Part 10

JAMES (JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART) (1688-1766), prince of Wales, known to the Jacobites as James III. and to the Hanoverian party as the Old Pretender, the son and heir of James II. of England, was born in St James's Palace, London, on the 10th of June 1688. The scandalous story that he was a supposititious child, started and spread abroad by interested politicians at the time of his birth, has been completely disproved, and most contemporary writers allude to his striking family likeness to the Royal Stuarts. Shortly before the flight of the king to Sheerness, the infant prince together with his mother was sent to France, and afterwards he continued to reside with his father at the court of St Germain. On the death of his father, on the 16th of September 1701, he was immediately proclaimed king by Louis XIV. of France, but a fantastic attempt to perform a similar ceremony in London so roused the anger of the populace that the mock pursuivants barely escaped with their lives. A bill of attainder against him received the royal assent a few days before the death of William III. in 1702, and the Princess Anne, half-sister of the Pretender, succeeded William on the throne. An influential party still, however, continued to adhere to the Jacobite cause; but an expedition from Dunkirk planned in favour of James in the spring of 1708 failed of success, although the French ships under the comte de Fourbin, with James himself on board, reached the Firth of Forth in safety. At the Peace of Utrecht James withdrew from French territory to Bar-le-Duc in Lorraine. A rebellion in the Highlands of Scotland was inaugurated in September 1715 by the raising of the standard on the braes of Mar, and by the solemn proclamation of James Stuart, "the chevalier of St George," in the midst of the assembled clans, but its progress was arrested in November by the indecisive battle of Sheriffmuir and by the surrender at Preston. Unaware of the gloomy nature of his prospects, the chevalier landed in December 1715 at Peterhead, and advanced as far south as Scone, accompanied by a small force under the earl of Mar; but on learning of the approach of the duke of Argyll, he retreated to Montrose, where the Highlanders dispersed to the mountains, and he embarked again for France. A Spanish expedition sent out in his behalf in 1719, under the direction of Alberoni, was scattered by a tempest, only two frigates reaching the appointed rendezvous in the island of Lewis.

In 1718 James had become affianced to the young princess Maria Clementina Sobieski, grand-daughter of the warrior king of Poland, John Sobieski. The intended marriage was forbidden by the emperor, who in consequence kept the princess and her mother in honourable confinement at Innsbruck in Tirol. An attempt to abduct the princess by means of a ruse contrived by a zealous Jacobite gentleman, Charles Wogan, proved successful; Clementina reached Italy in safety, and she and James were ultimately married at Montefiascone on the 1st of September 1719. James and Clementina were now invited to reside in Rome at the special request of Pope Clement XI., who openly acknowledged their titles of British King and Queen, gave them a papal guard of troops, presented them with a villa at Albano and a palace (the Palazzo Muti in the Piazza dei Santi Apostoli) in the city, and also made them an annual allowance of 12,000 crowns out of the papal treasury. At the Palazzo Muti, which remained the chief centre of Jacobite intriguing, were born James's two sons, Charles Edward (the Young Pretender) and Henry Benedict Stuart. James's married life proved turbulent and unhappy, a circumstance that was principally due to the hot temper and jealous nature of Clementina, who soon after Henry's birth in 1725 left her husband and spent over two years in a Roman convent. At length a reconciliation was effected, which Clementina did not long survive, for she died at the early age of 32 in February 1735. Full regal honours were paid to the Stuart queen at her funeral, and the splendid but tasteless monument by Pietro Bracchi (1700-1773) in St Peter's was erected to her memory by order of Pope Benedict XIV.

