate way peculiar to herself, since on one occasion we find her revealing an almost ferocious determination to save his honour at the cost of both his life and her own. Jonson’s stepfather was a master bricklayer, living in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross, who provided his stepson with the foundations of a good education. After attending a private school in St Martin’s Lane, the boy was sent to Westminster School at the expense, it is said, of William Camden. Jonson’s gratitude for an education to which in truth he owed an almost inestimable debt concentrated itself upon the “most reverend head” of his benefactor, then second and afterwards head master of the famous school, and the firm friend of his pupil in later life.
After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to Cambridge—according to Fuller, to St John’s College. (For reasons in support of the tradition that he was a member of St John’s College, see J. B. Mullinger, the Eagle, No. xxv.) He says, however, himself that he studied at neither university, but was put to a trade immediately on leaving school. He soon had enough of the trade, which was no doubt his father’s bricklaying, for Henslowe in writing to Edward Alleyne of his affair with Gabriel Spenser calls him “bergemen [sic] Jonson, bricklayer.” Either before or after his marriage—more probably before, as Sir Francis Vere’s three English regiments were not removed from the Low Countries till 1592—he spent some time in that country soldiering, much to his own subsequent satisfaction when the days of self-conscious retrospect arrived, but to no further purpose beyond that of seeing something of the world.
Ben Jonson married not later than 1592. The registers of St Martin’s Church state that his eldest daughter Maria died in November 1593 when she was, Jonson tells us (epigram 22), only six months old. His eldest son Benjamin died of the plague ten years later (epigram 45). (A younger Benjamin died in 1635.) His wife Jonson characterized to Drummond as “a shrew, but honest”; and for a period (undated) of five years he preferred to live without her, enjoying the hospitality of Lord Aubigny (afterwards duke of Lennox). Long burnings of oil among his books, and long spells of recreation at the tavern, such as Jonson loved, are not the most favoured accompaniments of family life. But Jonson was no stranger to the tenderest of affections: two at least of the several children whom his wife bore to him he commemorated in touching little tributes of verse; nor in speaking of his lost eldest daughter did he forget “her mother’s tears.” By the middle of 1597 we come across further documentary evidence of him at home in London in the shape of an entry in Philip Henslowe’s diary (July 28) of 3s. 6d. “received of Bengemenes Johnsones share.” He was therefore by this time—when Shakespeare, his senior by nearly nine years, was already in prosperous circumstances and good esteem—at least a regular member of the acting profession, with a fixed engagement in the lord admiral’s company, then performing under Henslowe’s management at the Rose. Perhaps he had previously acted at the Curtain (a former house of the lord admiral’s men), and “taken mad Jeronimo’s part” on a play-wagon in the highway. This latter appearance, if it ever took place, would, as was pointed out by Gifford, probably have been in Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, since in The First Part of Jeronimo Jonson would have had, most inappropriately, to dwell on the “smallness” of his “bulk.” He was at a subsequent date (1601) employed by Henslowe to write up The Spanish Tragedy, and this fact may have given rise to Wood’s story of his performance as a stroller (see, however, Fleay, The English Drama, ii. 29, 30). Jonson’s additions, which were not the first changes made in the play, are usually supposed to be those printed with The Spanish Tragedy in the edition of 1602; Charles Lamb’s doubts on the subject, which were shared by Coleridge, seem an instance of that subjective kind of criticism which it is unsafe to follow when the external evidence to the contrary is so strong.
According to Aubrey, whose statement must be taken for what it is worth, “Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor.” His physique was certainly not well adapted to the histrionic conditions of his—perhaps of any—day; but, in any case, it was not long before he found his place in the organism of his company. In 1597, as we know from Henslowe, Jonson undertook to write a play for the lord admiral’s men; and in the following year he was mentioned by Merès in his Palladis Tamia as one of “the best for tragedy,” without any reference to a connexion on his part with the other branch of the drama. Whether this was a criticism based on material evidence or an unconscious slip, Ben Jonson in the same year 1598 produced one of the most famous of English comedies, Every Man in his Humour, which was first acted—probably in the earlier part of September—by the lord chamberlain’s company at the Curtain. Shakespeare was one of the actors in Jonson’s comedy, and it is in the character of Old Knowell in this very play that, according to a bold but ingenious guess, he is represented in the half-length portrait of him in the folio of 1623, beneath which were printed Jonson’s lines concerning the picture. Every Man in his Humour was published in 1601; the critical prologue first appears in the folio of 1616, and there are other divergences (see Castelain, appendix A). After the Restoration the play was revived in 1751 by Garrick (who acted Kitely) with alterations, and long continued to be known on the stage. It was followed in the same year by The Case is Altered, acted by the children of the queen’s revels, which contains a satirical attack upon the pageant poet, Anthony Munday. This comedy, which was not included in the folio editions, is one of intrigue rather than of character; it contains obvious reminiscences of Shylock and his daughter. The earlier of these two comedies was indisputably successful.
Before the year 1598 was out, however, Jonson found himself in prison and in danger of the gallows. In a duel, fought on the 22nd of September in Hogsden Fields, he had killed an actor of Henslowe’s company named Gabriel Spenser. The quarrel with Henslowe consequent on this event may account for the production of Every Man in his Humour by the rival company. In prison Jonson was visited by a Roman Catholic priest, and the result (certainly strange, if Jonson’s parentage is considered) was his conversion to the Church of Rome, to which he adhered for twelve years. Jonson was afterwards a diligent student of divinity; but, though his mind was religious, it is not probable that its natural bias much inclined it to dwell upon creeds and their controversies. He pleaded guilty to the charge brought against him, as the rolls of Middlesex sessions show; but, after a short imprisonment, he was released by benefit of clergy, forfeiting his “goods and chattels,” and being branded on his left thumb. The affair does not seem to have affected his reputation; in 1599 he is found back again at work for Henslowe, receiving together with Dekker, Chettle and “another gentleman,” earnest-money for a tragedy (undiscovered) called Robert II., King of Scots. In the same year he brought out through the lord chamberlain’s company (possibly already at the Globe, then newly built or building) the elaborate comedy of Every Man out of his Humour (quarto 1600; fol. 1616)—a play subsequently presented before Queen Elizabeth. The sunshine of court favour, rarely diffused during her reign in rays otherwise than figuratively golden, was not to bring any material comfort to the most learned of her dramatists, before there was laid upon her the inevitable hand of which his courtly epilogue had besought death to forget the use. Indeed, of his Cynthia’s Revels, performed by the chapel children in 1600 and printed with the first title of The Fountain of Self-Love in 1601, though it was no doubt primarily designed as a compliment to the queen, the most marked result had been to offend two playwrights of note—Dekker, with whom he had formerly worked in company, and who had a healthy if rough grip of his own; and Marston, who was perhaps less dangerous by his strength than by his versatility. According to Jonson, his quarrel with Marston had begun by the latter attacking his morals, and in the course of it they came to blows, and might have come to worse. In Cynthia’s Revels, Dekker is generally held to be satirized as Hedon, and Marston as Anaides (Fleay, however, thinks Anaides is Dekker, and Hedon Daniel), while the character of Crites most assuredly has some features of Jonson himself. Learning the intention of the two writers whom he had satirized, or at all events of Dekker, to wreak literary vengeance upon him, he anticipated them in The Poetaster (1601), again played by the children of the queen’s chapel at the Blackfriars and printed in 1602; Marston and Dekker are here ridiculed respectively as the aristocratic Crispinus and the vulgar Demetrius. The play was completed fifteen weeks after its plot was first conceived. It is not certain to what the proceedings against author and play before the lord chief justice, referred to in the dedication of the edition of 1616, had reference, or when they were instituted. Fleay’s supposition that the “purge,” said in the Returne from Parnassus (Pt. II. act iv. sc. iii.) to have been administered by Shakespeare to Jonson in return for Horace’s “pill to the poets” in this piece, consisted of Troilus and Cressida is supremely ingenious, but cannot be examined here. As for Dekker, he retaliated on The Poetaster by the Satiromastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1602). Some more last words were indeed attempted on Jonson’s part, but in the Apologetic Dialogue added to The Poetaster in the edition of 1616, though excluded from that of 1602, he says he intends to turn his attention to tragedy. This intention he apparently carried out immediately, for in 1602 he received £10 from Henslowe for a play, entitled Richard Crookbacke, now lost—unfortunately so, for purposes of comparison in particular, even if it was only, as Fleay conjectures, “an alteration of Marlowe’s play.” According to a statement by Overbury, early in 1603, “Ben Johnson, the poet, now lives upon one Townesend,” supposed to have been the poet and masque-writer Aurelian Townshend, at one time steward to the 1st earl of Salisbury, “and scornes the world.” To his other early patron, Lord Aubigny, Jonson dedicated the first of his two extant tragedies, Sejanus, produced by the king’s servants at the Globe late in 1603, Shakespeare once more taking a part in the performance. Either on its performance or on its appearing in print in 1605, Jonson was called before the privy council by the Earl of Northampton. But it is open to question whether this was the occasion on which, according to Jonson’s statement to Drummond, Northampton “accused him both of popery and treason” (see Castelain, Appendix C). Though, for one reason or another, unsuccessful at first, the endurance of its reputation is attested by its performance, in a German version by an Englishman, John Michael Girish, at the court of the grandson of James I. at Heidelberg.
