Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/653

 J E N J E R 625 Jcnner at once refused ; to brush up his classics would, he said, &quot; be irksome beyond measure. I would not do it for a diadem. That indeed would be a bauble : I would not do it for John Hunter s museum.&quot; He visited London for the last time in 1814, when he was presented to the allied sovereigns, and to most of the principal personages that accompanied them. In the next year his wife died after a long illness, and he felt her loss most acutely. It was the signal for him to retire from public life : he never left Berkeley again, except for a day or two, as long as he lived. He found sufficient occupation fur the remainder of his life in collecting further evidence ou some points connected with his great discovery, and in his engagements as a physician, a naturalist, and a magis trate. In 1818 a severe epidemic of small-pox prevailed, and fresh doubts were thrown on the efficacy of vaccination, in part, apparently, owing to the bad quality of the vaccine lymph employed. This caused Jenner much annoyance, which was relieved by an able defence of the practice, written by Sir Gilbert Blane. But this led him, in 1821, to send a circular letter to most of the medical men in the kingdom inquiring into the effect of other skin diseases in modifying the progress of cow-pox. A year later he published his last work, On the Influence of Artificial Eruptions in certain Diseases ; and in 1823 he presented his list paper &quot; On the Migration of Birds&quot; to the Royal Society. In these pursuits the evening of his days passed happily away. On the 24th of January 1823 he retired to rest apparently as well as usual, and next morning rose and cime down to his library, where he was found insensible on the floor, in a state of apoplexy, and with the right side paralysed. He never rallied, and died the following morning, January 26, 1823. A public subscription was set on foot, shortly after his death, by the medical men of his county, for the purpose of erecting some memorial in his honour, and with much difficulty a sufficient sum was raised to enable a statue to be placed in Gloucester cathedral. In 1850 another attempt was made to set up a monument to him ; this appears to have failed, but at length, in 1858, a statue of him was erected by public subscription in London. Independently of that great discovery which will for ever render his name immortal, Jenner possessed talents of observation and reflexion that would have made him eminent as a naturalist and a physician. These qualities would have been more widely appreciated had not his tastes for rural scenes and domestic life led him to sacrifice such fame as is to be gained only amid the busy throng of men. This resolution was strengthened by his love for the simple pleasures of society, for which his varied accomplishments so well fitted him ; indeed, there can be little doubt that he would never have had the perseverance to carry through his great discovery of vaccination had not his earnest benevolence pressed it on him, as a duty, to confer such a great and permanent benefit on the whole human race. Jenner s life was written by the intimate friend of liis later years, Dr Baron of Gloucester (2 vols. 1827, 1838), and this excel lent work is almost the sole source from which the present and other biographies of him have been taken. (J. R. G.*) JENYNS, SOAME (1704-1787), author of the Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, was born at London, of a good family, in 1704. He enjoyed the best educational advantages, and studied at St John s College, Cambridge. In 1742 he was chosen M.P. for Cambridge shire, in which his property lay, and he afterwards sat for t.lie borough of Dunwich and the town of Cambridge. From 1755 to 1780 he was one of the commissioners of the board of trade. He died December 18, 1787. For the measure of literary repute which he enjoyed during his life Jenyns was indebted as much to his wealth and social standing as to his accomplishments and talents, though both were considerable. His poetical works, the Art of Dancing, 1727, and Miscellanies, 1770, contain many passages graceful and lively, though occasionally verging on licenca The first of his prose works was his free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, 1756. This essay was severely criticized on its appearance, especially by Dr Johnson in the Literary Magazine. Johnson in this critique the very best paper of the kind he ever wrote condemned the book strongly as a slight and shallow attempt to solve one of the most difficult of moral problems. Jeuyns, a gentle and amiable man in the main, was extremely irritated by his failure, lie put forth a second edition of his work with a vindication prefixed, and tried to take vengeance on Johnson after his death by a sarcastic epitaph. In 1776 Jenyns published his View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion. Though at one period of his life he had affected a kind of deistic scepticism, he had now returned to the orthodox creed of his youth, and there seems no reason to doubt his sincerity, questioned at the time, in defending Christianity on the ground of its total variance with the principles of human reason. The work was deservedly praised in its day for its literary merits, but is so plainly the production of a dilettante in theology that as a scientific treatise it is valueless. A collected edition of the works of Jenyns appeared in 1790, with a biography by Charles Nelson Cole. JEPHTHAH (nr^ Ie^e), one of the &quot;judges&quot; of Israel, was an illegitimate son of &quot; Gilead,&quot; and, being ex pelled from his father s house by his lawful brethren, took refuge in the Syrian land of Tob, where he gathered around him a powerful band of homeless men like himself. The Ammonites pressing hard on his countrymen, the &quot; elders of Gilead &quot; called for his help, which he consented to give on condition that in the event of victory the supremacy should be conferred upon him. The success of his arms was complete, and he became in consequence &quot;judge&quot; of Israel until his death six years afterwards. His name is best known in history and literature in connexion with his &quot; vow,&quot; which led to the sacrifice of his daughter as a burnt offering on his return from the war. Much reluctance has been, and continues to be, shown by many writers in accept ing the plain sense of the Scripture narrative on this point, reluctance which proceeds to a large extent on unwar ranted assumptions as to the stage of ethical development which had been reached in Israel in the period of the judges, or at the time when the narrative took shape. Several modern writers, on the other hand, are disposed to find a mythical element in the history of Jephthah. In this connexion weight has been laid on his name, &quot; the opener,&quot; on the fact that Gilead is not a personal name, and particularly on the circumstance that what is related about his daughter appears to be the popular explanation of a ceremony closely allied to w r ell-known rites connected with solar mythology. The story of Jephthah is told in Judg. x. 15-xii. 7; a great part of this section of that book, however, is occupied w r ith an allocution (xi. 14-27) to the children of Ammon which almost certainly belongs to a later hand. See Wellhausen-Bleek, Einlcitung ; Goldzilier s Mytholoyic dcr Hclrdcr ; and Studer and Bertheau s commentaries on Judges. JERBOA, a family of rodent mammals (Dipodidas), chiefly characterized by the great length of the hind limbs as compared with those in front, the disproportion being, in most cases, greater even than in the kangaroos. Like the latter, the jerboas, or jumping mice, as they are also called, raise themselves when disturbed on their hind legs, and execute enormous leaps by the aid of a long muscular tail. When undisturbed, however, they make use of all their XIII. --79