His wife's death seems to have affected James's health and spirits greatly, and he now began to grow feeble and indifferent, so that the political adherents of the Stuarts were gradually led to fix their hopes upon the two young princes rather than upon their father. Travellers to Rome at this period note that James appeared seldom in public, and that much of his time was given up to religious exercises; he was _dévot à l'excès_, so Charles de Brosses, an unprejudiced Frenchman, informs us. It was with great reluctance that James allowed his elder son to leave Italy for France in 1744; nevertheless in the following year, he permitted Henry to follow his brother's example, but with the news of Culloden he evidently came to regard his cause as definitely lost. The estrangement from his elder and favourite son, which arose over Henry's adoption of an ecclesiastical career, so embittered his last years that he sank into a moping invalid and rarely left his chamber. With the crushing failure of the "Forty-five" and his quarrel with his heir, the once-dreaded James soon became a mere cipher in British politics, and his death at Rome on the 2nd of January 1766 passed almost unnoticed in London. He was buried with regal pomp in St Peter's, where Canova's famous monument, erected by Pius VII. in 1819, commemorates him and his two sons. As to James's personal character, there is abundant evidence to show that he was grave, high-principled, industrious, abstemious and dignified, and that the unflattering portrait drawn of him by Thackeray in _Esmond_ is utterly at variance with historical facts. Although a fervent Roman Catholic, he was far more reasonable and liberal in his religious views than his father, as many extant letters testify.

See Earl Stanhope, _History of England and Decline of the Last Stuarts_ (1853); _Calendar of the Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle_; J. H. Jesse, _Memories of the Pretenders and their Adherents_ (1845); Dr John Doran, _"Mann" and Manners at the Court of Florence_ (1876); _Relazione della morte di Giacomo III., Rè d'Inghilterra_; and Charles de Brosses, _Lettres sur l'Italie_ (1885). (H. M. V.)

JAMES, DAVID (1839-1893), English actor, was born in London, his real name being Belasco. He began his stage career at an early age, and after 1863 gradually made his way in humorous parts. His creation, in 1875, of the part of Perkyn Middlewick in Our Boys made him famous as a comedian, the performance obtaining for the piece a then unprecedented run from the 16th of January 1875 till the 18th of April 1879. In 1885 he had another notable success as Blueskin in _Little Jack Sheppard_ at the Gaiety Theatre, his principal associates being Fred Leslie and Nellie Farren. His song in this burlesque, "Botany Bay," became widely popular. In the part of John Dory in _Wild Oats_ he again made a great hit at the Criterion Theatre in 1886; and among his other most successful impersonations were Simon Ingot in _David Garrick_, Tweedie in _Tweedie's Rights_, Macclesfield in _The Guv'nor_, and Eccles in _Caste_. His unctuous humour and unfailing spirits made him a great favourite with the public. He died on the 2nd of October 1893.

JAMES, GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD (1799-1860), English novelist, son of Pinkstan James, physician, was born in George Street, Hanover Square, London, on the 9th of August 1799. He was educated at a private school at Putney, and afterwards in France. He began to write early, and had, according to his own account, composed the stories afterwards published as _A String of Pearls_ before he was seventeen. As a contributor to newspapers and magazines, he came under the notice of Washington Irving, who encouraged him to produce his _Life of Edward the Black Prince_ (1822). _Richelieu_ was finished in 1825, and was well thought of by Sir Walter Scott (who apparently saw it in manuscript), but was not brought out till 1829. Perhaps Irving and Scott, from their natural amiability, were rather dangerous advisers for a writer so inclined by nature to abundant production as James. But he took up historical romance writing at a lucky moment. Scott had firmly established the popularity of the style, and James in England, like Dumas in France, reaped the reward of their master's labours as well as of their own. For thirty years the author of _Richelieu_ continued to pour out novels of the same kind though of varying merit. His works in prose fiction, verse narrative, and history of an easy kind are said to number over a hundred, most of them being three-volume novels of the usual length. Sixty-seven are catalogued in the British Museum. The best examples of his style are perhaps _Richelieu_ (1829); _Philip Augustus_ (1831); _Henry Masterton_, probably the best of all (1832); _Mary of Burgundy_ (1833); _Darnley_ (1839); _Corse de Léon_ (1841); _The Smuggler_ (1845). His poetry does not require special mention, nor does his history, though for a short time during the reign of William IV. he held the office of historiographer royal. After writing copiously for about twenty years, James in 1850 went to America as British Consul for Massachusetts. He was consul at Richmond, Virginia, from 1852 to 1856, when he was appointed to a similar post at Venice, where he died on the 9th of June 1860.

