Born at London, Jan. 1, 1704: Died there, Dec. 18, 1787. An English miscellaneous writer. In 1722 he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, leaving without a degree in 1725. He published anonymously “The Art of Dancing: a poem” (1727) and a collection of poems (1752). He was returned to Parliament in 1742. In 1757 he published a “Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil,” and in 1765 “The Objections to the Taxation of our American Colonies by the Legislature of Great Britain briefly considered.” His “View of the Internal Evidences of the Christian Religion” was published in 1776.

Personal

  Mr. Soame Jenyns, who died a few days ago, had (as Mr. Wm. Gerard Hamilton, who sat for six years at the Board of Trade with him, informed me) no notion of ratiocination, no rectitude of mind; nor could he be made without much labour to comprehend an argument. If however there was anything weak, or defective, or ridiculous in what another said, he always laid hold of it and played upon it with success. He looked at everything with a view to pleasantry alone. This being his grand object, and he being no reasoner, his best friends were at a loss to know whether his book upon Christianity was serious or ironical. He twice endeavoured to speak in the House of Commons, and every one was prepared with a half-grin before he uttered a word; but he failed miserably. He had a most inharmonious voice, and a laugh scarcely human. He laughed all his life at patriotism and public spirit; and supposed all oppression of the people by those in power was merely imaginary.

  He was a man of great mildness, gentleness, and sweetness of temper, which he manifested to all with whom he had concerns, either in the business of life or its social intercourse. His earnest desire, so far as possible, was never to offend any person; and he made such allowances for those whose disposition differed from his own, that he was rarely offended with others. He was strict in the performance of religious duties in public, and a constant practiser of them in private. His conversation among his equals was most amiable and engaging; for he possessed a well-informed mind, accompanied by an uncommon vein of the most lively, spirited, and genuine wit, which always flowed copiously, but was ever tempered by the most perfect kindness. To his inferiors he was most kind and courteous, not only in his expressions and behaviour, but in assisting them in all their wants and distresses, ever considering his poor neighbours in the country as part of his own family; and that he might give them his care and protection, he spent his summers on his estate, saying, “I can do more good in my own parish at that time than in any other situation.” It is also no ordinary or misplaced eulogium which we read in the obituary of that parish:—“Decr. 18, 1787, Soame Jenyns, Esq., in the eighty-third year of his age, one of the most amiable of men and one of the truest Christians, in whom was united one of the finest understandings to one of the best hearts.”

  He was the man who bore his part in all societies with the most even temper and undisturbed hilarity of all the good companions, whom I ever knew. He came into your house at the very moment you had put upon your card; he dressed himself to do your party honour in all the colours of the jay; his lace indeed had long since lost its lustre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut since the days when gentlemen wore embroidered velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram shirts. As nature had cast him in the exact mould of an ill-made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them. Because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen, that added nothing to his beauty; yet I heard this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his history, that he wondered any body so ugly could write a book. Such was the exterior of a man, who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every company he came into; his pleasantry was of a sort peculiar to himself; it harmonised with everything; it was like the bread to our dinner; you did not perhaps make it the whole, or principal part, of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long stories, engrossed not much of your attention, and was not angry with those that did; his thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very whimsical affinity to the paradox in them: he wrote verses upon dancing, and prose upon the origin of evil, yet he was a very indifferent metaphysician, and a worse dancer; ill-nature and personality, with the single exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips; those lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the first person to whom he recited them; they were very bad, but he had been told that Johnson ridiculed his metaphysics, and some of us had just then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each other.

  His appearance, dress, manner, and conversation, were very eccentric, and those of his wife, who generally accompanied him on his visits, were no less so. The lady here alluded to was his second wife, who entertained so exalted an idea of her husband’s accuracy and propriety of conversation, that she acquired the habit of always repeating the last sentence of any thing he said. Thus when the gentleman observed, we had a disagreeable journey to town, the roads were bad, we were sadly jolted, the lady would immediately repeat the observation “Yes, as Mr. Jenyns says, we were sadly jolted.”

  Soame Jenyns appears to have been an amiable country gentleman, rather bigoted in his political tendencies, but not without acuteness and elegance of style. He could write pretty verses after the model of Prior; that he “gave his days and nights to the study of Addison” was inferred from two or three papers contributed to the “World;” and he is said to have been the charm of every social circle which he entered.

  Soame Jenyns once expressed a wonder that anybody so ugly as Gibbon could write a book; the real marvel would have been if that monumental work, the “Decline and Fall,” had been produced by a handsome man. The remark was still stranger, coming, as it did, from one who was himself a writer of books, and of good books too, although he was disfigured by an immense wen under his head, and had eyes protruding like a lobster’s, yet allowing room for another wen between them and his nose.

Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, 1776

  Soame Jenyns has published a confirmation of the Christian Religion from internal evidence. Pray was not his Origin of Evil a little heterodox? I have dipped a little into this new piece, and thought I saw something like irony, but to be sure I am wrong, for the Ecclesiastical Court are quite satisfied.

  Dr. Mayo having asked Johnson’s opinion of Soame Jenyns’s “View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion,”—JOHNSON: “I think it a pretty book; not very theological, indeed; and there seems to be an affectation of ease and carelessness, as if it were not suitable to his character to be very serious about the matter.”

  A work of very considerable shrewdness and ingenuity, in which many striking views of Christianity are adduced in support of its heavenly origin.

  The last and best work of Mr. Jenyns, was the dissertation on “the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion.” The literary history of this work is not without interest. Originally impressed with deep convictions of the truth of Christianity, its author allowed himself to be seduced into doubts, and finally settled in Deism. Renewed inquiry re-established his mind in a rational faith. He subsequently endeavored to arrange in this treatise the arguments and considerations which had most weight in his case. Immediately on its first appearance, it became popular with all parties, and yet every party in religion and literature expressed the most decided dissatisfaction with some particular portion of the argument, or some special view of the author. Such has continued to be its reception up to the present hour. As a whole, it is admitted to be the best treatise, in its particular range, yet given to the world, but in some respect—differing according to the source whence the censure comes—the disapproval of its individual doctrines and reasonings is almost universal. We have hinted that the circumstances of the author may be pleaded as offering at once an apology and a distinction in favour of his work. They go far also to account for this mixed estimate of its merits. With a more experienced theology, he would have conducted his argument more technically, and without the reckless admissions which offend divines; but, at the same time, he might thus have rendered his treatise less popular with ordinary readers. Let the man of the world, again, who turns away from the evangelical seriousness, and scriptural earnestness of other parts, remember, that these are the sentiments of one who, amid the gay literature and selfish business of the world, thus felt, and thus recommends the power of Christianity.

General

  I have read the little wicked book about Evil, that settled Mr. Dodsley’s conscience in that point, and find nothing in it but absurdity.

  His poetry does not rise above mediocrity: indeed, it scarcely deserves the name; but the style of his prose is smooth and lucid, his turns of thought are neat and unexpected; and when he sports in irony, in which he apparently delights to indulge, he is uncommonly playful and airy…. Jenyns has evidently a predilection for paradoxical opinions; and why, he might reasonably urge in his defence, should a man address the Public, who has nothing new to offer to it?

  In a literary point of view he obtained a considerable degree of temporary celebrity, occasioned principally by the bold and paradoxical nature of his disquisitions…. To any distinguished rank as a poet he has no claim; it may be said, however, that his versification is smooth, and sometimes elegant, though deficient in vigour; and that several of his smaller productions effervesce with humour and well chosen satire. As a writer in prose, he is entitled to more estimation, whether his matter or manner be considered.

  His poems were published collectively in the volumes of Dodsley, and whoever pleases, may judge of their value. But they excited no great interest when originally written; they excite less at the present period, and will probably glide down the stream of time, till, with the mob of gentlemen who write with ease, they sink into the waters of oblivion.

  We venture to assert, that there are few books in the language, of the same size as the little volume before us, containing more acute and ingenious reasoning, abounding in more lively illustration or more elegant and polished composition…. To those who do not possess this little volume we fearlessly recommend them to procure it, and unhesitatingly promise them a rich, though small, store of instruction and entertainment…. The first Essay, on the chain of universal being, is chiefly remarkable for the complete and elegant manner in which this mysterious connection is shewn to exist. The reasoning in it is of that sort which carries conviction, by the method of stating and setting forth the bearings of the question. It may, perhaps, be not unfitly called the reasoning of development, which requires nothing more than an unveiling or disclosing of the hidden link of circumstances, and not an invention of arguments, but a mere opening of the eyes to the nature of things.

  Read the works of Soame Jenyns and of Locke. Would not both of these men, for instance, while they retained their integrity, have been seen always on the opposite sides of any question that could affect the constitution and government of a free country.

  Some divines rejoiced that Jenyns had discarded his early scepticism and embraced orthodoxy; others questioned his sincerity and disliked his ingenious paradoxes…. Jenyns’s prose style was regarded by his contemporaries as a model of ease and elegance. It was highly commended by Burke, and Boswell allowed that “Jenyns was possessed of lively talents … and could very happily play with a light subject.” His metaphysical speculations were not profound, and his political views were short-sighted; but he wrote some agreeable essays (though Charles Lamb entered his works on the list of “books which are no books”).