When the reign of James I. opened in England and an adulatory loyalty seemed intent on showing that it had not exhausted itself at the feet of Gloriana, Jonson’s well-stored brain and ready pen had their share in devising and executing ingenious variations on the theme “Welcome—since we cannot do without thee!” With extraordinary promptitude his genius, which, far from being “ponderous” in its operations, was singularly swift and flexible in adapting itself to the demands made upon it, met the new taste for masques and entertainments—new of course in degree rather than in kind—introduced with the new reign and fostered by both the king and his consort. The pageant which on the 7th of May 1603 bade the king welcome to a capital dissolved in joy was partly of Jonson’s, partly of Dekker’s, devising; and he was able to deepen and diversify the impression by the composition of masques presented to James I. when entertained at houses of the nobility. The Satyr (1603) was produced on one of these occasions, Queen Anne’s sojourn at Althorpe, the seat of Sir Robert Spencer, afterwards Lord Althorpe, who seems to have previously bestowed some patronage upon him. The Penates followed on May-day 1604 at the house of Sir William Cornwallis at Highgate, and the queen herself with her ladies played his Masque of Blackness at Whitehall in 1605. He was soon occasionally employed by the court itself—already in 1606 in conjunction with Inigo Jones, as responsible for the “painting and carpentry”—and thus speedily showed himself master in a species of composition for which, more than any other English poet before Milton, he secured an enduring place in the national poetic literature. Personally, no doubt, he derived considerable material benefit from the new fashion—more especially if his statement to Drummond was anything like correct, that out of his plays (which may be presumed to mean his original plays) he had never gained a couple of hundred pounds.
Good humour seems to have come back with good fortune. Joint employment in The King’s Entertainment (1604) had reconciled him with Dekker; and with Marston also, who in 1604 dedicated to him his Malcontent, he was again on pleasant terms. When, therefore, in 1604 Marston and Chapman (who, Jonson told Drummond, was loved of him, and whom he had probably honoured as “Virgil” in The Poetaster, and who has, though on doubtful grounds, been supposed to have collaborated in the original Sejanus) produced the excellent comedy of Eastward Ho, it appears to have contained some contributions by Jonson. At all events, when the authors were arrested on account of one or more passages in the play which were deemed insulting to the Scots, he “voluntarily imprisoned himself” with them. They were soon released, and a banquet at his expense, attended by Camden and Selden, terminated the incident. If Jonson is to be believed, there had been a report that the prisoners were to have their ears and noses cut, and, with reference apparently to this peril, “at the midst of the feast his old mother drank to him, and showed him a paper which she had intended (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prison among his drink, which was full of lusty strong poison; and that she was no churl, she told him, she minded first to have drunk of it herself.” Strange to say, in 1605 Jonson and Chapman, though the former, as he averred, had so “attempered” his style as to have “given no cause to any good man of grief,” were again in prison on account of “a play”; but they appear to have been once more speedily set free, in consequence of a very manly and dignified letter addressed by Jonson to the Earl of Salisbury. As to the relations between Chapman and Jonson, illustrated by newly discovered letters, see Bertram Dobell in the Athenaeum No. 3831 (March 30, 1901), and the comments of Castelain. He thinks that the play in question, in which both Chapman and Jonson took part, was Sir Gyles Goosecappe, and that the last imprisonment of the two poets was shortly after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In the mysterious history of the Gunpowder Plot Jonson certainly had some obscure part. On the 7th of November, very soon after the discovery of the conspiracy, the council appears to have sent for him and to have asked him, as a loyal Roman Catholic, to use his good offices in inducing the priests to do something required by the council—one hardly likes to conjecture it to have been some tampering with the secrets of confession. In any case, the negotiations fell through, because the priests declined to come forth out of their hiding-places to be negotiated with—greatly to the wrath of Ben Jonson, who declares in a letter to Lord Salisbury that “they are all so enweaved in it that it will make 500 gentlemen less of the religion within this week, if they carry their understanding about them.” Jonson himself, however, did not declare his separation from the Church of Rome for five years longer, however much it might have been to his advantage to do so.
His powers as a dramatist were at their height during the earlier half of the reign of James I.; and by the year 1616 he had produced nearly all the plays which are worthy of his genius. They include the tragedy of Catiline (acted and printed 1611), which achieved only a doubtful success, and the comedies of Volpone, or the Fox (acted 1605 and printed in 1607 with a dedication “from my house in the Blackfriars”), Epicoene, or the Silent Woman (1609; entered in the Stationers’ Register 1610), the Alchemist (1610; printed in 1610), Bartholomew Fair and The Devil is an Ass (acted respectively in 1614 and 1616). During the same period he produced several masques, usually in connexion with Inigo Jones, with whom, however, he seems to have quarrelled already in this reign, though it is very doubtful whether the architect is really intended to be ridiculed in Bartholomew Fair under the character of Lanthorn Leatherhead. Littlewit, according to Fleay, is Daniel. Among the most attractive of his masques may be mentioned the Masque of Blackness (1606), the Masque of Beauty (1608), and the Masque of Queens (1609), described by Swinburne as “the most splendid of all masques” and as “one of the typically splendid monuments or trophies of English literature.” In 1616 a modest pension of 100 marks a year was conferred upon him; and possibly this sign of royal favour may have encouraged him to the publication of the first volume of the folio collected edition of his works (1616), though there are indications that he had contemplated its production, an exceptional task for a playwright of his times to take in hand, as early as 1612.
He had other patrons more bountiful than the Crown, and for a brief space of time (in 1613) had travelled to France as governor (without apparently much moral authority) to the eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh, then a state prisoner in the Tower, for whose society Jonson may have gained a liking at the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, but for whose personal character he, like so many of his contemporaries, seems to have had but small esteem. By the year 1616 Jonson seems to have made up his mind to cease writing for the stage, where neither his success nor his profits had equalled his merits and expectations. He continued to produce masques and entertainments when called upon; but he was attracted by many other literary pursuits, and had already accomplished enough to furnish plentiful materials for retrospective discourse over pipe or cup. He was already entitled to lord it at the Mermaid, where his quick antagonist in earlier wit-combats (if Fuller’s famous description be authentic) no longer appeared even on a visit from his comfortable retreat at Stratford. That on the other hand Ben carried his wicked town habits into Warwickshire, and there, together with Drayton, made Shakespeare drink so hard with them as to bring upon himself the fatal fever which ended his days, is a scandal with which we may fairly refuse to load Jonson’s memory. That he had a share in the preparing for the press of the first folio of Shakespeare, or in the composition of its preface, is of course a mere conjecture.
It was in the year 1618 that, like Dr Samuel Johnson a century and a half afterwards, Ben resolved to have a real holiday for once, and about midsummer started for his ancestral country, Scotland. He had (very heroically for a man of his habits) determined to make the journey on foot; and he was speedily followed by John Taylor, the water-poet, who still further handicapped himself by the condition that he would accomplish the pilgrimage without a penny in his pocket. Jonson, who put money in his good friend’s purse when he came up with him at Leith, spent more than a year and a half in the hospitable Lowlands, being solemnly elected a burgess of Edinburgh, and on another occasion entertained at a public banquet there. But the best-remembered hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the learned Scottish poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, to which we owe the so-called Conversations. In these famous jottings, the work of no extenuating hand, Jonson lives for us to this day, delivering his censures, terse as they are, in an expansive mood whether of praise or of blame; nor is he at all generously described in the postscript added by his fatigued and at times irritated host as “a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others.” A poetical account of this journey, “with all the adventures,” was burnt with Jonson’s library.
After his return to England Jonson appears to have resumed his former course of life. Among his noble patrons and patronesses were the countess of Rutland (Sidney’s daughter) and her cousin Lady Wroth; and in 1619 his visits to the country seats of the nobility were varied by a sojourn at Oxford with Richard Corbet, the poet, at Christ Church, on which occasion he took up the master’s degree granted to him by the university; whether he actually proceeded to the same degree granted to him at Cambridge seems unknown. He confessed about this time that he was or seemed growing “restive,” i.e. lazy, though it was not long before he returned to the occasional composition of masques. The extremely spirited Gipsies Metamorphosed (1621) was thrice presented before the king, who was so pleased with it as to grant to the poet the reversion of the office of master of the revels, besides proposing to confer upon him the honour of knighthood. This honour Jonson (hardly in deference to the memory of Sir Petronel Flash) declined; but there was no reason why he should not gratefully accept the increase of his pension in the same year (1621) to £200—a temporary increase only, inasmuch as it still stood at 100 marks when afterwards augmented by Charles I.