James has been compared to Dumas, and the comparison holds good in respect of kind, though by no means in respect of merit. Both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of history what could without much difficulty be worked up into picturesque fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the likeness ends. Of purely literary talent James had little. His plots are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair average, and he was deplorably prone to repeat himself. The "two cavaliers" who in one form or another open most of his books have passed into a proverb, and Thackeray's good-natured but fatal parody of _Barbazure_ is likely to outlast _Richelieu_ and _Darnley_ by many a year. Nevertheless, though James cannot be allowed any very high rank among novelists, he had a genuine narrative gift, and, though his very best books fall far below _Les trois mousquetaires_ and _La reine Margot_, there is a certain even level of interest to be found in all of them. James never resorted to illegitimate methods to attract readers, and deserves such credit as may be due to a purveyor of amusement who never caters for the less creditable tastes of his guests.

His best novels were published in a revised form in 21 volumes (1844-1849).

JAMES, HENRY (1843- ), American author, was born in New York on the 15th of April 1843. His father was Henry James (1811-1882), a theological writer of great originality, from whom both he and his brother Professor William James derived their psychological subtlety and their idiomatic, picturesque English. Most of Henry's boyhood was spent in Europe, where he studied under tutors in England, France and Switzerland. In 1860 he returned to America, and began reading law at Harvard, only to find speedily that literature, not law, was what he most cared for. His earliest short tale, "The Story of a Year," appeared in 1865, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and frequent stories and sketches followed. In 1869 he again went to Europe, where he subsequently made his home, for the most part living in London, or at Rye in Sussex. Among his specially noteworthy works are the following: _Watch and Ward_ (1871); _Roderick Hudson_ (1875); _The American_ (1877); _Daisy Miller_ (1878); _French Poets and Novelists_ (1878); _A Life of Hawthorne_ (1879); _The Portrait of a Lady_ (1881); _Portraits of Places_ (1884); _The Bostonians_ (1886); _Partial Portraits_ (1888); _The Tragic Muse_ (1890); _Essays in London_ (1893); _The Two Magics_ (1898); _The Awkward Age_ (1898); _The Wings of the Dove_ (1902); _The Ambassadors_ (1903); _The Golden Bowl_ (1904); _English Hours_ (1905); _The American Scene_ (1907); _The High Bid_ (1909); _Italian Hours_ (1909).

As a novelist, Henry James is a modern of the moderns both in subject matter and in method. He is entirely loyal to contemporary life and reverentially exact in his transcription of the phase. His characters are for the most part people of the world who conceive of life as a fine art and have the leisure to carry out their theories. Rarely are they at close quarters with any ugly practical task. They are subtle and complex with the subtlety and the complexity that come from conscious preoccupation with themselves. They are specialists in conduct and past masters in casuistry, and are full of variations and shadows of turning. Moreover, they are finely expressive of _milieu_; each belongs unmistakably to his class and his race; each is true to inherited moral traditions and delicately illustrative of some social code. To reveal the power and the tragedy of life through so many minutely limiting and apparently artificial conditions, and by means of characters who are somewhat self-conscious and are apt to make of life only a pleasant pastime, might well seem an impossible task. Yet it is precisely in this that Henry James is pre-eminently successful. The essentially human is what he really cares for, however much he may at times seem preoccupied with the _technique_ of his art or with the mask of conventions through which he makes the essentially human reveal itself. Nor has "the vista of the spiritual been denied him." No more poignant spiritual tragedy has been recounted in recent fiction than the story of Isabel Archer in _The Portrait of a Lady_. His method, too, is as modern as his subject matter. He early fell in love with the "point of view," and the good and the bad qualities of his work all follow from this literary passion. He is a very sensitive impressionist, with a technique that can fix the most elusive phase of character and render the most baffling surface. The skill is unending with which he places his characters in such relations and under such lights that they flash out in due succession their continuously varying facets. At times he may seem to forget that a character is something incalculably more than the sum of all its phases; and then his characters tend to have their existence, as Positivists expect to have their immortality, simply and solely in the minds of other people. But when his method is at its best, the delicate phases of character that he transcribes coalesce perfectly into clearly defined and suggestive images of living, acting men and women. Doubtless, there is a certain initiation necessary for the enjoyment of Mr James. He presupposes a cosmopolitan outlook, a certain interest in art and in social artifice, and no little abstract curiosity about the workings of the human mechanism. But for speculative readers, for readers who care for art in life as well as for life in art, and for readers above all who want to encounter and comprehend a great variety of very modern and finely modulated characters, Mr James holds a place of his own, unrivalled as an interpreter of the world of to-day.

