James Harris (grammarian)
James Harris, FRS (24 July 1709 – 22 December 1780) was an English politician and grammarian. He was the author of Hermes, a philosophical inquiry concerning universal grammar (1751).
Life
[edit]James Harris was born at Salisbury, Wiltshire, the son of James Harris (1674–1731) by his second marriage to Elizabeth (c. 1682–1744), daughter of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury.[1] He was educated at the Salisbury Cathedral School, and Wadham College, Oxford. On leaving university he was entered at Lincoln's Inn as a student of law, though he was not intended for the Bar. The death of his father in 1733 brought him an independent fortune and Malmesbury House in Salisbury's Cathedral Close.[2]
Harris became a county magistrate. He was Member of Parliament for Christchurch from 1761 until his death, and Comptroller to the Queen from 1774 to 1780. He held political office under George Grenville: in January 1763 he became a lord of the admiralty, and in April that year a lord of the treasury. He retired from his post with Grenville in 1765.[2]
Harris was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1763.[3] He died at Malmesbury House on 22 December 1780, and was buried on 28 December in Salisbury Cathedral, where there is a memorial to him in the north transept.[1]
Associations
[edit]Harris was a lover of music and a friend of Handel. He directed concerts and music festivals at Salisbury for nearly fifty years. He adapted the words for a selection from Italian and German composers (subsequently published by the cathedral organist Joseph Corfe).[4] He wrote a number of pastorals. One of them, Damon and Amaryllis was produced by David Garrick at Drury Lane, as debut piece for the singer Thomas Norris. Norris was originally a Salisbury chorister, and a protégé of Harris.[5] In 1741 John Robartes, 4th Earl of Radnor gave him the collection of Handel's music made by Elizabeth Legh (1694–1734).[6]
One correspondent of Harris was Lord Monboddo, who disclosed in a 1772 letter to him some early evolutionary thought.[7] Samuel Johnson found Harris uncongenial, saying he was "a sound, solid scholar," but "a prig" and "a coxcomb" who "did not understand his own system" in Harris's work Hermes.[2]
The music historian Charles Burney, on the other hand, esteemed him as a writer on music. Harris, his wife and daughter attended a high-powered domestic concert at Burney's house in May 1775, of which a vivid description by the 22-year-old Frances (Fanny) Burney survives: "I had the satisfaction to sit next to Mr. Harris, who is very chearful [sic] and communicative, and his conversation instructive and agreeable." His daughter Louisa ("a modest, reserved, and sensible girl") was asked to sing, and Harris accompanied her.[8]
Works
[edit]Interested in the Greek and Latin classics, Harris sought out manuscripts and printed editions that influenced his writings, as did the works of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, his uncle.[1] Harris published in 1744 Three Treatises — on art; on music, painting and poetry; and on happiness. In 1751 appeared the work by which he became best known, Hermes, a philosophical inquiry concerning universal grammar.[4] In the direction of prescriptive grammar, it influenced Robert Lowth's English grammar of 1762.[9]
Harris also published Philosophical Arrangements and Philological Inquiries. His works were collected and published in 1801, by his son James who prefixed a brief biography.[4]
Hampshire Record Office holds Harris's papers.[10] Letters from his wife Elizabeth are also extant.[11]
Family
[edit]Harris married Elizabeth, daughter of John Clarke of Sandford, Somerset, in 1745. They had two sons and three daughters.[12] James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury, the diplomat, was his elder son.[13]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Dunhill, Rosemary. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12393.
{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) - ^ a b c Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1891). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 25. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ "Fellows details". Royal Society. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
- ^ a b c One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Harris, James". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 19–20.
- ^ Stevenson, Kay Gilliland; Seares, Margaret; Smith, John Christopher (1998). Paradise Lost in Short: Smith, Stillingfleet, and the Transformation of Epic. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 180 note 9. ISBN 9780838637180.
- ^ Landgraf, Annette; Vickers, David (2013). The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia. Cambridge University Press. p. 384. ISBN 978-1-107-66640-5.
- ^ Letter from Lord Monboddo to James Harris, 31 December 1772; reprinted by William Knight 1900 ISBN 1-85506-207-0
- ^ The Early Diary of Frances Burney, 1768-1778, edited by Annie Raine Ellis, Vol. II, pp. 56-60 (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., [1889] 1913).
- ^ Webster, Merriam (1989). Webster's Dictionary of English Usage: English Dictionary. Bukupedia. p. 12. ISBN 9780877790327.
- ^ Designation Statement on the Significance of Hampshire's Archive Collections
- ^ Burrows, Donald; Dunhill, Rosemary; Harris, James (2002). Music and Theatre in Handel's World: The Family Papers of James Harris, 1732-1780. Oxford University Press. p. xxii. ISBN 9780198166542.
- ^ "Harris, James (1709-80), of Salisbury, Wilts. History of Parliament Online". historyofparliamentonline.org.
- ^ "Harris, James (1746-1820), of Salisbury, Wilts. History of Parliament Online". historyofparliamentonline.org.
Further reading
[edit]- Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill, Music and Theatre in Handel's World: The Family Papers of James Harris 1732–1780, Oxford University Press, US, 2002
- Clive T. Probyn, The Sociable Humanist: The Life and Works of James Harris, 1709–1780, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991
- The Works of James Harris, Esq. 2 vols, London: F. Wingrave, 1801 (facsimile ed., Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2003)
External links
[edit]- James Harris at Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
- Harris, Earls of Malmesbury archive at Hampshire Record Office
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- 1709 births
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- Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford
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