The close of King James I.’s reign found the foremost of its poets in anything but a prosperous condition. It would be unjust to hold the Sun, the Dog, the Triple Tun, or the Old Devil with its Apollo club-room, where Ben’s supremacy must by this time have become established, responsible for this result; taverns were the clubs of that day, and a man of letters is not considered lost in our own because he haunts a smoking-room in Pall Mall. Disease had weakened the poet’s strength, and the burning of his library, as his Execration upon Vulcan sufficiently shows, must have been no mere transitory trouble to a poor poet and scholar. Moreover he cannot but have felt, from the time of the accession of Charles I. early in 1625 onwards, that the royal patronage would no longer be due in part to anything like intellectual sympathy. He thus thought it best to recur to the surer way of writing for the stage, and in 1625 produced, with no faint heart, but with a very clear anticipation of the comments which would be made upon the reappearance of the “huge, overgrown play-maker,” The Staple of News, a comedy excellent in some respects, but little calculated to become popular. It was not printed till 1631. Jonson, whose habit of body was not more conducive than were his ways of life to a healthy old age, had a paralytic stroke in 1626, and a second in 1628. In the latter year, on the death of Middleton, the appointment of city chronologer, with a salary of 100 nobles a year, was bestowed upon him. He appears to have considered the duties of this office as purely ornamental; but in 1631 his salary was suspended until he should have presented some fruits of his labours in his place, or—as he more succinctly phrased it—“yesterday the barbarous court of aldermen have withdrawn their chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard, £33, 6s. 8d.” After being in 1628 arrested by mistake on the utterly false charge of having written certain verses in approval of the assassination of Buckingham, he was soon allowed to return to Westminster, where it would appear from a letter of his “son and contiguous neighbour,” James Howell, he was living in 1629, and about this time narrowly escaped another conflagration. In the same year (1629) he once more essayed the stage with the comedy of The New Inn, which was actually, and on its own merits not unjustly, damned on the first performance. It was printed in 1631, “as it was never acted but most negligently played”; and Jonson defended himself against his critics in his spirited Ode to Himself. The epilogue to The New Inn having dwelt not without dignity upon the neglect which the poet had experienced at the hands of “king and queen,” King Charles immediately sent the unlucky author a gift of £100, and in response to a further appeal increased his standing salary to the same sum, with the addition of an annual tierce of canary—the poet-laureate’s customary royal gift, though this designation of an office, of which Jonson discharged some of what became the ordinary functions, is not mentioned in the warrant dated the 26th of March 1630. In 1634, by the king’s desire, Jonson’s salary as chronologer to the city was again paid. To his later years belong the comedies, The Magnetic Lady (1632) and The Tale of a Tub (1633), both printed in 1640, and some masques, none of which met with great success. The patronage of liberal-minded men, such as the earl, afterwards duke, of Newcastle—by whom he must have been commissioned to write his last two masques Love’s Welcome at Welbeck (1633) and Love’s Welcome at Bolsover (1634)—and Viscount Falkland, was not wanting, and his was hardly an instance in which the fickleness of time and taste could have allowed a literary veteran to end his career in neglect. He was the acknowledged chief of the English world of letters, both at the festive meetings where he ruled the roast among the younger authors whose pride it was to be “sealed of the tribe of Ben,” and by the avowal of grave writers, old or young, not one of whom would have ventured to dispute his titular pre-eminence. Nor was he to the last unconscious of the claims upon him which his position brought with it. When, nearly two years after he had lost his surviving son, death came upon the sick old man on the 6th of August 1637, he left behind him an unfinished work of great beauty, the pastoral drama of The Sad Shepherd (printed in 1641). For forty years, he said in the prologue, he had feasted the public; at first he could scarce hit its taste, but patience had at last enabled it to identify itself with the working of his pen.
We are so accustomed to think of Ben Jonson presiding, attentive to his own applause, over a circle of younger followers and admirers that we are apt to forget the hard struggle which he had passed through before gaining the crown now universally acknowledged to be his. Howell records, in the year before Ben’s death, that a solemn supper at the poet’s own house, where the host had almost spoiled the relish of the feast by vilifying others and magnifying himself, “T. Ca.” (Thomas Carew) buzzed in the writer’s ear “that, though Ben had barrelled up a great deal of knowledge, yet it seemed he had not read the Ethics, which, among other precepts of morality, forbid self-commendation.” Self-reliance is but too frequently coupled with self-consciousness, and for good and for evil self-confidence was no doubt the most prominent feature in the character of Ben Jonson. Hence the combativeness which involved him in so many quarrels in his earlier days, and which jarred so harshly upon the less militant and in some respects more pedantic nature of Drummond. But his quarrels do not appear to have entered deeply into his soul, or indeed usually to have lasted long.[2] He was too exuberant in his vituperations to be bitter, and too outspoken to be malicious. He loved of all things to be called “honest,” and there is every reason to suppose that he deserved the epithet. The old superstition that Jonson was filled with malignant envy of the greatest of his fellow-dramatists, and lost no opportunity of giving expression to it, hardly needs notice. Those who consider that Shakespeare was beyond criticism may find blasphemy in the saying of Jonson that Shakespeare “wanted art.” Occasional jesting allusions to particular plays of Shakespeare may be found in Jonson, among which should hardly be included the sneer at “mouldy” Pericles in his Ode to Himself. But these amount to nothing collectively, and to very little individually; and against them have to be set, not only the many pleasant traditions concerning the long intimacy between the pair, but also the lines, prefixed to the first Shakespeare folio, as noble as they are judicious, dedicated by the survivor to “the star of poets,” and the adaptation, clearly sympathetic notwithstanding all its buts, de Shakespeare nostrat. in the Discoveries. But if Gifford had rendered no other service to Jonson’s fame he must be allowed to have once for all vindicated it from the cruellest aspersion which has ever been cast upon it. That in general Ben Jonson was a man of strong likes and dislikes, and was wont to manifest the latter as vehemently as the former, it would be idle to deny. He was at least impartial in his censures, dealing them out freely to Puritan poets like Wither and (supposing him not to have exaggerated his free-spokenness) to princes of his church like Cardinal du Perron. And, if sensitive to attack, he seems to have been impervious to flattery—to judge from the candour with which he condemned the foibles even of so enthusiastic an admirer as Beaumont. The personage that he disliked the most, and openly abused in the roundest terms, was unfortunately one with many heads and a tongue to hiss in each—no other than that “general public” which it was the fundamental mistake of his life to fancy he could “rail into approbation” before he had effectively secured its goodwill. And upon the whole it may be said that the admiration of the few, rather than the favour of the many, has kept green the fame of the most independent among all the masters of an art which, in more senses than one, must please to live.
Jonson’s learning and industry, which were alike exceptional, by no means exhausted themselves in furnishing and elaborating the materials of his dramatic works. His enemies sneered at him as a translator—a title which the preceding generation was inclined to esteem the most honourable in literature. But his classical scholarship shows itself in other directions besides his translations from the Latin poets (the Ars poetica in particular), in addition to which he appears to have written a version of Barclay’s Argenis; it was likewise the basis of his English Grammar, of which nothing but the rough draft remains (the MS. itself having perished in the fire in his library), and in connexion with the subject of which he appears to have pursued other linguistic studies (Howell in 1629 was trying to procure him a Welsh grammar). And its effects are very visible in some of the most pleasing of his non-dramatic poems, which often display that combination of polish and simplicity hardly to be reached—or even to be appreciated—without some measure of classical training.
Exclusively of the few lyrics in Jonson’s dramas (which, with the exception of the stately choruses in Catiline, charm, and perhaps may surprise, by their lightness of touch), his non-dramatic works are comprised in the following collections. The book of Epigrams (published in the first folio of 1616) contained, in the poet’s own words, the “ripest of his studies.” His notion of an epigram was the ancient, not the restricted modern one—still less that of the critic (R. C., the author of The Times’ Whistle) in whose language, according to Jonson, “witty” was “obscene.” On the whole, these epigrams excel more in encomiastic than in satiric touches, while the pathos of one or two epitaphs in the collection is of the truest kind. In the lyrics and epistles contained in the Forest (also in the first folio), Jonson shows greater variety in the poetic styles adopted by him; but the subject of love, which Dryden considered conspicuous by its absence in the author’s dramas, is similarly eschewed here. The Underwoods (not published collectively till the second and surreptitious folio) are a miscellaneous series, comprising, together with a few religious and a few amatory poems, a large number of epigrams, epitaphs, elegies and “odes,” including both the tributes to Shakespeare and several to royal and other patrons and friends, besides the Execration upon Vulcan, and the characteristic ode addressed by the poet to himself. To these pieces in verse should be added the Discoveries—Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matters, avowedly a commonplace book of aphorisms noted by the poet in his dally readings—thoughts adopted and adapted in more tranquil and perhaps more sober moods than those which gave rise to the outpourings of the Conversations at Hawthornden. As to the critical value of these Conversations it is far from being only negative; he knew how to admire as well as how to disdain. For these thoughts, though abounding with biographical as well as general interest, Jonson was almost entirely indebted to ancient writers, or (as has been shown by Professor Spingarn and by Percy Simpson) indebted to the humanists of the Renaissance (see Modern Language Review, ii. 3, April 1907).
The extant dramatic works of Ben Jonson fall into three or, if his fragmentary pastoral drama be considered to stand by itself, into four distinct divisions. The tragedies are only two in number—Sejanus his Fall and Catiline his Conspiracy.[3] Of these the earlier, as is worth noting, was produced at Shakespeare’s theatre, in all probability before the first of Shakespeare’s Roman dramas, and still contains a considerable admixture of rhyme in the dialogue. Though perhaps less carefully elaborated in diction than its successor, Sejanus is at least equally impressive as a highly wrought dramatic treatment of a complex historic theme. The character of Tiberius adds an element of curious psychological interest on which speculation has never quite exhausted itself and which, in Jonson’s day at least, was wanting to the figures of Catiline and his associates. But in both plays the action is powerfully conducted, and the care bestowed by the dramatist upon the great variety of characters introduced cannot, as in some of his comedies, be said to distract the interest of the reader. Both these tragedies are noble works, though the relative popularity of the subject (for conspiracies are in the long run more interesting than camarillas) has perhaps secured the preference to Catiline. Yet this play and its predecessor were alike too manifestly intended by their author to court the goodwill of what he calls the “extraordinary” reader. It is difficult to imagine that (with the aid of judicious shortenings) either could altogether miss its effect on the stage; but, while Shakespeare causes us to forget, Jonson seems to wish us to remember, his authorities. The half is often greater than the whole; and Jonson, like all dramatists and, it might be added, all novelists in similar cases, has had to pay the penalty incurred by too obvious a desire to underline the learning of the author.