For a list of the short stories of Mr Henry James, collections of them in volume form, and other works, see bibliographies by F. A. King, in _The Novels of Henry James_, by Elisabeth L. Cary (New York and London, 1905), and by Le Roy Phillips, _A Bibliography of the Writings of Henry James_ (Boston, Mass., 1906). In 1909 an _édition de luxe_ of Henry James's novels was published in 24 volumes.

JAMES, JOHN ANGELL (1785-1859), English Nonconformist divine, was born at Blandford, Dorsetshire, on the 6th of June 1785. At the close of his seven years' apprenticeship to a linen-draper at Poole he decided to become a preacher, and in 1802 he went to David Bogue's training institution at Gosport. A year and a half later, on a visit to Birmingham, his preaching was so highly esteemed by the congregation of Carr's Lane Independent chapel that they invited him to exercise his ministry amongst them; he settled there in 1805, and was ordained in May 1806. For several years his success as a preacher was comparatively small; but he jumped into popularity about 1814, and began to attract large crowds wherever he officiated. At the same time his religious writings, the best known of which are _The Anxious Inquirer_ and _An Earnest Ministry_, acquired a wide circulation. James was a typical Congregational preacher of the early 19th century, massive and elaborate rather than original. His preaching displayed little or nothing of Calvinism, the earlier severity of which had been modified in Birmingham by Edward Williams, one of his predecessors. He was one of the founders of the Evangelical Alliance and of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. Municipal interests appealed strongly to him, and he was also for many years chairman of Spring Hill (afterwards Mansfield) College. He died at Birmingham on the 1st of October 1859.

A collected edition of James's works appeared in 1860-1864. See _A Review of the Life and Character of J. Angell James_ (1860), by J. Campbell, and _Life and Letters of J. A. James_ (1861), edited by his successor, R. W. Dale, who also contributed a sketch of his predecessor to _Pulpit Memorials_ (1878).

JAMES, THOMAS (c. 1573-1629), English librarian, was born at Newport, Isle of Wight. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and became a fellow of New College in 1593. His wide knowledge of books, together with his skill in deciphering manuscripts and detecting literary forgeries, secured him in 1602 the post of librarian to the library founded in that year by Sir Thomas Bodley at Oxford. At the same time he was made rector of St Aldate's, Oxford. In 1605 he compiled a classified catalogue of the books in the Bodleian Library, but in 1620 substituted for it an alphabetical catalogue. The arrangement in 1610, whereby the Stationers' Company undertook to supply the Bodleian Library with every book published, was James's suggestion. Ill health compelled him to resign his post in 1620, and he died at Oxford in August 1629.

