Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/14

 and technical, but have a certain interest from his adherence to the Aristotelian philosophy during the period of Locke's supremacy. His works are: 1. Three treatises (on ‘Art,’ ‘Music, Painting, and Poetry,’ and ‘Happiness’), 1744; 5th edition, 1794. 2. ‘Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar,’ 1751; translated into French by Thurot in 1796 by order of the French Directory. 3. ‘Philosophical Arrangements,’ 1775. 4. ‘Philological Inquiries,’ 1781 (appendix of various pieces). His works were collected, with ‘Some Account of the Author,’ by his son, Lord Malmesbury, in 1801. ‘On Rise and Progress of Criticism, from Papers by J.H.,’ 1752, and ‘Spring: a Pastoral,’ represented at Drury Lane 22 Sept. 1762, are also attributed to him. He added some notes to Sarah Fielding's translation of Xenophon.

 HARRIS, JAMES, first (1746–1820), diplomatist, of a Wiltshire family long settled at Orcheston St. George, eldest son of James Harris [q. v.], author of ‘Hermes,’ by his wife, Elizabeth Clarke, was born at his father's house in the Close, Salisbury, 21 April 1746. At four years of age he went to a dame's school, and after three years to the Salisbury grammar school. Thence he went to Winchester College, where he remained until September 1762. After some time spent in London with his father, then a lord of the treasury, he went in June 1763 to Merton College, Oxford, where he idled away two years as a gentleman-commoner, in the company of Charles James Fox and William Eden. At the end of the summer term 1765 he left Oxford and went in September to Leyden, where he spent a year in serious study, and in mastering the Dutch language. Here he began the ‘Diary,’ which he kept very fully for the greater part of his life. In 1766 he returned to England for a few months, and in 1767 travelled in Holland, Prussia, Poland, and France. He was then, through the influence of Lord Shelburne, appointed secretary of embassy at Madrid, with a salary of 800l., and in the absence of the ambassador, Sir James Grey, was left in August 1769 chargé d'affaires. In August 1770 he heard of the expedition fitting out at Buenos Ayres against the Falkland Islands, and ventured, on his own responsibility, to take so high a tone with the Spanish minister, the Marquis Grimaldi, that the attempt was abandoned. In December, however, war seemed so nearly inevitable that he had actually been recalled, and had left Madrid, when at twenty leagues' distance he met a courier with the news that the Spanish government had yielded, and that he might return. His conduct in this affair gained him great credit. He was nominated minister plenipotentiary on 22 Feb. 1771, and, returning to England in the summer, was appointed to Berlin, where he arrived in February 1772. In Sept. 1776 he gave up his mission, and returned to England. In 1777 he became ambassador to the court of Catherine II at St. Petersburg, where he struggled against the hostility of Prussia and the duplicity of the empress. In December 1778 he was made a knight of the Bath, and received his knighthood from the empress on 20 March 1779. The climate injured his health (1782). From 1770 to 1774 and from 1780 until he was summoned to the upper house in 1788 he was M.P. for Christchurch. He was a strong whig and a great admirer of Fox, and was appointed by the Rockingham ministry (in April 1783) to the ministry at the Hague, an inferior but a very responsible position. Harris accepted, and left Russia in August. The dismissal of the ministry suspended his appointment, and, in spite of his support of Fox in the House of Commons, after his fall from December 1783 to February 1784, Pitt renewed the offer, in recognition of his great diplomatic abilities, and in December 1784 he proceeded to Holland, with the rank of minister, but with the salary and appointments of an ambassador. At the time of leaving Russia he had expended 20,000l. out of his private fortune. At the Hague he found the Bourbons encouraging the Dutch democratic party, and holding out hopes of the creation of a Dutch republic. He used his influence on the side of the stadtholder so successfully that ‘he may be said to have created, fostered, and matured a counter-revolution, which restored to the stadtholder his power.’ ‘Ce rusé et audacieux Harris,’ as Mirabeau calls him (Cour de Berlin, ii. 13), often resorted to extreme expedients to gain information. On one occasion he bribed a royal valet to exclude a rival for twenty-four hours from the king's closet, and on another he arranged a series of disguises for a messenger whom he sent from the Hague (September 1785) to deliver a message to Cornwallis in Berlin (Cornwallis Correspondence, i. 193). From March to July 1785 he was in England on leave, and carried an overture from Pitt to the Prince of Wales in regard to the settlement of the prince's debts. He formed the design of