Perversity—or would-be originality—alone could declare Jonson’s tragedy preferable to his comedy. Even if the revolution which he created in the comic branch of the drama had been mistaken in its principles or unsatisfactory in its results, it would be clear that the strength of his dramatic genius lay in the power of depicting a great variety of characters, and that in comedy alone he succeeded in finding a wide field for the exercise of this power. There may have been no very original or very profound discovery in the idea which he illustrated in Every Man in his Humour, and, as it were, technically elaborated in Every Man out of his Humour—that in many men one quality is observable which so possesses them as to draw the whole of their individualities one way, and that this phenomenon “may be truly said to be a humour.” The idea of the master quality or tendency was, as has been well observed, a very considerable one for dramatist or novelist. Nor did Jonson (happily) attempt to work out this idea with any excessive scientific consistency as a comic dramatist. But, by refusing to apply the term “humour” (q.v.) to a mere peculiarity or affectation of manners, and restricting its use to actual or implied differences or distinctions of character, he broadened the whole basis of English comedy after his fashion, as Molière at a later date, keeping in closer touch with the common experience of human life, with a lighter hand broadened the basis of French and of modern Western comedy at large. It does not of course follow that Jonson’s disciples, the Bromes and the Cartwrights, always adequately reproduced the master’s conception of “humorous” comedy. Jonson’s wide and various reading helped him to diversify the application of his theory, while perhaps at times it led him into too remote illustrations of it. Still, Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca, Macilente and Fungoso, Volpone and Mosca, and a goodly number of other characters impress themselves permanently upon the memory of those whose attention they have as a matter of course commanded. It is a very futile criticism to condemn Jonson’s characters as a mere series of types of general ideas; on the other hand, it is a very sound criticism to object, with Barry Cornwall, to the “multitude of characters who throw no light upon the story, and lend no interest to it, occupying space that had better have been bestowed upon the principal agents of the plot.”
In the construction of plots, as in most other respects, Jonson’s at once conscientious and vigorous mind led him in the direction of originality; he depended to a far less degree than the greater part of his contemporaries (Shakespeare with the rest) upon borrowed plots. But either his inventive character was occasionally at fault in this respect, or his devotion to his characters often diverted his attention from a brisk conduct of his plot. Barry Cornwall has directed attention to the essential likeness in the plot of two of Jonson’s best comedies, Volpone and The Alchemist; and another critic, W. Bodham Donne, has dwelt on the difficulty which, in The Poetaster and elsewhere, Ben Jonson seems to experience in sustaining the promise of his actions. The Poetaster is, however, a play sui generis, in which the real business can hardly be said to begin till the last act.
Dryden, when criticizing Ben Jonson’s comedies, thought fit, while allowing the old master humour and incontestable “pleasantness,” to deny him wit and those ornaments thereof which Quintilian reckons up under the terms urbana, salsa, faceta and so forth. Such wit as Dryden has in view is the mere outward fashion or style of the day, the euphuism or “sheerwit” or chic which is the creed of Fastidious Brisks and of their astute purveyors at any given moment. In this Ben Jonson was no doubt defective; but it would be an error to suppose him, as a comic dramatist, to have maintained towards the world around him the attitude of a philosopher, careless of mere transient externalisms. It is said that the scene of his Every Man in his Humour was originally laid near Florence; and his Volpone, which is perhaps the darkest social picture ever drawn by him, plays at Venice. Neither locality was ill-chosen, but the real atmosphere of his comedies is that of the native surroundings amidst which they were produced; and Ben Jonson’s times live for us in his men and women, his country gulls and town gulls, his alchemists and exorcists, his “skeldring” captains and whining Puritans, and the whole ragamuffin rout of his Bartholomew Fair, the comedy par excellence of Elizabethan low life. After he had described the pastimes, fashionable and unfashionable, of his age, its feeble superstitions and its flaunting naughtinesses, its vapouring affectations and its lying effronteries, with an odour as of “divine tabacco” pervading the whole, little might seem to be left to describe for his “sons” and successors. Enough, however, remained; only that his followers speedily again threw manners and “humours” into an undistinguishable medley.
The gift which both in his art and in his life Jonson lacked was that of exercising the influence or creating the effects which he wished to exercise or create without the appearance of consciousness. Concealment never crept over his efforts, and he scorned insinuation. Instead of this, influenced no doubt by the example of the free relations between author and public permitted by Attic comedy, he resorted again and again, from Every Man out of his Humour to The Magnetic Lady, to inductions and commentatory intermezzos and appendices, which, though occasionally effective by the excellence of their execution, are to be regretted as introducing into his dramas an exotic and often vexatious element. A man of letters to the very core, he never quite understood that there is and ought to be a wide difference of methods between the world of letters and the world of the theatre.
The richness and versatility of Jonson’s genius will never be fully appreciated by those who fail to acquaint themselves with what is preserved to us of his “masques” and cognate entertainments. He was conscious enough of his success in this direction—“next himself,” he said, “only Fletcher and Chapman could write a masque.” He introduced, or at least established, the ingenious innovation of the anti-masque, which Schlegel has described, as a species of “parody added by the poet to his device, and usually prefixed to the serious entry,” and which accordingly supplies a grotesque antidote to the often extravagantly imaginative main conception. Jonson’s learning, creative power and humorous ingenuity—combined, it should not be forgotten, with a genuine lyrical gift—all found abundant opportunities for displaying themselves in these productions. Though a growth of foreign origin, the masque was by him thoroughly domesticated in the high places of English literature. He lived long enough to see the species produce its poetic masterpiece in Comus.
The Sad Shepherd, of which Jonson left behind him three acts and a prologue, is distinguished among English pastoral dramas by its freshness of tone; it breathes something of the spirit of the greenwood, and is not unnatural even in its supernatural element. While this piece, with its charming love-scenes between Robin Hood and Maid Marion, remains a fragment, another pastoral by Jonson, the May Lord (which F. G. Fleay and J. A. Symonds sought to identify with The Sad Shepherd; see, however, W. W. Greg in introduction to the Louvain reprint), has been lost, and a third, of which Loch Lomond was intended to be the scene, probably remained unwritten.
Though Ben Jonson never altogether recognized the truth of the maxim that the dramatic art has properly speaking no didactic purpose, his long and laborious life was not wasted upon a barren endeavour. In tragedy he added two works of uncommon merit to our dramatic literature. In comedy his aim was higher, his effort more sustained, and his success more solid than were those of any of his fellows. In the subsidiary and hybrid species of the masque, he helped to open a new and attractive though undoubtedly devious path in the field of dramatic literature. His intellectual endowments surpassed those of most of the great English dramatists in richness and breadth; and in energy of application he probably left them all behind. Inferior to more than one of his fellow-dramatists in the power of imaginative sympathy, he was first among the Elizabethans in the power of observation; and there is point in Barrett Wendell’s paradox, that as a dramatist he was not really a poet but a painter. Yet it is less by these gifts, or even by his unexcelled capacity for hard work, than by the true ring of manliness that he will always remain distinguished among his peers.
Jonson was buried on the north side of the nave in Westminster Abbey, and the inscription, “O Rare Ben Jonson,” was cut in the slab over his grave. In the beginning of the 18th century a portrait bust was put up to his memory in the Poets’ Corner by Harley, earl of Oxford. Of Honthorst’s portrait of Jonson at Knole Park there is a copy in the National Portrait Gallery; another was engraved by W. Marshall for the 1640 edition of his Poems.
Bibliography.—The date of the first folio volume of Jonson’s Works (of which title his novel but characteristic use in applying it to plays was at the time much ridiculed) has already been mentioned as 1616; the second, professedly published in 1640, is described by Gifford as “a wretched continuation of the first, printed from MSS. surreptitiously obtained during his life, or ignorantly hurried through the press after his death, and bearing a variety of dates from 1631 to 1641 inclusive.” The works were reprinted in a single folio volume in 1692, in which The New Inn and The Case is Altered were included for the first time, and again in 6 vols. 8vo in 1715. Peter Whalley’s edition in 7 vols., with a life, appeared in 1756, but was superseded in 1816 by William Gifford’s, in 9 vols. (of which the first includes a biographical memoir, and the famous essay on the “Proofs of Ben Jonson’s Malignity, from the Commentators on Shakespeare”). A new edition of Gifford’s was published in 9 vols. in 1875 by Colonel F. Cunningham, as well as a cheap reprint in 3 vols. in 1870. Both contain the Conversations with Drummond, which were first printed in full by David Laing in the Shakespeare Society’s Publications (1842) and the Jonsonus Virbius, a collection (unparalleled in number and variety of authors) of poetical tributes, published about six months after Jonson’s death by his friends and admirers. There is also a single-volume edition, with a very readable memoir, by Barry Cornwall (1838). An edition of Ben Jonson’s works from the original texts was recently undertaken by C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson. A selection from his plays, edited for the “Mermaid” series in 1893-1895 by B. Nicholson, with an introduction by C. H. Herford, was reissued in 1904. W. W. Bang in his Materialien zur Kunde des alten englischen Dramas has reprinted from the folio of 1616 those of Ben Jonson’s plays which are contained in it (Louvain, 1905-1906). Every Man in his Humour and Every Man out of his Humour have been edited for the same series (16 and 17, 1905 and 1907) by W. W. Bang and W. W. Greg. Every Man in his Humour has also been edited, with a brief biographical as well as special introduction, to which the present sketch owes some details, by H. B. Wheatley (1877). Some valuable editions of plays by Ben Jonson have been recently published by American scholars in the Yale Studies in English, edited by A. S. Cook—The Poetaster, ed. H. S. Mallory (1905); The Alchemist, ed. C. M. Hathaway (1903); The Devil is an Ass, ed. W. S. Johnson (1905); The Staple of News, ed. De Winter (1905); The New Inn, ed. by G. Bremner (1908); The Sad Shepherd (with Waldron’s continuation) has been edited by W. W. Greg for Bang’s Materialien zur Kunde des alten englischen Dramas (Louvain, 1905).