JAMES, WILLIAM (d. 1827), English naval historian, author of the _Naval History of Great Britain from the Declaration of War by France in 1793 to the Accession of George IV._, practised as a proctor in the admiralty court of Jamaica between 1801 and 1813. He was in the United States when the war of 1812 broke out, and was detained as a prisoner, but escaped to Halifax. His literary career began by letters to the _Naval Chronicle_ over the signature of "Boxer." In 1816 he published _An Inquiry into the Merits of the Principal Naval Actions between Great Britain and the United States_. In this pamphlet, which James reprinted in 1817, enlarged and with a new title, his object was to prove that the American frigates were stronger than their British opponents nominally of the same class. In 1819 he began his _Naval History_, which appeared in five volumes (1822-1824), and was reprinted in six volumes (1826). It is a monument of painstaking accuracy in all such matters as dates, names, tonnage, armament and movements of ships, though no attempt is ever made to show the connexion between the various movements. James died on the 28th of May 1827 in London, leaving a widow who received a civil list pension of £100.

An edition of the _Naval History_ in six volumes, with additions and notes by Capt. F. Chamier, was published in 1837, and a further one in 1886. An edition epitomized by R. O'Byrne appeared in 1888, and an _Index_ by C. G. Toogood was issued by the Navy Records Society in 1895.

JAMES, WILLIAM (1842-1910), American philosopher, son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James, and brother of the novelist Henry James, was born on the 11th of January 1842 at New York City. He graduated M.D. at Harvard in 1870. Two years after he was appointed a lecturer at Harvard in anatomy and physiology, and later in psychology and philosophy. Subsequently he became assistant professor of philosophy (1880-1885), professor (1885-1889), professor of psychology (1889-1897) and professor of philosophy (1897-1907). In 1899-1901 he delivered the Gifford lectures on natural religion at the university of Edinburgh, and in 1908 the Hibbert lectures at Manchester College, Oxford. With the appearance of his _Principles of Psychology_ (2 vols., 1890), James at once stepped into the front rank of psychologists as a leader of the physical school, a position which he maintained not only by the brilliance of his analogies but also by the freshness and unconventionality of his style. In metaphysics he upheld the idealist position from the empirical standpoint. Beside the _Principles of Psychology_, which appeared in a shorter form in 1892 (_Psychology_), his chief works are: _The Will to Believe_ (1897); _Human Immortality_ (Boston, 1898); _Talks to Teachers_ (1899); _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ (New York, 1902); _Pragmatism--a New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking_ (1907); _A Pluralistic Universe_ (1909; Hibbert lectures), in which, though he still attacked the hypothesis of absolutism, he admitted it as a legitimate alternative. He received honorary degrees from Padua (1893), Princeton (1896), Edinburgh (1902), Harvard (1905). He died on the 27th of August 1910.

JAMES OF HEREFORD, HENRY JAMES, 1ST BARON (1828- ), English lawyer and statesman, son of P. T. James, surgeon, was born at Hereford on the 30th of October 1828, and educated at Cheltenham College. A prizeman of the Inner Temple, he was called to the bar in 1852 and joined the Oxford circuit, where he soon came into prominence. In 1867 he was made "postman" of the court of exchequer, and in 1869 became a Q.C. At the general election of 1868 he obtained a seat in parliament for Taunton as a Liberal, by the unseating of Mr Serjeant Cox on a scrutiny in March 1869, and he kept the seat till 1885, when he was returned for Bury. He attracted attention in parliament by his speeches in 1872 in the debates on the Judicature Act. In 1873 (September) he was made solicitor-general, and in November attorney-general, and knighted; and when Gladstone returned to power in 1880 he resumed his office. He was responsible for carrying the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883. On Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule, Sir Henry James parted from him and became one of the most influential of the Liberal Unionists: Gladstone had offered him the lord chancellorship in 1886, but he declined it; and the knowledge of the sacrifice he had made in refusing to follow his old chief in his new departure lent great weight to his advocacy of the Unionist cause in the country. He was one of the leading counsel for _The Times_ before the Parnell Commission, and from 1892 to 1895 was attorney-general to the prince of Wales. From 1895 to 1902 he was a member of the Unionist ministry as chancellor for the duchy of Lancaster, and in 1895 he was made a peer as Baron James of Hereford. In later years he was a prominent opponent of the Tariff Reform movement, adhering to the section of Free Trade Unionists.