Chapter James I. to Jefferies of J by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

James I. to Jefferies

James I., King of Scotland (1394-1437).—Poet, the third son of Robert III., was born at Dunfermline. In 1406 he was sent for safety and education to France, but on the voyage was taken prisoner by an English ship, and conveyed to England, where until 1824 he remained confined in various places, but chiefly in the Tower of London. He was then ransomed and, after his marriage to Lady Jane or Joan Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset, and the heroine of The King’s Quhair (or Book), crowned at Scone. While in England he had been carefully educated, and on his return to his native country endeavoured to reduce its turbulent nobility to due subjection, and to introduce various reforms. His efforts, however, which do not appear to have been always marked by prudence, ended disastrously in his assassination in the monastery of the Black Friars, Perth, in February, 1437. James I. was a man of great natural capacity both intellectual and practical—an ardent student and a poet of no mean order. In addition to The King’s Quhair, one of the finest love poems in existence, and A Ballad of Good Counsel, which are very generally attributed to him, he has been more doubtfully credited with Peeblis to the Play and Christis Kirke on the Greene.

James, George Payne Rainsford (1801-1860).—Novelist and historical writer, son of a physician in London, was for many years British Consul at various places in the United States and on the Continent. At an early age he began to write romances, and continued his production with such industry that his works reach to 100 vols. This excessive rapidity was fatal to his permanent reputation; but his books had considerable immediate popularity. Among them are Richelieu (1829), Philip Augustus (1831), The Man at Arms (1840), The Huguenot (1838), The Robber, Henry of Guise (1839), Agincourt (1844), The King’s Highway (1840). In addition to his novels he wrote Memoirs of Great Commanders, a Life of the Black Prince, and other historical and biographical works. He held the honorary office of Historiographer Royal.

Jameson, Mrs. Anna Brownell (Murphy) (1794-1860).—w riter on art, daughter of Denis Brownell Murphy, a distinguished miniature painter, married Robert Jameson, a barrister (afterwards Attorney- General of Ontario). The union, however, did not turn out happily: a separation took place, and Mrs. Jameson turned her attention to literature, and specially to subjects connected with art. Among many other works she produced Loves of the Poets (1829), Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831), Beauties of the Court of Charles II. (1833), Rubens (translated from the German), Hand Book to the Galleries of Art, Early Italian Painters, Sacred and Legendary Art (1848), etc. Her works show knowledge and discrimination and, though now in many respects superseded, still retain interest and value.

Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse (1841-1905).—B. at Dundee, and educated at St. Columba’s Coll., Dublin, Charterhouse, and Cambridge, at the last of which he lectured on the classics, and was in 1869 elected Public Orator. After being Professor of Greek at Glasgow, he held from 1889 the corresponding chair at Cambridge, and for a time represented the University in Parliament. He was one of the founders of the British School of Archæology at Athens. Among his works are The Attic Orators, An Introduction to Homer, Lectures on Greek Poetry, Life of Richard Bentley (English Men of Letters Series), and he edited the works of Sophocles, and the Poems and Fragments of Bacchylides, discovered in 1896. Jebb was one of the most brilliant of modern scholars.

Jefferies, Richard (1848-1887).—Naturalist and novelist, son of a farmer, was born at Swindon, Wilts. He began his literary career on the staff of a local newspaper, and first attracted attention by a letter in the Times on the Wiltshire labourer. Thereafter he wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette, in which appeared his Gamekeeper at Home, and Wild Life in a Southern County (1879), both afterwards repub. Both these works are full of minute observation and vivid description of country life. They were followed by The Amateur Poacher (1880), Wood Magic (1881), Round about a Great Estate (1881), The Open Air (1885), and others on similar subjects. Among his novels are Bevis, in which he draws on his own childish memories, and After London, or Wild England (1885), a romance of the future, when London has ceased to exist. The Story of My Heart (1883) is an idealised picture of his inner life. Jefferies died after a painful illness, which an lasted for six years. In his own line, that of depicting with an intense sense for nature all the elements of country and wild life, vegetable and animal, surviving in the face of modern civilisation, he has had few equals. Life by E. Thomas.