The criticisms of Ben Jonson are too numerous for cataloguing here; among those by eminent Englishmen should be specially mentioned John Dryden’s, particularly those in his Essay on Dramatic Poësy (1667-1668; revised 1684), and in the preface to An Evening’s Love, or the Mock Astrologer (1668), and A. C. Swinburne’s Study of Ben Jonson (1889), in which, however, the significance of the Discoveries is misapprehended. See also F. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (1891), i. 311-387, ii. 1-18; C. H. Herford, “Ben Jonson” (art. in Dict. Nat. Biog., vol. xxx., 1802); A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, 2nd ed. (1899), ii. 296-407; and for a list of early impressions, W. W. Greg, List of English Plays written before 1643 and printed before 1700 (Bibliographical Society, 1900), pp. 55-58 and supplement 11-15. An important French work on Ben Jonson, both biographical and critical, and containing, besides many translations of scenes and passages, some valuable appendices, to more than one of which reference has been made above, is Maurice Castelain’s Ben Jonson, l’homme et l’œuvre (1907). Among treatises or essays on particular aspects of his literary work may be mentioned Emil Koeppel’s Quellenstudien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson’s, &c. (1895); the same writer’s “Ben Jonson’s Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker,” &c., in Anglicistische Forschungen, 20 (1906); F. E. Schelling’s Ben Jonson and the Classical School (1898); and as to his masques, A. Soergel, Die englischen Maskenspiele (1882) and J. Schmidt, “Über Ben Jonson’s Maskenspiele,” in Herrig’s Archiv, &c., xxvii. 51-91. See also H. Reinsch, “Ben Jonson’s Poetik und seine Beziehungen zu Horaz,” in Münchener Beiträge, 16 (1899).
(A. W. W.)
[1] His Christian name of Benjamin was usually abbreviated by himself and his contemporaries; and thus, in accordance with his famous epitaph, it will always continue to be abbreviated.
[2] With Inigo Jones, however, in quarrelling with whom, as Howell reminds Jonson, the poet was virtually quarrelling with his bread and butter, he seems to have found it impossible to live permanently at peace; his satirical Expostulation against the architect was published as late as 1635. Chapman’s satire against his old associate, perhaps due to this quarrel, was left unfinished and unpublished.
[3] Of The Fall of Mortimer Jonson left only a few lines behind him; but, as he also left the argument of the play, factious ingenuity contrived to furbish up the relic into a libel against Queen Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole in 1731, and to revive the contrivance by way of an insult to the princess dowager of Wales and Lord Bute in 1762.
JOPLIN, a city of Jasper county, Missouri, U.S.A., on Joplin creek, about 140 m. S. of Kansas City. Pop. (1890), 9943; (1900), 26,023, of whom 893 were foreign-born and 773 were negroes; (1910 census) 32,073. It is served by the Missouri Pacific, the St Louis & San Francisco, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, and the Kansas City Southern railways, and by interurban electric lines. The city has a fine court-house, a United States government building, a Carnegie library and a large auditorium. Joplin is the trade centre of a rich agricultural and fruit-growing district, but its growth has been chiefly due to its situation in one of the most productive zinc and lead regions in the country, for which it is the commercial centre. In 1906 the value of zinc-ore shipments from this Missouri-Kansas (or Joplin) district was $12,074,105, and of shipments of lead ore, $3,048,558. The value of Joplin’s factory product in 1905 was $3,006,203, an increase of 29.3% since 1900. Natural gas, piped from the Kansas fields, is used for light and power, and electricity for commercial lighting and power is derived from plants on Spring River, near Vark, Kansas, and on Shoal creek. The municipality owns its electric-lighting plant; the water-works are under private ownership. The first settlement in the neighbourhood was made in 1838. In 1871 Joplin was laid out and incorporated as a town; in 1872 it and a rival town on the other side of Joplin creek were united under the name Union City; in 1873 Union City was chartered as a city under the name Joplin; and in 1888 Joplin was chartered as a city of the third class. The city derives its name from the creek, which was named in honour of the Rev. Harris G. Joplin (c. 1810-1847), a native of Tennessee.
JOPPA, less correctly Jaffa (Arab. Yāfā), a seaport on the coast of Palestine. It is of great antiquity, being mentioned in the tribute lists of Tethmosis (Thothmes) III.; but as it never was in the territory of the pre-exilic Israelites it was to them a place of no importance. Its ascription to the tribe of Dan (Josh. xix. 46) is purely theoretical. According to the authors of Chronicles (2 Chron. ii. 16), Ezra (iii. 7) and Jonah (i. 3) it was a seaport for importation of the Lebanon timber floated down the coasts or for ships plying even to distant Tarshish. About 148 B.C. it was captured from the Syrians by Jonathan Maccabaeus (1 Macc. x. 75) and later it was retaken and garrisoned by Simon his brother (xii. 33, xiii. 11). It was restored to the Syrians by Pompey (Jos., Ant. xiv. 4, 4) but again given back to the Jews (ib. xiv. 10, 6) with an exemption from tax. St Peter for a while lodged at Joppa, where he restored the benevolent widow Tabitha to life, and had the vision which taught him the universality of the plan of Christianity.
According to Strabo (xvi. ii.), who makes the strange mistake of saying that Jerusalem is visible from Joppa, the place was a resort of pirates. It was destroyed by Vespasian in the Jewish War (68). Tradition connects the story of Andromeda and the sea-monster with the sea-coast of Joppa, and in early times her chains were shown as well as the skeleton of the monster itself (Jos. Wars, iii. 9, 3). The site seems to have been shown even to some medieval pilgrims, and curious traces of it have been detected in modern Moslem legends.
In the 5th and 11th centuries we hear from time to time of bishops of Joppa, under the metropolitan of Jerusalem. In 1126 the district was captured by the knights of St John, but lost to Saladin in 1187. Richard Cœur de Lion retook it in 1191, but it was finally retaken by Malek el ‘Adil in 1196. It languished for a time; in the 16th century it was an almost uninhabited ruin; but towards the end of the 17th century it began anew to develop as a seaport. In 1799 it was stormed by Napoleon; the fortifications were repaired and strengthened by the British.
The modern town of Joppa derives its importance, first, as a seaport for Jerusalem and the whole of southern Palestine, and secondly as a centre of the fruit-growing industry. During the latter part of the 19th century it greatly increased in size. The old city walls have been entirely removed. Its population is about 35,000 (Moslems 23,000, Christians 5000, Jews 7000; with the Christians are included the “Templars,” a semi-religious, semi-agricultural German colony of about 320 souls). The town, which rises over a rounded hillock on the coast, about 100 ft. high, has a very picturesque appearance from the sea. The harbour (so-called) is one of the worst existing, being simply a natural breakwater formed by a ledge of reefs, safe enough for small Oriental craft, but very dangerous for large vessels, which can only make use of the seaport in calm weather; these never come nearer than about a mile from the shore. A railway and a bad carriage-road connect Joppa with Jerusalem. The water of the town is derived from wells, many of which have a brackish taste. The export trade of the town consists of soap of olive oil, sesame, barley, water melons, wine and especially oranges (commonly known as Jaffa oranges), grown in the famous and ever-increasing gardens that lie north and east of the town. The chief imports are timber, cotton and other textile goods, tiles, iron, rice, coffee, sugar and petroleum. The value of the exports in 1900 was estimated at £264,950, the imports £382,405. Over 10,000 pilgrims, chiefly Russians, and some three or four thousand tourists land annually at Joppa. The town is the seat of a kaimakam or lieutenant-governor, subordinate to the governor of Jerusalem, and contains vice-consulates of Great Britain, France, Germany, America and other powers. There are Latin, Greek, Armenian and Coptic monasteries; and hospitals and schools under British, French and German auspices.
(R. A. S. M.)
JORDAENS, JACOB (1593-1678), Flemish painter, was born and died at Antwerp. He studied, like Rubens, under Adam van Noort, and his marriage with his master’s daughter in 1616, the year after his admission to the gild of painters, prevented him from visiting Rome. He was forced to content himself with studying such examples of the Italian masters as he found at home; but a far more potent influence was exerted upon his style by Rubens, who employed him sometimes to reproduce small sketches in large. Jordaens is second to Rubens alone in their special department of the Flemish school. In both there is the same warmth of colour, truth to nature, mastery of chiaroscuro and energy of expression; but Jordaens is wanting in dignity of conception, and is inferior in choice of forms, in the character of his heads, and in correctness of drawing. Not seldom he sins against good taste, and in some of his humorous pieces the coarseness is only atoned for by the animation. Of these last he seems in some cases to have painted several replicas. He employed his pencil also in biblical, mythological, historical and allegorical subjects, and is well-known as a portrait painter. He also etched some plates.
See the elaborate work on the painter, by Max Rooses (1908).
JORDAN, CAMILLE (1771-1821), French politician, was born in Lyons on the 11th of January 1771 of a well-to-do mercantile family. He was educated in Lyons, and from an early age was imbued with royalist principles. He actively supported by voice, pen and musket his native town in its resistance to the Convention; and when Lyons fell, in October 1793, Jordan fled. From Switzerland he passed in six months to England, where he formed acquaintances with other French exiles and with prominent British statesmen, and imbibed a lasting admiration for the English Constitution. In 1796 he returned to France, and next year he was sent by Lyons as a deputy to the Council of Five Hundred. There his eloquence won him consideration. He earnestly supported what he felt to be true freedom, especially in matters of religious worship, though the energetic appeal on behalf of church bells in his Rapport sur la liberté des cultes procured him the sobriquet of Jordan-Cloche. Proscribed at the coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor (4th of September 1797) he escaped to Basel. Thence he went to Germany, where he met Goethe. Back again in France by 1800, he boldly published in 1802 his Vrai sens du vote national pour le consulat à vie, in which he exposed the ambitious schemes of Bonaparte. He was unmolested, however, and during the First Empire lived in literary retirement at Lyons with his wife and family, producing for the Lyons academy occasional papers on the Influence réciproque de l’éloquence sur la Révolution et de la Révolution sur l’éloquence; Études sur Klopstock, &c. At the restoration in 1814 he again emerged into public life. By Louis XVIII. he was ennobled and named a councillor of state; and from 1816 he sat in the chamber of deputies as representative of Ain. At first he supported the ministry, but when they began to show signs of reaction he separated from them, and gradually came to be at the head of the constitutional opposition. His speeches in the chamber were always eloquent and powerful. Though warned by failing health to resign, Camille Jordan remained at his post till his death at Paris, on the 19th of May 1821.
To his pen we owe Lettre à M. Lamourette (1791); Histoire de la conversion d’une dame Parisienne (1792); La Loi et la religion vengées (1792); Adresse à ses commettants sur la révolution du 4 Septembre 1797 (1797); Sur les troubles de Lyon (1818); La Session de 1817 (1818). His Discours were collected in 1818. The “Fragments choisis,” and translations from the German, were published in L’Abeille française. Besides the various histories of the time, see further details vol. x. of the Revue encyclopédique; a paper on Jordan and Madame de Staël, by C. A. Sainte-Beuve, in the Revue des deux mondes for March 1868 and R. Boubée, “Camille Jordan à Weimar,” in the Correspondant (1901), ccv. 718-738 and 948-970.
JORDAN, DOROTHEA (1762-1816), Irish actress, was born near Waterford, Ireland, in 1762. Her mother, Grace Phillips, at one time known as Mrs Frances, was a Dublin actress. Her father, whose name was Bland, was according to one account an army captain, but more probably a stage hand. Dorothy Jordan made her first appearance on the stage in 1777 in Dublin as Phoebe in As You Like It. After acting elsewhere in Ireland she appeared in 1782 at Leeds, and subsequently at other Yorkshire towns, in a variety of parts, including Lady Teazle. It was at this time that she began calling herself Mrs Jordan. In 1785 she made her first London appearance at Drury Lane as Peggy in A Country Girl. Before the end of her first season she had become an established public favourite, her acting in comedy being declared second only to that of Kitty Clive. Her engagement at Drury Lane lasted till 1809, and she played a large variety of parts. But gradually it came to be recognized that her special talent lay in comedy, her Lady Teazle, Rosalind and Imogen being specially liked, and such “breeches” parts as William in Rosina. During the rebuilding of Drury Lane she played at the Haymarket; she transferred her services in 1811 to Covent Garden. Here, in 1814, she made her last appearance on the London stage, and the following year, at Margate, retired altogether. Mrs Jordan’s private life was one of the scandals of the period. She had a daughter by her first manager, in Ireland, and four children by Sir Richard Ford, whose name she bore for some years. In 1790 she became the mistress of the duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.), and bore him ten children, who were ennobled under the name of Fitz Clarence, the eldest being created earl of Munster. In 1811 they separated by mutual consent, Mrs Jordan being granted a liberal allowance. In 1815 she went abroad. According to one story she was in danger of imprisonment for debt. If so, the debt must have been incurred on behalf of others—probably her relations, who appear to have been continually borrowing from her—for her own personal debts were very much more than covered by her savings. She is generally understood to have died at St Cloud, near Paris, on the 3rd of July 1816, but the story that under an assumed name she lived for seven years after that date in England finds some credence.
See James Boaden, Life of Mrs Jordan (1831); The Great Illegitimates (1830); John Genest, Account of the Stage; Tate Wilkinson, The Wandering Patentee; Memoirs and Amorous Adventures by Sea and Land of King William IV. (1830); The Georgian Era (1838).
JORDAN, THOMAS (1612?-1685), English poet and pamphleteer, was born in London and started life as an actor at the Red Bull theatre in Clerkenwell. He published in 1637 his first volume of poems, entitled Poeticall Varieties, and in the same year appeared A Pill to Purge Melancholy. In 1639 he recited one of his poems before King Charles I., and from this time forward Jordan’s output in verse and prose was continuous and prolific. He freely borrowed from other authors, and frequently re-issued his own writings under new names. During the troubles between the king and the parliament he wrote a number of Royalist pamphlets, the first of which, A Medicine for the Times, or an Antidote against Faction, appeared in 1641. Dedications, occasional verses, prologues and epilogues to plays poured from his pen. Many volumes of his poems bear no date, and they were probably written during the Commonwealth. At the Restoration he eulogized Monk, produced a masque at the entertainment of the general in the city of London and wrote pamphlets in his support. He then for some years devoted his chief attention to writing plays, in at least one of which, Money is an Ass, he himself played a part when it was produced in 1668. In 1671 he was appointed laureate to the city of London; from this date till his death in 1685 he annually composed a panegyric on the lord mayor, and arranged the pageantry of the lord mayor’s shows, which he celebrated in verse under such titles as London Triumphant, or the City in Jollity and Splendour (1672), or London in Luster, Projecting many Bright Beams of Triumph (1679). Many volumes of these curious productions are preserved in the British Museum.
In addition to his numerous printed works, of which perhaps A Royal Arbour of Loyall Poesie (1664) and A Nursery of Novelties in Variety of Poetry are most deserving of mention, several volumes of his poems exist in manuscript. W. C. Hazlitt and other 19th-century critics found more merit in Jordan’s writings than was allowed by his contemporaries, who for the most part scornfully referred to his voluminous productions as commonplace and dull.
See Gerard Langbaine, Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691); David Erskine Baker, Biographia Dramatica (4 vols., 1812); W. C. Hazlitt, Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain (1867); F. W. Fairholt, Lord Mayors Pageants (Percy Society, 1843), containing a memoir of Thomas Jordan; John Gough Nichols, London Pageants (1831).
JORDAN, WILHELM (1819-1904), German poet and novelist, was born at Insterburg in East Prussia on the 8th of February 1819. He studied, first theology and then philosophy and natural science, at the universities of Konigsberg and Berlin. He settled in Leipzig as a journalist; but the democratic views expressed in some essays and the volumes of poems Glocke und Kanone (1481) and Irdische Phantasien (1842) led to his expulsion from Saxony in 1846. He next engaged in literary and tutorial work in Bremen, and on the outbreak of the revolution, in February 1848, was sent to Paris, as correspondent of the Bremer Zeitung. He almost immediately, however, returned to Germany and, throwing himself into the political fray in Berlin, was elected member for Freienwalde, in the first German parliament at Frankfort-on-Main. For a short while he sided with the Left, but soon joined the party of von Gagern. On a vote having been passed for the establishment of a German navy, he was appointed secretary of the committee to deal with the whole question, and was subsequently made ministerial councillor (Ministerialrat) in the naval department of the government. The naval project was abandoned, Jordan was pensioned and afterwards resided at Frankfort-on-Main until his death on the 25th of June 1904, devoting himself to literary work, acting as his own publisher, and producing numerous poems, novels, dramas and translations.
Among his best known works are: Demiurgos (3 vols., 1852-1854), a “Mysterium,” in which he attempted to deal with the problems of human existence, but the work found little favour; Nibelunge, an epic poem in alliterative verse, in two parts, (1) Sigfnedsage (1867-1868; 13th ed. 1889) and (2) Hildebrants Heimkehr (1874; 10th ed. 1892)—in the first part he is regarded as having been remarkably successful; a tragedy, Die Wittwe des Agis (1858); the comedies, Die Liebesleugner (1855) and Durchs Ohr (1870; 6th ed. 1885); and the novels Die Sebalds (1885) and Zwei Wiegen (1887). Jordan also published numerous translations, notably Homers Odyssee (1876; 2nd ed. 1889) and Homers Ilias (1881; 2nd ed. 1894); Die Edda (1889). He was also distinguished as a reciter, and on a visit to the United States in 1871 read extracts from his works before large audiences.
JORDAN (the down-comer; Arab. esh-Sheri’a, the watering-place), the only river of Palestine and one of the most remarkable in the world. It flows from north to south in a deep trough-like valley, the Aulon of the Greeks and Ghōr of the Arabs, which is usually believed to follow the line of a fault or fracture of the earth’s crust. Most geologists hold that the valley is part of an old sea-bed, traces of which remain in numerous shingle-banks and beach-levels. This, they say, once extended to the Red Sea and even over N.E. Africa. Shrinkage caused the pelagic limestone bottom to be upheaved in two ridges, between which occurred a long fracture, which can now be traced from Coelesyria down the Wadi Araba to the Gulf of Akaba. The Jordan valley in its lower part keeps about the old level of the sea-bottom and is therefore a remnant of the Miocene world. This theory, however, is not universally accepted, some authorities preferring to assume a succession of more strictly local elevations and depressions, connected with the recent volcanic activity of the Jaulan and Lija districts on the east bank, which brought the contours finally to their actual form. In any case the number of distinct sea-beaches seems to imply a succession of convulsive changes, more recent than the great Miocene upheaval, which are responsible for the shrinkage of the water into the three isolated pans now found. For more than two-thirds of its course the Jordan lies below the level of the sea. It has never been navigable, no important town has ever been built on its banks, and it runs into an inland sea which has no port and is destitute of aquatic life. Throughout history it has exerted a separatist influence, roughly dividing the settled from the nomadic populations; and the crossing of Jordan, one way or the other, was always an event in the history of Israel. In Hebrew times its valley was regarded as a “wilderness” and, except in the Roman era, seems always to have been as sparsely inhabited as now. From its sources to the Dead Sea it rushes down a continuous inclined plane, broken here and there by rapids and small falls; between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea its sinuosity is so great that in a direct distance of 65 m. it traverses at least 200 m. The mean fall is about 9 ft. in the mile. The Jordan has two great sources, one in Tell el-Kadi (Dan) whence springs the Nahr Leddan, a stream 12 ft. broad at its birth; the other at Banias (anc. Paneas, Caesarea-Philippi), some 4 m. N., where the Nahr Banias issues from a cave, about 30 ft. broad. But two longer streams with less water contest their claim, the Nahr Barrighit from Coelesyria, which rises near the springs of the Litany, and the Nahr Hasbany from Hermon. The four streams unite below the fortress of Banias, which once held the gate of the valley, and flow into a marshy tract now called Huleh (Semechonitis, and perhaps Merom of Joshua). There the Jordan begins to fall below sea-level, rushing down 680 ft. in 9 m. to a delta, which opens into the Sea of Galilee. Thereafter it follows a valley which is usually not above 4 m. broad, but opens out twice into the small plains of Bethshan and Jericho. The river actually flows in a depression, the Zor, from a quarter to 2 m. wide, which it has hollowed out for itself in the bed of the Ghor. During the rainy season (January and February), when the Jordan overflows its banks, the Zor is flooded, but when the water falls it produces rich crops. The floor of the Ghor falls gently to the Zor, and is intersected by deep channels, which have been cut by the small streams and winter torrents that traverse it on their way to the Jordan. As far south as Kurn Surtabeh most of the valley is fertile, and even between that point and the Dead Sea there are several well-watered oases. In summer the heat in the Ghor is intense, 110° F. in the shade, but in winter the temperature falls to 40°, and sometimes to 32° at night. During the seasons of rain and melting snow the river is very full, and liable to freshets. After twelve hours’ rain it has been known to rise from 4 to 5 ft., and to fall as rapidly. In 1257 the Jordan was dammed up for several hours by a landslip, probably due to heavy rain. On leaving the Sea of Galilee the water is quite clear, but it soon assumes a tawny colour from the soft marl which it washes away from its banks and deposits in the Dead Sea. On the whole it is an unpleasant foul stream running between poisonous banks, and as such it seems to have been regarded by the Jews and other Syrians. The Hebrew poets did not sing its praises, and others compared it unfavourably with the clear rivers of Damascus. The clay of the valley was used for brickmaking, and Solomon established brass foundries there. From crusading times to this day it has grown sugar-cane. In Roman times it had extensive palm-groves and some small towns (e.g. Livias or Julias opposite Jericho) and villages. The Jordan is crossed by two stone bridges—one north of Lake Huleh, the other between that lake and the Sea of Galilee—and by a wooden bridge on the road from Jerusalem to Gilead and Moab. During the Roman period, and almost to the end of the Arab supremacy, there were bridges on all the great lines of communication between eastern and western Palestine, and ferries at other places. The depth of water varies greatly with the season. When not in flood the river is often fordable, and between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea there are then more than fifty fords—some of them of historic interest. The only difficulty is occasioned by the erratic zigzag current. The natural products of the Jordan valley—a tropical oasis sunk in the temperate zone, and overhung by Alpine Hermon—are unique. Papyrus grows in Lake Huleh, and rice and cereals thrive on its shores, whilst below the Sea of Galilee the vegetation is almost tropical. The flora and fauna present a large infusion of Ethiopian types; and the fish, with which the river is abundantly stocked, have a great affinity with those of the rivers and lakes of east Africa. Ere the Jordan enters the Dead Sea, its valley has become very barren and forbidding. It reaches the lake at a minus level of 1290 ft., the depression continuing downwards to twice that depth in the bed of the Dead Sea. It receives two affluents, with perennial waters, on the left, the Yarmuk (Hieromax) which flows in from the volcanic Jaulan a little south of the Sea of Galilee, and the Zerka (Jabbok) which comes from the Belka district to a point more than half-way down the lower course. On the right the Jalud descends from the plain of Esdraelon to near Beisan, and the Far’a from near Nablus. Various salt springs rise in the lower valley. The rest of the tributaries are wadis, dry except after rains.
Such human life as may be found in the valley now is mainly migratory. The Samaritan villagers use it in winter as pasture-ground, and, with the Circassians and Arabs of the east bank, cultivate plots here and there. They retire on the approach of summer. Jericho is the only considerable settlement in the lower valley, and it lies some distance west of the stream on the lower slopes of the Judaean heights.
See W. F. Lynch, Narrative of the U.S. Expedition, &c. (1849); H. B. Tristram, Land of Israel (1865); J. Macgregor, Rob Roy on the Jordan (1870); A. Neubauer, La Géographie du Talmud (1868); E. Robinson, Physical Geography of the Holy Land (1865); E. Hull, Mount Seir, &c. (1885), and Memoir on the Geology of Arabia Petraea, &c. (1886); G. A. Smith, Hist. Geography of the Holy Land (1894); W. Libbey and F. E. Hoskins, The Jordan Valley, &c. (1905). See also [Palestine].
(C. W. W.; D. G. H.)
JORDANES,[1] the historian of the Gothic nation, flourished about the middle of the 6th century. All that we certainly know about his life is contained in three sentences of his history of the Goths (cap. 50), from which, among other particulars as to the history of his family, we learn that his grandfather Paria was notary to Candac, the chief of a confederation of Alans and other tribes settled during the latter half of the 5th century on the south of the Danube in the provinces which are now Bulgaria and the Dobrudscha. Jordanes himself was the notary of Candac’s nephew, the Gothic chief Gunthigis, until he took the vows of a monk. This, according to the manner of speaking of that day, is the meaning of his words ante conversionem meam, though it is quite possible that he may at the same time have renounced the Arian creed of his forefathers, which it is clear that he no longer held when he wrote his Gothic history. The Getica of Jordanes shows Gothic sympathies; but these are probably due to an imitation of the tone of Cassiodorus, from whom he draws practically all his material. He was not himself a Goth, belonging to a confederation of Germanic tribes, embracing Alans and Scyrians, which had come under the influence of the Ostrogoths settled on the lower Danube; and his own sympathies are those of a member of this confederation. He is accordingly friendly to the Goths, even apart from the influence of Cassiodorus; but he is also prepossessed in favour of the eastern emperors in whose territories this confederation lived and whose subject he himself was. This makes him an impartial authority on the last days of the Ostrogoths. At the same time, living in Moesia, he is restricted in his outlook to Danubian affairs. He has little to say of the inner history and policy of the kingdom of Theodoric: his interests lie, as Mommsen says, within a triangle of which the three points are Sirmium, Larissa and Constantinople. Finally, connected as he was with the Alans, he shows himself friendly to them, whenever they enter into his narrative.
We pass from the extremely shadowy personality of Jordanes to the more interesting question of his works.
1. The Romana, or, as he himself calls it, De summa temporum vel origine actibusque gentis Romanorum, was composed in 551. It was begun before, but published after, the Getica. It is a sketch of the history of the world from the creation, based on Jerome, the epitome of Florus, Orosius and the ecclesiastical history of Socrates. There is a curious reference to Iamblichus, apparently the neo-platonist philosopher, whose name Jordanes, being, as he says himself, agrammatus, inserts by way of a flourish. The work is only of any value for the century 450-550, when Jordanes is dealing with recent history. It is merely a hasty compilation intended to stand side by side with the Getica.[2]
2. The other work of Jordanes commonly called De rebus Geticis or Getica, was styled by himself De origine actibusque Getarum, and was also written in 551. He informs us that while he was engaged upon the Romana a friend named Castalius invited him to compress into one small treatise the twelve books—now lost—of the senator Cassiodorus, on The Origin and Actions of the Goths. Jordanes professes to have had the work of Cassiodorus in his hands for but three days, and to reproduce the sense not the words; but his book, short as it is, evidently contains long verbatim extracts from the earlier author, and it may be suspected that the story of the triduana lectio and the apology quamvis verba non recolo, possibly even the friendly invitation of Castalius, are mere blinds to cover his own entire want of originality. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact (discovered by von Sybel) that even the very preface to his book is taken almost word for word from Rufinus’s translation of Origen’s commentary on the epistle to the Romans. There is no doubt, even on Jordanes’ own statements, that his work is based upon that of Cassiodorus, and that any historical worth which it possesses is due to that fact. Cassiodorus was one of the very few men who, Roman by birth and sympathies, could yet appreciate the greatness of the barbarians by whom the empire was overthrown. The chief adviser of Theodoric, the East Gothic king in Italy, he accepted with ardour that monarch’s great scheme, if indeed, he did not himself originally suggest it, of welding Roman and Goth together into one harmonious state which should preserve the social refinement and the intellectual culture of the Latin-speaking races without losing the hardy virtues of their Teutonic conquerors. To this aim everything in the political life of Cassiodorus was subservient, and this aim he evidently kept before him in his Gothic history. But in writing that history Cassiodorus was himself indebted to the work of a certain Ablabius. It was Ablabius, apparently, who had first used the Gothic sagas (prisca carmina); it was he who had constructed the stem of the Amals. Whether he was a Greek, a Roman or a Goth we do not know; nor can we say when he wrote, though his work may be dated conjecturally in the early part of the reign of Theodoric the Great. We can only say that he wrote on the origin and history of the Goths, using both Gothic saga and Greek sources; and that if Jordanes used Cassiodorus, Cassiodorus used, if to a less extent, the work of Ablabius.
Cassiodorus began his work, at the request of Theodoric, and therefore before 526: it was finished by 533. At the root of the work lies a theory, whencesoever derived, which identified the Goths with the Scythians, whose country Darius Hystaspes invaded, and with the Getae of Dacia, whom Trajan conquered. This double identification enabled Cassiodorus to bring the favoured race into line with the peoples of classical antiquity, to interweave with their history stories about Hercules and the Amazons, to make them invade Egypt, to claim for them a share in the wisdom of the semi-mythical Scythian philosopher Zamolxis. He was thus able with some show of plausibility to represent the Goths as “wiser than all the other barbarians and almost like the Greeks” (Jord., De reb. Get., cap. v.), and to send a son of the Gothic king Telephus to fight at the siege of Troy, with the ancestors of the Romans. All this we can now perceive to have no relation to history, but at the time it may have made the subjugation of the Roman less bitter to feel that he was not after all bowing down before a race of barbarian upstarts, but that his Amal sovereign was as firmly rooted in classical antiquity as any Julius or Claudius who ever wore the purple. In the eighteen years which elapsed between 533 and the composition of the Getica of Jordanes, great events, most disastrous for the Romano-Gothic monarchy of Theodoric, had taken place. It was no longer possible to write as if the whole civilization of the Western world would sit down contentedly under the shadow of East Gothic dominion and Amal sovereignty. And, moreover, the instincts of Jordanes, as a subject of the Eastern Empire, predisposed him to flatter the sacred majesty of Justinian, by whose victorious arms the overthrow of the barbarian kingdom in Italy had been effected. Hence we perceive two currents of tendency in the Getica. On the one hand, as a transcriber of the philo-Goth Cassiodorus, he magnifies the race of Alaric and Theodoric, and claims for them their full share, perhaps more than their full share, of glory in the past. On the other hand he speaks of the great anti-Teuton emperor Justinian, and of his reversal of the German conquests of the 5th century, in language which would certainly have grated on the ears of Totila and his heroes. When Ravenna is taken, and Vitigis carried into captivity, Jordanes almost exults in the fact that “the nobility of the Amals and the illustrious offspring of so many mighty men have surrendered to a yet more illustrious prince and a yet mightier general, whose fame shall not grow dim through all the centuries.” (Getica, lx. § 315).
This laudation, both of the Goths and of their Byzantine conquerors, may perhaps help us to understand the motive with which the Getica was written. In the year 551 Germanus, nephew of Justinian, accompanied by his bride, Matasuntha, grand-daughter of Theodoric, set forth to reconquer Italy for the empire. His early death prevented any schemes for a revived Romano-Gothic kingdom which may have been based on his personality. His widow, however, bore a posthumous child, also named Germanus, of whom Jordanes speaks (cap. 60) as “blending the blood of the Anicii and the Amals, and furnishing a hope under the divine blessing of one day uniting their glories.” This younger Germanus did nothing in after life to realize these anticipations; but the somewhat pointed way in which his name and his mother’s name are mentioned by Jordanes lends some probability to the view that he hoped for the child’s succession to the Eastern Empire, and the final reconciliation of the Goths and Romans in the person of a Gotho-Roman emperor.
The De rebus Geticis falls naturally into four parts. The first (chs. i.-xiii.) commences with a geographical description of the three quarters of the world, and in more detail of Britain and Scanzia (Sweden), from which the Goths under their king Berig migrated to the southern coast of the Baltic. Their migration across what has since been called Lithuania to the shores of the Euxine, and their differentiation into Visigoths and Ostrogoths, are next described. Chs. v.-xiii. contain an account of the intrusive Geto-Scythian element before alluded to.
The second section (chs. xiv.-xxiv.) returns to the true history of the Gothic nation, sets forth the genealogy of the Amal kings, and describes the inroads of the Goths into the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, with the foundation and the overthrow of the great but somewhat shadowy kingdom of Hermanric.
The third section (chs. xxv.-xlvii.) traces the history of the West Goths from the Hunnish invasion to the downfall of the Gothic kingdom in Gaul under Alaric II. (376-507). The best part of this section, and indeed of the whole book, is the seven chapters devoted to Attila’s invasion of Gaul and the battle of the Mauriac plains. Here we have in all probability a verbatim extract from Cassiodorus, who (possibly resting on Ablabius) interwove with his narrative large portions of the Gothic sagas. The celebrated expression certaminis gaudia assuredly came at first neither from the suave minister Cassiodorus nor from the small-souled notary Jordanes, but is the translation of some thought which first found utterance through the lips of a Gothic minstrel.
The fourth section (chs. xlviii.-lx.) traces the history of the East Goths from the same Hunnish invasion to the first overthrow of the Gothic monarchy in Italy (376-539). In this fourth section are inserted, somewhat out of their proper place, some valuable details as to the Gothi Minores, “an immense people dwelling in the region of Nicopolis, with their high priest and primate Vulfilas, who is said also to have taught them letters.” The book closes with the allusion to Germanus and the panegyric on Justinian as the conqueror of the Goths referred to above.
Jordanes refers in the Getica to a number of authors besides Cassiodorus; but he owes his knowledge of them to Cassiodorus. It is perhaps only when he is using Orosius that we can hold Jordanes to have borrowed directly. Otherwise, as Mommsen says, the Getica is a mera epitome, laxata ea et perversa, historiae Gothicae Cassiodorianae.
As to the style and literary character of Jordanes, every author who has used him speaks in terms of severe censure. When he is left to himself and not merely transcribing, he is sometimes scarcely grammatical. There are awkward gaps in his narrative and statements inconsistent with each other. He quotes, as if he were familiarly acquainted with their writings, a number of Greek and Roman writers, of whom it is almost certain that he had not read more than one or two. At the same time he does not quote the chronicler Marcellinus, from whom he has copied verbatim the history of the deposition of Augustulus. All these faults make him a peculiarly unsatisfactory authority where we cannot check his statements by those of other authors. It may, however, be pleaded in extenuation that he is professedly a transcriber, and, if his story be correct, a transcriber in peculiarly unfavourable circumstances. He has also himself suffered much from the inaccuracy of copyists. But nothing has really been more unfortunate for the reputation of Jordanes as a writer than the extreme preciousness of the information which he has preserved to us. The Teutonic tribes whose dim origins he records have in the course of centuries attained to world-wide dominion. The battle in the Mauriac plains of which he is really the sole historian, is now seen to have had important bearings on the destinies of the world. And thus the hasty pamphlet of a half-educated Gothic monk has been forced into prominence, almost into rivalry with the finished productions of the great writers of classical antiquity. No wonder that it stands the comparison badly; but with all its faults the Getica of Jordanes will probably ever retain its place side by side with the De moribus Germanorum of Tacitus as a chief source of information respecting the history, institutions and modes of thought of our Teutonic forefathers.
Editions.—The classical edition is that of Mommsen (in Mon. Germ. hist. auct. antiq., v., ii.), which supersedes the older editions, such as that in the first volume of Muratori’s Scriptt. rer. Ital. The best MS. is the Heidelberg MS., written in Germany, probably in the 8th century; but this perished in the fire at Mommsen’s house. The next of the MSS. in value are the Vaticanus Palatinus of the 10th century, and the Valenciennes MS. of the 9th.
Authorities.—Von Sybel’s essay, De fontibus Jordanis (1838); Schirren’s De ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat Commentatio (Dorpat, 1858); Kopke’s Die Anfänge des Königthums beiden Gothen (Berlin, 1859); Dahn’s Die Könige der Germanen, vol. ii. (Munich, 1861); Ebert’s Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Literatur (Leipsic, 1874); Wattenbach’s Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1877); and the introduction of Mommsen to his edition.
(T. H.; E. Br.)
[1] The evidence of MSS. is overwhelming against the form Jornandes. The MSS. exhibit Jordanis or Jordannis; but these are only Vulgar-Latin spellings of Jordanes.
[2] The terms of the dedication of this book to a certain Vigilius make it impossible that the pope (538-555) of that name is meant.